North Central College’s Commemorative Statues

A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried.
A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried. WBEZ/Logan Jaffe
A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried.
A monument in Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th Street and Cottage Grove marks the largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere, or where roughly 4,000 Confederate soldiers who died at Camp Douglas are buried. WBEZ/Logan Jaffe

North Central College’s Commemorative Statues

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The violence in Charlottesville is adding fuel to a national conversation about the place of civil war tributes in America today. In the Oak Woods Cemetery at 67th and Cottage Grove, a 40-foot-tall statue commemorates thousands of confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war at Chicago’s Camp Douglas. North Central College history professor Ann Keating says this statue is different from those honoring confederate figures like the one of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville.

This segment was produced by Carrie Shepherd.