Gus Speth: Let statues mark civil rights struggle, too

Editor’s note: This commentary is by Gus Speth, who is a senior fellow at Vermont Law School and former dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. It was published in the Valley News on Aug. 28.
On a grand pedestal high over the public square in the center of the small South Carolina town where my wife and I grew up in the 1940s and ’50s, there stands a statue of an anonymous Confederate soldier, facing south. I grew up with it but paid it little attention. I didn