Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Georgetown Journal of Modern Critical Race Perspectives

Abstract

When it comes to racism and the law, visual rhetoric has played and still plays an outsized role. Jason Aldean’s music video for “Try That in a Small Town” aptly illustrates this thesis. The video shows Aldean and his band performing in front of the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, the same location where, in 1918, a white mob violently lynched a young Black man. To some (white) viewers, the Maury County Courthouse might symbolize justice. In combination with the song’s lyrics, however, the courthouse conjures up visuals of the lynching that occurred outside its doors, reminding viewers that small town justice does not serve everyone.

Set in Tennessee, like Aldean’s song, this article examines three recent legal controversies that illustrate visual rhetoric’s power to cement cultural meanings about race and racism. The first controversy involves the display of Confederate memorabilia inside the jury deliberation room in a small Tennessee town. The second controversy illustrates how Tennessee’s heritage protection law prevents local citizens from removing Confederate monuments from public property. The third example explains how, under Tennessee’s divisive concepts acts, conservative parents censor truthful imagery depicting U.S. history regarding race. In Tennessee, visual rhetoric has been used to reinforce white supremacy, but it can also propel society toward racial justice and equity. Whichever way it is used, when visual rhetoric touches upon race and racism in public spaces, intense conflict erupts.

What is happening in Tennessee maps onto national jurisprudential and cultural trends. Just as Aldean’s video struck a chord across the country, the issues boiling up in Tennessee are also nationally relevant. Many other states have similar heritage protection laws that prevent the removal of Confederate monuments. And many states have enacted anti-Critical Race Theory (CRT) bills, or other bills aimed at “divisive concepts.” This article analyzes these trends from a visual perspective.

Drawing upon the disciplines of legal rhetoric and visual rhetoric, Part I of this Article explains the rhetorical concepts that apply to Confederate imagery in the courtroom, on the courthouse lawn, and in textbook illustrations. Part II delves into the Confederate Jury Room cases, discussing the cases and exploring interdisciplinary explanations for what Confederate symbols mean historically as well as what they do to observers psychologically. Part III will address Confederate monuments in Tennessee, explaining how Tennessee’s Heritage Protection Act (amended many times in a reactionary fashion) operates in a highly undemocratic way, preventing local citizens from exercising control over public spaces and reinforcing toxic and traumatic narratives that bolster white supremacy and denigrate Black experiences.

This Article argues that Congress should declare all Confederate monuments on public land to be a badge of slavery within the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment. In so doing, various state heritage protection acts would be preempted by federal law, allowing local citizens to remove these statues. Finally, IV will address Tennessee’s anti- CRT, “divisive concepts” acts, particularly analyzing the role that visual rhetoric plays in these attempts to stifle truthful portrayals of history. This article will conclude by drawing together the threads and patterns contained within each scene.

Publication Date

2023

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