The removals were driven by the belief that the monuments glorify white supremacy and memorialize a government whose founding principle was the perpetuation and expansion of slavery.[4][5][6][7][8] Many of those who object to the removals claim that the artifacts are part of the cultural heritage of the United States.[9] Historically, the vast majority of these Confederate monuments were built during the Jim Crow Era and Civil Rights Movement as a means of intimidating African Americans and reaffirming white supremacy.[10][11][12] The monuments have thus become highly politicised; according to Eleanor Harvey, a senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and a scholar of Civil War history: "If white nationalists and neo-Nazis are now claiming this as part of their heritage, they have essentially co-opted those images and those statues beyond any capacity to neutralize them again".[4] According to Stan Deaton, senior historian at the Georgia Historical Society, "These laws are the Old South imposing its moral and its political views on us forever more. This is what led to the Civil War, and it still divides us as a country. We have competing visions not only about the future but about the past."[13]
Chart illustrating the number of Confederate monuments, schools and other iconography established by year. Most of these were put up either during the Jim Crow era or during the Civil Rights movement, times of increased racial tension.[14]
Many of the Confederate monuments concerned were built in periods of racial conflict, such as when Jim Crow laws were being introduced in the late 19th century and at the start of the 20th century or during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.[a][b] These two periods also coincided with the 50th anniversary and the American Civil War Centennial.[16] The peak in construction of Civil War Monuments occurred between the late 1890s up to 1920, with a second, smaller peak in the late 1950s to mid 1960s.[17]
According to historian Jane Dailey from University of Chicago, in many cases the purpose of the monuments was not to celebrate the past but rather to promote a "white supremacist future".[18] Another historian, Karyn Cox, from University of North Carolina has written that the monuments are "a legacy of the brutally racist Jim Crow era".[19] Another historian from UNC, James Leloudis, stated that "The funders and backers of these monuments are very explicit that they are requiring a political education and a legitimacy for the Jim Crow era and the right of white men to rule."[20]
Adam Goodheart, Civil War author and director of the Starr Center at Washington College, stated in National Geographic: "They’re 20th-century artifacts in the sense that a lot of it had to do with a vision of national unity that embraced Southerners as well as Northerners, but importantly still excluded black people."[4]
History of removals
The removals were marked by events in Louisiana and Virginia within the span of two years. In Louisiana, after the Charleston church shooting of 2015, the city of New Orleans removed its Confederate memorials two years later.[21] A few months later, in August 2017, a state of emergency was declared in Virginia after a Unite the Right rally against the removal of the Robert Edward Lee statue in Charlottesville turned violent.[22]
Other events followed across the United States. In Baltimore, for example, the city's Confederate statues were removed on the night of August 15–16, 2017. Mayor Catherine Pugh said that she ordered the overnight removals to preserve public safety.[23][24] Similarly, in Lexington, Kentucky, Mayor Jim Gray asked the city council on August 16, 2017 to approve the relocation of two statues from a courthouse.[25][26] A different event occurred in Durham, North Carolina, where several protesters toppled the Confederate Soldiers Monument outside the Old Durham County Courthouse on August 15, 2017. Eight activists were arrested in connection with the illegal action.[27]
Laws prohibiting removals
In Alabama (2017), Mississippi (2004), North Carolina (2015), South Carolina (2000), Tennessee (2016), and Virginia (1902), state laws prohibit the removal or alteration of monuments. Attempts to repeal these laws have not yet (2017) been successful. Alabama's law, the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, was passed in May 2017, North Carolina's law in 2015. [28] Tennessee passed its Tennessee Heritage Protection Act in 2016.[29]
The removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina capitol required a 2/3 vote of both houses of the legislature.[30]
In August 2017, immediately after William A. Bell, the mayor of Birmingham, draped a Confederate memorial with plastic and surrounded it with plywood with the rationale "This country should in no way tolerate the hate that the KKK [ Ku Klux Klan ], neo-Nazis, fascists and other hate groups spew", Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall sued Bell and the city for violating a new (2017) state law that prohibits the "relocation, removal, alteration, or other disturbance of any monument on public property that has been in place for 40 years or more".[31]
Confederate Park. Renamed "Confederate Park" in 1923 at the request of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. A Confederate soldier statue was erected in 1910 at the intersection of North Main Avenue and West Capital Street adjacent to the Park. It was destroyed on July 16, 2016, when a policeman accidentally crashed his patrol car into the monument. The statue fell from its pedestal and was heavily damaged. In 2017, Demopolis city government voted 3–2 to move the damaged Confederate statue to a local museum and to install a new obelisk memorial that honors both the Union and the Confederate soldiers.[32][33]
Arizona
Fort Breckinridge: Named for John C. Breckinridge, U.S. Vice President, from its opening in 1861 until 1862, when it was renamed Fort Breckenridge to distance it from Breckinridge, who had become a Confederate general. Named Camp Grant (for Union general Ulysses S. Grant) in 1865. Site closed in 1872, when Camp Grant was moved to a new location.
Southside High School: Until 2016, the school nickname was the Rebels. Its mascot was Johnny Reb, a fictional personification of a Confederate soldier. The school also discontinued the use of "Dixie" as its fight song.[34]
Little Rock:
Confederate Boulevard was renamed to Springer Boulevard in 2015. The new name honors an African-American family prominent in the area since the Civil War.[35]
San Lorenzo High School. Until 2017, the school nickname was the "Rebels" – a tribute to the Confederate soldier in the Civil War. It's mascot, The Rebel Guy, was retired in 2016. The school’s original mascot, Colonel Reb, was a white man with a cane and goatee who was retired in 1997.[43]
Quartz Hill High School. Until 1995, the school had a mascot called Johnny Reb, who would wave a Confederate Flag at football games. Johnny Reb had replaced another Confederate-themed mascot, Jubilation T. Cornpone, who waved the Stars and Bars flag at football games. "Slave Day" fundraisers were phased out in the 1980's.[44]
In 2017, Washington National Cathedral removed stained glass windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. In 2016, it had removed the small Confederate flags in those windows.[46]
On August 22, 2017, the Manatee County Commission voted 4-3 to move the Confederate monument in front of the county courthouse to storage.[47] Removed on August 24, 2017. Statue broke while being removed by workers.[48]
Confederate monument called "Old Joe", Alachua County courthouse lawn, unveiled January 20, 1904.[50] Removed from government land to a private cemetery in 2017, with participation of the Daughters of the Confederacy.[51]
Confederate "Johnny Reb" monument, Lake Eola Park. Erected in 1911 on Magnolia Avenue; moved to Lake Eola Park in 1917. Removed from the park to a private location in 2017.[52][52]
In 1997, county commissioners removed the Confederate flag from the Hillsborough County seal. In a compromise, they voted to hang a version of the flag in the county center. Commissioners voted in 2015 to remove that flag. In 2007 the county stopped honoring Confederate History Month.
In June 2017, the Hillsborough County School Board started a review of how to change the name of Robert E. Lee Elementary School in east Tampa.[55]
The Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners in July 2017, voted to remove the Memoria in Aeterna (Eternal Memory) monument, erected in 1911 at Franklin and Lafayette Streets and moved to its current location, in front of the then-new county courthouse, in 1952.
Flag of the Confederacy removed from Senate seal, displayed in its chambers and on the Senate letterhead. Decided to remove August 19, 2015,[56] new shield in place 2016.[57]
The State Senate Seal included the Confederate Battle Flag from 1972 to 2016. The Senate voted in October 2015 to replace the confederate symbol with the Florida State Flag in the wake of the racially motivated Charleston shootings.[58]
The Confederate Stainless Banner flag flew over the west entrance of the Florida State Capitol from 1978 until 2001, when Gov. Jeb Bush ordered it removed.[59]
Confederate monument, Woodlawn Cemetery (1941), located at the front gate, directly behind an American flag. "The only one south of St. Augustine, likely the only Confederate statue in Palm Beach and Broward counties, said historian Janet DeVries, who leads cemetery tours at Woodlawn." Vandalized several times. Removed and placed in storage by order of Mayor Jeri Muoio on August 22, 2017, since its owner, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, had not claimed it despite notification.[60][61] "Believed by local historians to be the last Confederate monument in Palm Beach County."[62][63]
Between 1855 and 1862, the county now known as Lyon County was known as Breckinridge County, named for John C. Breckinridge, U.S. Vice President and Confederate general.[65]
Confederate Flag Bicentennial Memorial (1962, removed 2015). The Confederate battle flag had been displayed at the John S. Stevens Pavilion at Veterans Memorial Plaza near downtown since 1976, when it was placed there in a historical flag display as part of the nation’s bicentennial. The flag was removed July 2, 2015 by order of Mayor Jeff Longwell.[66]
Boone County High School. The mascot for the school was Mr. Rebel, a Confederate general who stands tall in a light blue uniform, feathered cap, and English mustache. It was removed in 2017.[67]
Lexington Mayor Jim Gray proposed the removal of two public statues commemorating John Hunt Morgan and John C. Breckenridge. The city council approved the removal on August 17, 2017, giving the mayor 30 days to determine a new location.[69]
Louisiana
To comply with the 2015 city council order, New Orleans removed statues of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; Gen. Robert E. Lee, who resigned his U.S Army commission at the time of Virginia's secession and accepted command of the state's military forces; Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard, who oversaw the Battle of Fort Sumter; and the Battle of Liberty Place Monument. Court challenges were unsuccessful. The workers who moved the monuments were dressed in bullet-proof vests, helmets, and masks to conceal their identities because of concerns about their safety.[70][71] According to Mayor Landrieu, "The original firm we’d hired to remove the monuments backed out after receiving death threats and having one of his cars set ablaze."[72] "The city said it was weighing where to display the monuments so they could be 'placed in their proper historical context from a dark period of American history."[2] On May 19, 2017, the Monumental Task Committee,[73] an organization that maintains monuments and plaques across the city, commented on the removal of the statues: "Mayor Landrieu and the City Council have stripped New Orleans of nationally recognized historic landmarks. With the removal of four of our century-plus aged landmarks, at 299 years old, New Orleans now heads into our Tricentennial more divided and less historic." Landrieu replied on the same day: "These statues are not just stone and metal. They are not just innocent remembrances of a benign history. These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy; ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement, and the terror that it actually stood for.”[74]
Battle of Liberty Place Monument – erected 1891 to commemorate the Reconstruction-era Battle of Liberty Place. Removed April 24, 2017. The workers were dressed in flak jackets, helmets and scarves to conceal their identities because of concerns about their safety. Police officers watched from a nearby hotel.[75]
Statue of Chief Justice of the United StatesRoger Taney, Maryland State House grounds (1872). Taney stayed loyal to the Union, and remained Chief Justice until his death in 1864. However, he was the author of the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision, leading up to the Civil War. Monuments to him are being removed at the same time, and for the same reasons, as Confederate monuments. Removed August 18, 2017. It and the three other monuments removed the same day were removed in the dead of night, under police guard.[77][78]
Confederate Monument. The monument was removed in July 2017 from its original location outside the Rockville Court House to private land. The monument was installed and/or dedicated on January 1, 1913.[82]
On August 16, 2017, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island removed a 1912 plaque from a tree Robert E. Lee planted between 1842 and 1847. They also removed a second marker erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1935.[89]
Busts of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are in the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College. The college plans to remove the statues.[2]
From 1910 to 2011, the monument stood in Reidsville's downtown area. In 2011, a motorist hit the monument, shattering the granite soldier which stood atop it. Placing the monument back in the center of town sparked a debate between local officials, neighbors and friends—which resulted in it being placed at its current site—the Greenview Cemetery.[90]
The Old Durham County Courthouse statue was pulled down by protesters, later arrested, on August 14, 2017.[92] It is being stored in a county warehouse.[93]
Willoughby South High School: In 2017, the school dropped its “Rebel” mascot – a man dressed in a gray Confederate military outfit – but kept the "Rebel" nickname.[101]
South Carolina
The Confederate flag was raised over the South Carolina statehouse in 1962. In 2000 the legislature voted to remove it and replace it with a flag on a flagpole in front of the Capitol.[102] In 2015 the complete removal was approved by the required 2/3 majority of both houses of the Legislature.[103]
In 2017, the Confederate flag and pictures of Jackson and Lee were removed from the York County courthouse.[104]
Confederate Memorial Hall, Vanderbilt University, was renamed Memorial Hall on August 15, 2016. Since the building "was built on the back of a $50,000 donation from the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1933," the University returned to them its 2017 equivalent, $1.2 million.[106]
Six Flags Over Texas theme park: In August 2017 removed the Stars and Bars Confederate Flag after flying it for 56 years along with the flags of the other countries that Texas has been part of. In the 1990s the park renamed the Confederacy section the Old South section and removed all Confederate Battle Flags.[107]
South Garland High School removed various Confederate symbols in 2015. A floor tile mosaic donated by the Class of 1968 and a granite sign in front of the school were replaced. Both had incorporated the Confederate flag, which was part of the school’s original coat of arms. In addition, the district has dropped “Dixie” as the tune for the school fight song.[113] The school changed its Colonel mascot's uniform from Confederate gray to red and blue in 1991.[114]
Downing Street. Renamed Emancipation Avenue in 2017.[115]
Lee High School (1962). Originally known as Robert E. Lee High School, district leaders dropped the “Robert E.” from the school’s title to distance the school from the Confederate general.[116] School officials changed the name to Margaret Long Wisdom High School in 2016.
Westbury High School changed the nickname of its athletic teams from the "Rebels" to the "Huskies."[117]
The 2015 decision to move a statue of Jefferson Davis from its mall to a museum was fought by SCV in court. The Confederates likened the move to the destruction of cultural heritage by ISIL while the University President Gregory L. Fenves said “it is not in the university’s best interest to continue commemorating him (Davis) on our Main Mall."[118]
After the removal of the Jefferson Davis statue in 2015 there were three remaining Confederate statues left on the South Mall at the University of Texas. The statues were of Generals Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston and Confederate Postmaster John H. Reagan. They were dedicated in 1933. On August 20–21, 2017 the university removed the three Confederate statues from the Austin campus grounds and relocated them to a museum.[119][120]
Three confederate statues, of two Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee and Albert Sidney Johnston, and the Confederate cabinet member John Reagan, were removed from the campus of the university on August 20, 2017. The decision was based on the aftermath of the protests in Charlottesville, VA.[121]
South Burlington High School Confederate themed Captain Rebel mascot (1961), use of the Confederate Battle Flag, and playing of Dixie almost immediately sparked controversy during the Civil Rights era and every decade since. The school board voted to retain the name in 2015 but to change it in 2017. "The Rebel Alliance", a community group opposed to changing the mascot has lead two successful efforts to defeat the school budget in public votes as a protest.[127][128] The students choose the "Wolves" and rebranding is proceeding.[129]
Lee Park, the setting for an equestrian statue of Robert Edward Lee, was renamed Emancipation Park on February 6, 2017.
On February 6, the Charlottesville City Council also voted to remove the equestrian statue of Lee. In April, the City Council voted to sell the statue. In May a six-month court injunction staying the removal was issued as a result of legal action by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and others. In June 2016 the pedestal had been spray painted with the words "Black Lives Matter",[130] and overnight between July 7 and 8, 2017, it was vandalized by being daubed in red paint.[131] On August 20, 2017, the City Council unanimously voted to shroud the statue, and that of Stonewall Jackson, in black. The Council "also decided to direct the city manager to take an administrative step that would make it easier to eventually remove the Jackson statue."[132] The statues were covered in black shrouds on August 23, 2017.[133]
On September 6, 2017, the city council voted to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson from Emancipation Park.[134]
Jackson Park, named for Stonewall Jackson, was renamed Justice Park.[135]
The University of Virginia Board of Visitors (trustees) voted unanimously to remove two plaques from the university’s Rotunda that honored students and alumni who fought and died for the Confederacy in the Civil War. The University also agreed "to acknowledge a $1,000 gift in 1921 from the Ku Klux Klan and contribute the amount, adjusted for inflation, to a suitable cause."[136]
A statue of Confederate veteran George Morgan Jones was removed from the Randolph College grounds on August 25, 2017.[139][64]
Washington (state)
Blaine and Vancouver:
Stone markers at both ends of the state designating Highway 99 the "Jefferson Davis Highway" were erected in the 1930s by the Daughters of the Confederacy, with State approval. They were removed in 2002 through the efforts of State Representative Hans Dunshee and city officials, and after it was discovered that the highway was never officially designated to memorialize Davis by the State.[140] Markers are now in Sons of Confederate Veterans owned "Jefferson Davis Park" in Ridgefield right beside I-5.[141]
Confederate Rest section of Forest Hill Cemetery. This section of the cemetery contains the remains of more than 100 Confederate soldiers who died as prisoners of war at nearby Camp Randall.
In 2015, a flag pole was removed from the section. The pole had been used to fly the Confederate flag for one week around Memorial Day.[142][143]
On August 17, 2017, a plaque dedicated to the buried confederate soldiers was removed on the order of Madison mayor Paul Soglin. A larger stone monument listing the names of the deceased was also ordered to be removed, but the removal was postponed until logistics could be worked out.[144][145][142]
According to historian Adam Goodheart, the statues were meant to be symbols of white supremacy and the rallying around them by white supremacists will likely hasten their demise.[148]Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology at Yale University, said the statues "really impacts the psyche of black people."[149]Harold Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, agreed that the statues were designed to belittle African Americans.[150]Dell Upton, chair of the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, wrote that "the monuments were not intended as public art," but rather were installed "as affirmations that the American polity was a white polity," and that because of their explicitly white supremacist intent, their removal from civic spaces was a matter "of justice, equity, and civic values."[12] In a 1993 book, author Frank McKenney argued otherwise; “These monuments were communal efforts, public art, and social history," he wrote. [151] Ex-soldiers and politicians had difficult time raising funds to erect monuments so the task mostly fell to the women, the “mothers widows, and orphans, the bereaved fiancees and sisters” of the soldiers who had lost their lives. [152] Many ladies memorial associations were formed in the decades following the end of the Civil War, most of them joining the United Daughters of the Confederacy following its inception in 1894. The women were advised to “remember that they were buying art, not metal and stone;”[153] The history the monuments celebrated told only one side of the story, however — one that was "openly pro-Confederate," Upton argues. Furthermore, Confederate monuments were erected without the consent or even input of Southern African-Americans, who remembered the Civil War far differently, and who had no interest in honoring those who fought to keep them enslaved.[12] According to Civil War historian Judith Giesberg, professor of history at Villanova University, "White supremacy is really what these statues represent."[154]
Robert Seigler in his study of Confederate monuments in South Carolina found that out of the over one hundred and seventy that he documented, only five monuments were found dedicated to the African Americans who had been used by the Confederacy working “on fortifications, and had served as musicians, teamsters, cooks, servants, and in other capacities,” four of those were to slaves and one to a musician, Henry Brown.[155]
Eric Foner, a historian of the Civil War and biographer of Lincoln, argued that more statues of African-Americans like Nat Turner should be constructed.[149]Alfred Brophy, a professor of law at the University of Alabama, argued the removal of the Confederate statues "facilitates forgetting", although these statues were "re-inscribed images of white supremacy". Brophy also stated that the Lee statue in Charlottesville should be removed.[149]
^Graham (2016) "Many of the treasured monuments that seem to offer a connection to the post-bellum South are actually much later, anachronistic constructions, and they tend to correlate closely with periods of fraught racial relations".[15]
^Graham (2016) "A timeline of the genesis of the Confederate sites shows two notable spikes. One comes around the turn of the 20th century, just after Plessy v. Ferguson, and just as many Southern states were establishing repressive race laws. The second runs from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s—the peak of the civil-rights movement."[4][15]
^"Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy". Southern Poverty Law Center. April 21, 2016. Retrieved September 15, 2017. The second spike began in the early 1950s and lasted through the 1960s, as the civil rights movement led to a backlash among segregationists. These two periods also coincided with the 50th and 100th anniversaries of the Civil War
^Holland, Jesse J. (August 15, 2017). "Deadly rally accelerates ongoing removal of Confederate statues across U.S.". The Chicago Tribune. ((cite web)): Cite has empty unknown parameter: |urlhttp://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-confederate-statue-removal-20170815-story.html= (help); Missing or empty |url= (help)
^Harvey, Steve (May 29, 2010). "Southern California does indeed have a Civil War history". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 11, 2017. So will Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where the Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy maintains a Confederate monument.
^[University of North Carolina], The Carolina Story: A Virtual Museum of the University History, "William L. Saunders (1835-1891) and Carolina Hall," https://museum.unc.edu/exhibits/show/names/carolina-hall, retrieved Aug. 25, 2017
^Sewell, Dan (August 26, 2017). "Little Ohio city swept into national battle over monuments". APNews.com. Associated Press. Retrieved August 27, 2017. It brought sudden attention to Franklin's 90-year-old rock marker, depicting Lee astride his horse, Traveller, and situated aside the "Dixie Highway," a roads network running from Miami to Michigan.
^"Theatre in Memphis pulls 'racially insensitive' Gone With the Wind. Orpheum Theatre ditches 34-year-old tradition of screening classic film after customers complained". The Guardian. August 28, 2017.
^Shapiro, T. Rees (July 8, 2014). "Washington and Lee University to remove Confederate flags following protests". Washington Post. ((cite news)): |access-date= requires |url= (help)
^ Seigler, Robert S., A Guide to Confederate Monuments in South Carolina: Passing the Cup, South Carolina Department of Archives and History, 1997 p. 10
