news-record.com

Alabama is replacing Jabez Lamar Monroe Curry with Helen Keller in the U.S. Capitol's statuary collection, and I haven't heard any loud outcry emanating from the Heart of Dixie.

That's probably because the blind, deaf and mute Keller has been an inspiration to the world in a way Curry could never be.

Curry was one of those Civil War-era figures who made it into Statuary Hall because the war was a recent memory and Southern states were eager to honor the men who had led their sons in the "Lost Cause." He was a staff aide to Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and to Gen. Joseph "Fighting Joe" Wheeler, Alabama's other entry in the Capitol's statuary pantheon. After the war, Curry worked for free public education for Southern whites and blacks. George Wallace should have taken notes.

Several other states are contemplating switcheroos in their statuary representations since Congress voted nine years ago to allow substitutions.

California has already installed Ronald Reagan, Kansas has installed Dwight Eisenhower, and Missouri has installed Harry Truman, replacing figures you've never heard of. Ohio wants to replace 19th-century Gov. William Allen, who once characterized black people as savages, with someone from its assortment of heroes and heroines. Among them are Thomas Edison, Dean Martin and Annie Oakley. Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, both native Ohioans, are not in the running. Nobody down South is complaining.

It was in 1864 that Congress authorized a Statuary Hall to be established in the Capitol's old House chamber after the new House wing was completed. Each state was allowed two statues.

North Carolina chose Charles Brantley Aycock and Zebulon B. Vance. Vance was governor during the Civil War, and a thorn in the side for Jefferson Davis because of his insistence on putting the interests of North Carolina ahead of the interests of the Confederacy. Aycock became governor in 1900 and devoted his administration to building schools and promoting public education. Is Sen. Sam Ervin, the Diogenes of Watergate, worthy of shoving one of them aside? Could Luther Hodges and Terry Sanford be considered their peers? Should the state look beyond the realm of politics and enshrine someone on the order of Michael Jordan, Charlie "Choo-Choo" Justice, Dean Smith or Mike Krzyzewski? Does Ava Gardner deserve a second look? How about Andy Griffith?

South Carolina skipped over her Revolutionary luminaries -- Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Andrew Pickens -- and opted for John C. Calhoun and Wade Hampton.

Calhoun espoused the doctrine of nullification in an attempt to get the protective tariff off the state's back, although he had initially supported it. Ten years before South Carolina seceded, he predicted that anti-slavery agitation would cause the Union to split.

Wade Hampton was a Confederate Army hero who tried to calm the seething emotions of white South Carolinians during Reconstruction. He won the governorship in a violent campaign that marked the end of Reconstruction and the establishment of white supremacy in the state for the next 90 years.

Are later South Carolinians more worthy? How about James F. Byrnes, Franklin Roosevelt's "assistant president" during World War II, who also served as a U.S. senator, Supreme Court justice and governor of the state? Or Strom Thurmond, who stayed in the Senate so long people thought he actually was a statue.

Georgia is represented by Alexander Hamilton Stephens, vice president of the Confederacy, who did not endear himself to his state's black population when he said of the breakaway nation: "The cornerstone of the new government rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and moral condition." Jimmy Carter, the Georgian who became president, was more egalitarian. But a lot of Georgians would prefer to replace Stephens with Herschel Walker. Georgia's other Capitol statue is of Crawford W. Long, who pioneered the use of anesthesia in surgery.

Mississippi's first choice was obvious: Jefferson Davis, the native son who became president of the Confederacy. Second choice was James Zachariah George. He signed Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession and was a colonel in the Civil War. Nice guy, but I'm thinking that one of the state's Miss America winners might brighten the Capitol a tad more.

Florida picked Edmund Kirby Smith, the last of the Confederate generals to surrender. No. 2 was a cool choice: John Corrie, father of refrigeration and air conditioning. Without them, how could Floridians survive?

No state had a clearer choice than Virginia. It chose George Washington, "the father of his country" and Robert E. Lee, the Confederacy's knight in shining armor.

As for James Lamar Monroe Curry, I don't think we'll have any trouble forgetting him. Most of us never even knew him. Let's hear it for Helen Keller!

Readers may write to Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625. E-mail: Swampscum2@aol.com