When Senator John Williams of Mississippi proposed a bill to Congress requesting a site to erect a monument in memory of the faithful Black Mammies of the South, African Americans were angered. The “Black Mammy” represented the notion of the faithful slave in Southern society. It conveyed the myth of the happy plantation, and neglected all the oppression that African Americans actually faced.. If the monument were erected, it would promote the Southernview of the Civil War as a defense of their culture, homes, and women rather than slavery. In this case, the African American view of the history of the Civil War would be lost. Furthermore, the Black Mommy monument represented to the public images that Black women played in domesticity and womanhood. They were servants in the masters’ houses and took care of the masters’ children even at the expense of their own children. It followed that Black women did not meet Victorian standards of womanhood, and should not be respected. Conversely, the New Negro male should not be respected either. He was not the economic support of his families. For elite Black women, endeavors to uplift themselves would be in vain once the statue was erected. The Black communities opposed not the monument itself, but all the messages it implied.