Finding some good in dismantling the Lost Cause

Team Henry Enterprises is a well-regarded Black-owned construction company headquartered in Virginia. Team Henry works on public infrastructure, private ground-up builds, renos, etc. It's also involved in projects of "cultural significance," including the UVA Memorial to Enslaved Laborers. And it has also been responsible for "the removal of countless monuments to the 'Lost Cause.'" 

Good riddance to those monuments that glorify the Confederacy. Statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest (Confederate general and the Ku Klux Klan's first Grand Wizard) and Robert E. Lee (whatever else you think of him as a noble warrior, he was a traitor to his country, as were the other political and military leaders of the Confederacy). 

I'm not a big fan of digging back through history and judging everyone by contemporary standards. But fighting to defend the institution of slavery, taking up arms against fellow country-men? 

Tear down those monuments!

All they do is reinforce the notion that fighting to defend slavery was somehow noble. Sure, many of those who fought were brave. But the cause itself was a loser. If it's the Lost Cause, then it should be LOST. 

And when it comes to tearing down those monuments to evil, Devon Henry is getting the job done.

He didn’t seek the job. He had never paid much attention to Civil War history. City and state officials said they turned to Team Henry Enterprises after a long list of bigger contractors — all White-owned — said they wanted no part of taking down Confederate statues.

For a Black man to step in carried enormous risk. Henry concealed the name of his company for a time and long shunned media interviews. He has endured death threats, seen employees walk away and been told by others in the industry that his future is ruined. He started wearing a bulletproof vest on job sites and got a permit to carry a concealed firearm for protection. (Source: Washington Post)

Team Henry's been at it a while now - since 2020 - and the threats continue, but Henry has "simply learned to live with them."

“My head’s in a different place now,” he said. “It’s like, I’m not scared to cross the street, but I’m always going to look both ways, right? So I’m not totally oblivious to who I am and what I’ve done, but I’m just not letting fear kind of drive what I do.”

He's also had some problems with finding subcontractors. To find a crane for one project, he had to go as far afield as Connecticut. 

The decision to take on the statue removal projects didn't come easy.

He had come to understand that those statues — especially Lee — were like religious objects to their defenders. They had stood more than a century as totems of a powerful mythology: that slavery was somehow benign, that Southerners were the noble victims of Northern aggression, that things were better when White people presided over an orderly world. The Lost Cause.

For a Black man to destroy such a symbol would put his life, his family, his livelihood on the line. Henry knew that in Louisiana, a White contractor withdrew from the job of removing four Confederate monuments after receiving death threats. Someone torched the man’s car.

But Henry saw this as a powerful chance to give a bit of justice to the souls represented by the memorial to enslaved people [his company had built]. 

Henry talked it over with his family, who encouraged him to go for it.  

His first project was removing a statue of Stonewall Jackson.

Thousands of onlookers chanted, screamed and taunted the bronze figure of Jackson high on his horse. One tearful Confederate defender begged for work to stop; deputies had to haul him away. 

Others in the crowd cheered. 

He also got some pushback he hadn't anticipated. An African American women dissed Henry for taking what she viewed as TLC with the Jackson statue. Why not, she asked, "just drop it. Just let it go. Just kick it over."

So Devon Henry is walking a fine line, and he's decided to do is professionally and dispassionately. Still, sometimes the enormity of what he's doing gets to him. All those Black folks who never thought they'd see the day when monuments to their oppression were taken down. 

In the meantime, Henry said, his business boomed. If some potential clients avoided him because of the statues, more sought him out. “We’re busier than we’ve ever been,” he said; Team Henry has grown to 200 employees after starting out 15 years ago with just four.

The company won recent contracts to build a bank and a credit union, and to rehabilitate a structure that once housed enslaved Africans at what’s now the Richmond Hill religious retreat.

He's also, oddly and interestingly,  gotten together with artists of color to create NFT's based on images of the dismantled statues. 

Dabbling in NFT's seems pretty rad for a man who's chosen such a grounded, physical profession. But, oh why not? 

Mostly, the story of Devon Henry and his company's success is a matter of lost and found. The Lost Cause is getting dismantled, and Henry's found his business booming.

Great!