We discovered a dead sparrow, my sister, brother, and I. We were four, five and six at the time, playing outside one day. I, being the oldest of that trio, decided we should bury it. We walked up the block and across the street to the circle where we sometimes played, stopped under a tree, used a stick to dig a small grave, placed the bird in, and covered it. The idea must have been something I had gotten from television. We’d never been to a funeral.

That circle here in Washington, DC is one of a few in this city of circles, squares, and triangles. Once known as Iowa Circle, historian Paul K. Williams writes that “…nearby Dupont Circle was lined with mansions and had become more popular with the city’s wealthy residents while Iowa Circle, surrounded by stately row houses, had become a middle-class neighborhood.” We lived there in the late ‘50s. Some of those houses had remained stately; some had seen better days.

The most striking feature of the circle is the magnificent bronze equestrian statue at its center, a statue I longed to climb but was unable, a statue so large that, when it arrived in Brooklyn from Italy, it had to be transported to Washington by a two-masted schooner rather than by train. I knew nothing of this then, knew nothing of the statue’s significance. We are being reminded that we still don’t know enough about the significance of such memorials.

This being the capital of the nation that defeated the Confederate States of America, many of the bronze memorials that stand in this city’s public spaces celebrate the Civil War’s victors rather than the vanquished. Yes, there is one Confederate brigadier general standing, Albert Pike. As historian Kathryn Allamong Jacob writes,

When members of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), a fraternal organization of Union veterans, became aware of plans for a public memorial to be erected in Washington, D.C. in honor of a Confederate general, they contacted congressmen and told them it would be a disgrace to the memories of all Union soldiers.

Instead of being depicted as a soldier, Congress allowed the statue to be erected as a civilian and Mason by the Masons, but as Jacob notes further, “For many years, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy would hold ceremonies at the site on Pike’s birthday…”

The man memorialized at Iowa Circle in 1901, the man who had lived there in 1885 and for whom the circle was renamed in 1930 was Major General John A. Logan. Playing what has been called “…a significant role in the Union success at Vicksburg…,” he later served in the U.S. Senate and “…was considered one of the most vocal advocates for military veterans and was instrumental in the federal government recognizing Memorial Day (originally called Decoration Day) as an official holiday…” Leaving Logan Circle along Vermont Avenue, one of the circle’s four spokes, and walking a mere three blocks southwest, there is another circle and equestrian monument; it honors Major General George Henry Thomas. Travel another two blocks in the same direction along the same avenue and there is a square dominated by Major General James B. McPherson on horseback.

After just one more block, Vermont Avenue leads to a square named in honor of the French aristocrat who, as a military officer, became a hero of the American Revolutionary War, the Marquis de Lafayette. He and a few of his compatriots stand in one corner of the square. In the other three stand statues of Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, the French nobleman who left his homeland to help America’s Continental Army; Tadeusz Kościuszko, the Polish military engineer who served as a colonel in that army; and Baron von Steuben, the Prussian military officer who served in the war as a major general. At the square’s center, waving his hat in the air while mounted on a horse in mid-rear, rides Major General Andrew Jackson from his days in the War of 1812. Those familiar with the city will know that directly across the street from Lafayette Square stands the house now occupied by the man who compares himself to Jackson and who has recently lamented that the media are “trying to take away our history and our heritage.” He should gather his security detail and take a simple six-block stroll.

If anything, we don’t have enough such representations of our history and heritage. This may seem an odd thing to write from where I sit. A block away is a park with statues of Dante and President James Buchanan. In easy walking distance from here can be found the sculpted likenesses of Carter G. Woodson and Daniel Webster; Duke Ellington and Mahatma Gandhi; Brevet Lt. General Winfield Scott, Major General George B. McClellan, and Methodist Episcopal Bishop Francis Asbury (all on horseback); Guglielmo Marconi, Martin Luther, Samuel Gompers, and James Cardinal Gibbons. I could go on.

These monuments are testament to a broader view of history and heritage, though a view that clearly shows the dearth of celebrated women. We do, at least, have the Virgin Mary and Eleanor Roosevelt, among a few more. That aforementioned park a block from here also is home to this city’s only equestrian statue of a woman, Joan of Arc.

I am inspired to want more after reading a Daily Beast profile of sculptor Gabriel Koren, who moved to New York City from her native Budapest in 1978. She writes in her artist’s statement that, “In Budapest there are many sculptures of Hungarian thinkers, writers and historical figures in the parks and on the streets. As a child I grew up playing with these sculptures, climbing on them, while constantly asking my grandmother who these people were.” She says further that, after arriving in In New York,

For fifteen years I attended history lectures in African American churches and community centers. I learned from the most respected history professors in the community, teaching African American history. These lectures were the source of my inspiration to create sculptures of great African American historical figures.

The Daily Beast article quotes her as saying about her discovery of black history, “I caught fire…I said ‘What a story! What an incredible story!’” That fire led to her creating the statues of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X that now stand in Upper Manhattan. According to the article, “…she proposes to replace the likes of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis with African-American heroes such as W.E.B. Dubois and Fannie Lou Hammer and James Baldwin.”

Imagine if those three could be encountered by kids on their way to bury a bird.