There has been much debate lately about which symbols of America’s racial injustices should be removed from public view or, in some cases, pulled down by angry crowds.

Mark A. Wilson 

As a long-time art history instructor at several Bay Area colleges, I and my students have been discussing this issue in class for years. While very few of my students have ever argued against the removal of statues of Confederate figures anywhere in the United States, some recent Bay Area events have revealed a troubling fissure in the current racial justice movement — and demonstrate just how complex the legacy of some historical figures can be.

The mob that rampaged through Golden Gate Park recently tore down every statue they could get their hands on, including one of Ulysses S. Grant. In a History channel special on Grant in May, the respected African-American historian and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out that Grant’s only connection to slavery before the Civil War was to free a single slave his wife’s father bequeathed to him.

During the Civil War, Grant pressed for the inclusion of Black soldiers in the Union Army, and he refused to carry out a prisoner exchange with Robert E. Lee because Lee would not include captured Black soldiers as Grant had insisted.

Coates and several professors of African-American history went on to praise Grant for his tireless efforts to defend the civil rights of Black Americans during his presidency, as well as his securing the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment granting Black male citizens the right to vote and fighting the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws in the South. One historian called Grant “America’s first civil rights president.”

One doesn’t have to be a supporter of President Trump to realize that the type of violence that erupted in Golden Gate Park recently will be harmful to the cause of racial justice in America for three reasons:

First, those of us who support Black Lives Matter should acknowledge the contributions of those people, both black and white, who stood up for justice for African Americans in the past as an inspiration to us at this pivotal point in American history.

Second, such acts play into the hands of Trump’s re-election campaign, giving him fodder for his spurious claim that his opposition is dominated by “radical-left anarchists.”

Third, attacking historic figures who worked to end the racial injustices of their times such as Grant, or even Lincoln, runs the real risk of alienating many people of good will who are the natural allies of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Indeed, in Washington, D.C., recently, a contingent of African-American residents of the Capitol Hill neighborhood, where a statue of Lincoln and a freed slave has stood since 1876, confronted a mob that wanted to pull it down. The residents pointed out that Frederick Douglass had dedicated the statue, and that the freed man was not kneeling passively but rising after breaking his own chains.

And, based on the news footage, it seems clear that the crowd in Golden Gate Park that night was made up mostly of white middle-class citizens who chose the temporary thrill of vandalism over the hard work of crafting meaningful reforms for our nation’s law enforcement, housing, legal and economic systems.

This is not the way to build a broad-based movement that will enact lasting changes to ensure racial justice for all Americans.

Mark A. Wilson is an art history instructor at several Bay Area colleges and the author of five books on West Coast history.