Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials

The Robert E. Lee monument in New Orleans, Louisiana, is taken down on May 19, 2017.

There are more than 160 Confederate monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America (CSA; the Confederacy) and associated figures that have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five of which have been since 2015.[1] Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors.

More than seven hundred monuments and memorials have been created on public land, the vast majority in the South during the era of Jim Crow laws from 1877 to 1964.[2] Efforts to remove them increased after the Charleston church shooting, the Unite the Right rally, and the murder of George Floyd.[3][4][5]

Proponents of their removal cite historical analysis that the monuments were not built as memorials, but to intimidate African Americans and reaffirm white supremacy after the Civil War;[6][7][8][9] and that they memorialize an unrecognized, treasonous[10][11] government, the Confederacy, whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery. They also argue that the presence of these memorials more than a hundred years after the defeat of the Confederacy continues to disenfranchise and alienate African Americans.[12][13][14][15][16] However, opponents view that removing the monuments as erasing history or a sign of disrespect for their Southern heritage. Some Southern states passed state laws restricting or prohibiting the removal or alteration of public monuments.[17]

According to The Washington Post, five Confederate monuments were removed after the Civil War, eight in the two years after the Charleston shooting, 48 in the three years after the Unite the Right rally, and 110 in the two years after George Floyd's murder.[1] In 2022, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said he would order the renaming of U.S. military bases named for Confederate generals, as well as other Defense Department property that honored Confederates.[18]

The campaign to remove monuments extended beyond the United States; many statues and other public works of art related to the transatlantic slave trade and European colonialism around the world have been removed or destroyed.

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference SPLC2016pdf was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Schachar, Natalie (August 15, 2015). "Jindal seeks to block illegal removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 17, 2017.
  4. ^ Kenning, Chris (August 15, 2017). "Confederate Monuments Are Illegally Coming Down Across the United States". The New York Times.
  5. ^ "U.S. cities step up removal of Confederate statues, despite Virginia". Reuters. August 16, 2017.
  6. ^ Parks, Miles (August 20, 2017). "Why Were Confederate Monuments Built? : NPR". NPR. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  7. ^ "Striking graphic reveals the construction of Confederate monuments peaked during the Jim Crow and civil rights eras". The Week. August 15, 2017. Retrieved August 28, 2017.
  8. ^ Confederate Monuments and Civic Values in the Wake of Charlottesville. Dell Upton, Society of American Historians, September 13, 2017
  9. ^ Sah Heritage Conservation Committee (December 1, 2020). "Statement on the Removal of Monuments to the Confederacy from Public Spaces". Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 79 (4): 379–380. doi:10.1525/jsah.2020.79.4.379. ISSN 0037-9808. S2CID 241554344.
  10. ^ The Law of Treason. The New York Times, April 21, 1861
  11. ^ Top US General Slams Confederacy As ‘Treason’, Signals Support For Base Renaming. DefenseOne, July 9, 2020
  12. ^ "Why the U.S. Capitol Still Hosts Confederate Monuments". National Geographic. August 17, 2017. Archived from the original on August 17, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2017.
  13. ^ "What Confederate Monument Builders Were Thinking". Bloomberg News. August 20, 2017. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  14. ^ Parks, Miles (August 20, 2017). "Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'". NPR. Retrieved August 21, 2017.
  15. ^ The History of Blaming 'Both Sides' and Why Language Matters, retrieved August 21, 2017
  16. ^ Drum, Kevin (August 15, 2017). "The real story behind all those Confederate statues". Mother Jones. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
  17. ^ Bliss, Jessica; Meyer, Holly (August 17, 2017). "In the South, Confederate monuments often protected, hard to remove thanks to state laws". The Tennessean. Archived from the original on July 31, 2020.
  18. ^ "Implementation of the Naming Commission's Recommendations" (PDF). United States Department of Defense. October 6, 2022. Archived (PDF) from the original on June 22, 2023. Retrieved August 23, 2023.