Arkansas Capitol Grounds Tour, part 1

This is the first in a series of posts I plan to do about the monuments that are scattered all over the grounds of the capitol here in Little Rock. I walk past this statue - a monument to the Confederate soldiers of Arkansas - every morning on my way in to the office. It is not the only memorial to the Civil War on the grounds - sort of like the various Confederate heroes statues on the UT campus - which I find a little creepy. I mean, the area wasn't the capitol until more than 30 years after the war was over, and these statues were all put up after that. Why were they still trying to celebrate that dark period in their history? I am not sure I will ever understand the South.

Anyway, this is the first statue I see in the mornings. I am sorry it is sort of dark - I took this about 7:50 AM on my first day of work. The statue is quite nice, if you can ignore what it stands for - that being racism, slavery, oppression, etc. I've always been partial to Nike figures (that is, the winged victory kind, not things in the shape of the swoosh) and even wrote a couple of papers about them in a college art history class. My favorite is the Nike of Samothrace. There is something about the stance that I appreciate, and the fact that victory is a strong woman, striding forward.