Public Confederate Markers in the United States

Source: “RVA Counter-Protests Against New-CSA.” Mobilus In Mobili, September 16, 2017. Flickr. Accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/mobili/37109128732/. CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/. 

By P. Makoto Hunter

Published Spring 2021

Special thanks to Lorin Utsch for editing and research contributions

Summary+

As of May 2021, 736 physical monuments and over 1000 other state-sponsored memorials to the Confederate States of America remain in the United States. Most of these markers were built as terror tactics targeting Black Americans during the post-Reconstruction and Civil Rights Movement eras of the twentieth century, long after the end of the Civil War and the Confederacy. Some of the reasons why Confederate markers and support for them persist in the public square are general unfamiliarity with Civil War history, widespread negationist history narratives, and state laws prohibiting local governments from altering Confederate monuments. Although Confederate markers ostensibly memorialize the past, they inflict racialized harm in the present, including worse health among Black Americans, economic losses, funds for pro-Confederate organizations, and the attention of violent White supremacy. Leading practices for alleviating these consequences include proposals to relocate Confederate monuments to museum settings and protests calling for marker removal.

Key Takeaways+

Over 1,800 public Confederate markers remain in the United States, including 736 physical monuments.

The overwhelming majority of public Confederate markers were built during periods of reactionary White supremacy and anti-Black violence.

General unfamiliarity with Civil War history, widespread negationist narratives, and state laws forbidding marker alteration all contribute to the continued presence of and support for public Confederate markers in America.

Public Confederate markers have been connected to worse health, economic losses, and violent White supremacy.

Protestors have called for governments to remove Confederate markers from public settings, and some advocates recommend relocating Confederate monuments to museums or similar institutions.

Impact analysis is limited, and more research is needed about the consequences of public Confederate markers and the outcomes of efforts to remove them.

Key Terms+

Allostatic Load—“The cumulative wear and tear on the body’s systems owing to repeated adaptation to stressors,” or “the physiological burden imposed by stress.”¹

Black–White Poverty Inequality—A measure of local income inequality between Blacks and Whites. Higher values represent greater Black disadvantage.²

Lost Cause—A negationist history of the Civil War and American South that portrays the Civil War as a “noble endeavor” fought primarily to defend states’ rights and Southern honor, denying the historical reality that Confederate secession was rooted in defending institutional slavery and Black–White inequality.³

Gross Domestic Product—The “total monetary or market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period . . . it functions as a comprehensive scorecard of a given country’s economic health.”⁴

Municipal Government—An “urban unit of local government,” typically meaning a city government.⁵

Negationist History—Distortion, falsification, or other misrepresentation of history.⁶ “Historical negationism” carries the same meaning.

Public Confederate Marker—Any public memorial to the Confederate States of America or to their cause, soldiers, or leaders. This description includes statues, monuments, parks, sites, Confederate flags, holidays, state songs, and namesakes, such as buildings, bases, schools, or streets named after Confederate themes or figures. “Symbol” or “memorial” conveys the same meaning.

Sons of Confederate Veterans—A men’s Confederate heritage group formed in the 1890s.⁷ Like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons promoted Lost Cause negationism and venerated Confederate memory, though it never achieved the United Daughters’ level of success and prominence.⁸ The group is still active in the twenty-first century.⁹

United Daughters of the Confederacy—A women’s Confederate heritage group “formed in 1894 to protect and venerate Confederate memory following the American Civil War” that, among other initiatives, fundraised, established, and maintained Confederate markers, such as monuments and museums, and promoted Lost Cause negationism as “correct” history.¹⁰ The group is still active in the twenty-first century.¹¹

Context

Historical Background

Though the American Civil War ended with the Confederate States’ surrender in 1865, as of May 2021 over 1,800 public Confederate markers remain in the United States, including 736 physical monuments.¹² Many people in the United States today defend public Confederate markers as historical emblems of Southern heritage and history. Contrary to this claim, the overwhelming majority of such markers are ahistorical—built not during or immediately after the Civil War but instead from 1900 onwards and even as late as the 1980s.¹³ Most were built as part of early twentieth-century efforts to enforce racism, reverse Reconstruction policies, and rewrite Civil War history.¹⁴ Reversing Reconstruction and restoring Black–White inequality was called “redemption,” and the rewritten Civil War history described a “Lost Cause,” portraying the Civil War as an honorable fight to defend states’ rights and slavery as a benign institution where slaves respected their masters in mutual faithfulness, despite overwhelming evidence of slavery’s detrimental effects on the enslaved. (For more details, see the boxes entitled “What Caused the Civil War?” and “Examples of the Lost Cause.”)¹⁵

During and after Reconstruction, vigilante terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan and White League used violence, including massacres and arson, to undermine congressional civil and voting rights laws in an extralegal campaign to “redeem” the South.

Source: Thomas Nast, The Union as It Was, 1874, illustration, Library of Congress, accessed March 23, 2021, https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3c28619.

While there is no rigorous data on the specific motivations behind every single Confederate marker, examples such as the University of Mississippi’s statue of a Confederate soldier suggest a non-coincidental correlation between raising a Confederate marker and racist motives. This specific statue had been justified as being a symbol of mourning that embodied “heritage, not hate,” but further archival study revealed the statue was dedicated under the premise of celebrating the living “soldier[s] of the Lost Cause” who continued to terrorize Black Americans after the Civil War.¹⁶ Similarly, when a Confederate veteran dedicated the University of North Carolina’s “Silent Sam” statue in 1906, he claimed it promoted the “welfare of the Anglo Saxon race.”¹⁷ Likewise, in 1951 a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives described the Confederate flag as “the symbol of the white race and the cause of the white people. The Confederate flag means segregation.”¹⁸ These examples reiterate both the mood of celebration surrounding monuments memorializing violations of Reconstruction laws and the way the motives behind Confederate markers were not always what the public currently believes them to be. Combined with historical research concluding that the United Daughters of the Confederacy (one of the primary organizations driving Confederate monument construction in the twentieth century) revered the Ku Klux Klan as heroes, it becomes evident that grief and heritage were dwarfed by anti-Black racism and White supremacy as the driving motivations for establishing Confederate markers.¹⁹

Marker dedication surged a second time during the mid-twentieth century. This time, the initiative accompanied violent resistance to the Civil Rights movement and explicit vows of “segregation forever.”²⁰ In both the post-Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras, Confederate markers glorified the Confederate states’ secessionist cause and implied that the same social ideology remained in force in their communities in the present.²¹

The University of Mississippi's twenty-nine-foot tall monument to Confederate soldiers (left).

Source: “Monument and Ventress Hall.” Joseph, December 20, 2009. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/josepha/4207438770/. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/. 

Current Public Opinions

Some members of the American public have expressed concerns that removing public markers to the Confederacy constitutes “erasing history.” However, historians and other social science and humanities scholars widely agree that removing markers from the public square does not erase history, as history will continue to be available in the many primary source documents from and significant body of scholarly research about the Civil War.²² For example, universities, libraries, and online repositories hold collections of Civil War primary sources, books, journals, documentaries, and encyclopedias; these resources address the Civil War at great length and will continue to do so.²³

Instead, marker removal draws attention to a specific interpretation of history. Interpretations of the past—the stories known as history—can change and do change as new evidence comes to light or as old evidence is re-examined.²⁴ Additionally, scholars have recognized that public monuments and namesakes are less tools of history and more tools for conveying community values and what the American Historical Association calls “civic honor.”²⁵ Monumentalist sculpture aggrandizes its subject, suggesting reverence, so the choice of subject implies a message about what a community deems honorable.²⁶ Therefore, rather than erasing history, removing a Confederate marker indicates withdrawing honor once bestowed on certain figures or causes due to changes in community values or public understanding.

Finally, there are also today still some who look to Confederate markers as heritage markers; recognizing that reality as part of people’s lived experience is relevant, as communities theoretically can imbue landscape features with meanings that may change over time.²⁷ However, while some claim Confederate markers are non-racial emblems of Southern heritage, Black Americans do not share that interpretation; instead, Black Americans experience Confederate markers like the battle flag as racist symbols of prejudice.²⁸ Black Americans report that Confederate markers are insulting, offensive, and embarrassing. In an instructive anecdote, a Black American observed that he received “surprised and confused looks” from neighbors when he moved onto a street with a statue of Robert E. Lee, a general of the Confederate army during the Civil War.²⁹ In July 2020, a majority of Black American respondents in a nationwide poll agreed that public monuments linked to Confederate generals should be removed.³⁰ Furthermore, Confederate markers’ implication in violent, White supremacist activity—such as the 2017 Unite the Right rally—casts further doubts on the supposed non-racial purpose of these markers (see Consequences: Attracting Violent White Supremacy below in this brief).³¹ Finally, modern research consistently connects public Confederate markers to ongoing harm against marginalized communities of color (see Consequences below in this brief).³² Acknowledging these realities is immensely important and provides cause for examining Confederate markers more closely.

Bigger than Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain is the largest bas-relief carving in the world. For perspective, Robert E. Lee (in the middle) is nine stories tall. Stone Mountain Park opened for visitors on April 14, 1965, on the hundredth anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.

Source: “Atlanta Georgia ~ Stone Mountain Theme Park ~ Attraction Site – Historic.” Onasill ~ Bill, circa 1990. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/onasill/49700477211/. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/. 

Despite their controversy, public Confederate markers remain scattered across the American landscape. Markers exist in 32 different states and are as far flung and varied as Washington state’s Lee Middle School and Georgia state’s Stone Mountain, the “Mount Rushmore of the Confederacy.”³³

However, scrutiny of such markers sharply increased in 2015, when an anti-Black shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston sparked nationwide interest in removing and renaming public Confederate markers.³⁴ In 2020, the police killing of George Floyd revived that public movement, and protests and proclamations abounded.³⁵ Accompanying this scrutiny, resistance to marker removals and renamings also resurged as long-standing factors continued to contribute to the presence of and support for public Confederate markers.³⁶ Even after this heightened scrutiny, however, a 2020 Quinnipiac poll found only 52% of American voters in favor of “removing Confederate statues from public spaces,” and a 2020 Economist/YouGov poll found only 38% of American adults in favor of removing “statues of Confederate generals on public property.”³⁷

Most mainstream academic research on Confederate markers, their background, and their effects on society is relatively new, possibly because Confederate markers and Lost Cause negationist history’s entrenchment in American landscapes and cultural narratives discouraged more critical examination.³⁸ (Though outside the general American mainstream, Black American discourse has consistently examined, interrogated, and criticized public Confederate markers virtually since their inception.³⁹) Rigorous, controlled testing does not exist to establish causal links between many contributing factors, public Confederate markers, and the consequences of these markers, but research does suggest strong, reasonable correlations that are worthy of serious consideration.

Contributing Factors

Unfamiliarity with the History of Slavery and the Civil War

Research suggests that unfamiliarity with the history of slavery and the Civil War corresponds with support for retaining such markers in the public square. An analysis of a 2004 survey of White Georgians found that support for the Confederate battle flag as a public symbol correlated negatively with knowledge of Civil War history.⁴⁰ That is to say, respondents who knew less Civil War history tended to be more supportive of the Confederate battle flag, while respondents who knew more Civil War history tended to be less supportive. While this study is limited in application—it is not conclusively causational, and it examined only White Georgians’ reactions to specifically the Confederate flag—it does raise a significant possible contributing factor to general support for public Confederate markers.

When Americans lack context for public Confederate markers, they do not have the knowledge necessary to problematize support for Confederate markers. In other words, Americans who do not accurately understand the Civil War are less likely to recognize how public Confederate markers may contradict history, Americans’ values, and lived reality. For example, a 2018 study of high school students and curriculum found that only 8% of respondents could accurately identify slavery as the central cause of the Civil War (see the box entitled “What Caused the Civil War?”).⁴¹ Curriculum was only somewhat better, as when state standards were scored on the same question, they collectively scored only 36%, and popular textbooks only 58%. In the same study, only 32% of student respondents correctly understood slavery as an institution of power designed to make profits despite racist harm. State standards scored only 4% on that concept while textbooks scored only 28%.⁴² In a similar vein, educators interviewed by Teaching Tolerance magazine report frequently encountering students who minimize the harm of slavery or graspingly ask if there were “good masters” and struggle to come to terms with the historical facts of slavery and the Civil War.⁴³ This accords with a scholar’s assessment that most Americans’ ideas about the Civil War are based more on collective memory than on accurate history.⁴⁴ In theory, it is not so surprising that Americans who grow up not knowing that slavery was at the heart of the Civil War or not knowing the extent of slavery’s brutality are likewise relatively untroubled by monuments to Confederate leaders, causes, and soldiers, and this link may be why knowledge of Civil War history negatively correlated with Confederate flag support. As such, being inadequately educated about the history of slavery and the Civil War may be an important contributing factor to Americans’ continued support for public Confederate markers.

Misleading Negationist History

Beyond simply being unfamiliar with the history of slavery and the Civil War, Americans also face a frequent cascade of inaccurate, negationist history that obscures Confederate markers’ meanings and purposes, casting the markers—and the Confederate States of America they represent—in a more virtuous light.⁴⁵ This negationist history—called the “Lost Cause”—is a false narrative rooted in ex-Confederate leaders’ postwar efforts to portray themselves and their secessionist cause in a more appealing light, crafting a new legacy for themselves that would preserve White supremacy while obscuring the pro-slavery motivations that instigated secession and the Civil War. Since that post-Civil War effort, the Lost Cause narrative has spread, eventually becoming part of mainstream American public memory and continuing to this day.⁴⁶ Former Confederate leaders and heritage groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy laid the groundwork for the Lost Cause in the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, but as the negationist history became accepted as part of mainstream American public memory and culture, the Lost Cause has since self-propagated, recreating itself as succeeding generations of Americans learn, accept, and go on to perpetuate ideas behind the Lost Cause.⁴⁷ As such, the Lost Cause continues to this day, existing as a contributing factor that stretches from the end of the nineteenth century to the present.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated this statue of Robert E. Lee in Dallas, Texas, in 1936. In 2017, the city of Dallas removed the statue and sold it to a private buyer for $1.45 million. It now decorates Black Jack’s Crossing golf course in Lajitas, Texas.

Source: A. Phimister Proctor’s Statue of Robert E. Lee after the Dedication in Lee Park by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, June 12, 1936, Hayes Collection, accessed March 23, 2021, Dallas Public Library.

The Lost Cause false narrative has several elements that variously appear in media, school curriculum, political rhetoric, and family and community memory, whether in part or all together. Lost Cause ideas include the following:

Antebellum slaveholding society was refined and virtuous, men and women lived family values, and slaves enjoyed their masters’ beneficence or at least ended up better off than they would have been if they were free.⁴⁸

The Civil War was a valiant fight to defend Southern honor and states’ right against an oppressive, Northern-dominated federal government.⁴⁹

Economic imbalance between the North and South and Northern states’ aggression motivated secession and caused the Civil War, rather than slavery.⁵⁰

The Confederate military was gentlemanly and tactically brilliant while the Northern military was undignified and won only by dint of superior resources.⁵¹

After the death of Abraham Lincoln, the Republican-majority Congress’ postwar Reconstruction policies were vindictive and vengeful.⁵²

Opportunistic Northern “carpetbaggers” exploited the politics and economies of the postwar South.⁵³

Newly-freed Black Americans took over Southern governments, were uneducated and inexperienced, and posed a threat to American democracy.⁵⁴

In every case, these narrative elements are entirely false or almost entirely false and significantly misrepresent the academic consensus of what happened in the American past.⁵⁵ Although one can still find media voices that try to corroborate these Lost Cause views, such outlets typically rely on discredited negationist history—the fallout of how the Lost Cause has pervaded and continues to pervade American culture, subconsciousness, and education.⁵⁶ Lost Cause negationism appears in school textbooks, political rhetoric, movies like Gone With the Wind and Lincoln, songs, theme park attractions, video games, and memorials to the Confederate States.⁵⁷ (Misleading negationist history is therefore simultaneously a cause and consequence of public Confederate markers.)

At present, there exists no randomized control trial isolating a Lost Cause exposure–pro-Confederate marker relationship. However, the prominence of the Lost Cause in American culture provides strong reason to suspect it as a contributing factor to the presence of Confederate markers in public spaces. It is reasonable to conclude that Americans who erroneously accept Lost Cause negation as historical fact are more likely to think positively, or at least neutrally, of the Confederacy. Likewise, it is reasonable to conclude that an American public which thinks of Confederate generals as war heroes, Southern society as familial and chivalrous, the Civil War as a tragedy unrelated to slavery, and Reconstruction as a mistake is also an American public likely to either support the presence of Confederate markers or at least abstain from opposing.

Gone with the Wind, a popular film in its time that has since entered the American cultural cinematic canon, casts plantation and slaveholding society in an excessively rosy light. The movie emphasizes Southern gentility and supposed loyalty between enslaved people and their masters, and it brushes aside the historical realities of chattel slavery and white supremacy.

Source: “Publicity photo for Gone with the Wind.” Circa 1939. Wikimedia Commons, accessed March 8, 2021. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gone_With_The_Wind_featuring_McDaniel_%26_de_Havilland_%26_Leigh.jpg. Public Domain.

Inscribed with the words, “Lest we forget our Confederate dead,” this monument stands in front of a public building in Greensboro, Alabama. The Confederate memorial dwarfs the general veterans memorial standing behind it.

Source: “Hale County Confederate Monument.” Jimmy Emerson, DVM, October 8, 2019. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021. "Hale County Confederate Monument" by Jimmy Emerson (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

While anecdotal, the experience of journalist Alexis Okeowo, who witnessed a new Confederate monument dedication in 2017, attests this conclusion.⁵⁸ The Sons of Confederate Veterans built a memorial to “unknown Confederate soldiers” in a privately owned memorial park. After the reverent ceremony, Okeowo spoke with several attendees. Most of their comments followed Lost Cause strands of thought, including insisting that memorializing the Confederacy was only about mourning the dead and had “nothing to do with color,” vindicating forebears’ participation by claiming plantation families had treated Blacks kindly, and teleologically projecting the states’ rights motivation onto Confederate soldiers.⁵⁹

State Laws Prohibiting Marker Removal by Local Authorities

Finally, state laws limiting municipal governments’ authority to remove Confederate monuments also contribute to the persistent presence of Confederate markers in the public square. Eight states—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia—have passed laws that supersede municipal governments and limit or outright prohibit alterations to, removals of, or replacements for public Confederate markers.⁶⁰

Importantly, marker-alteration bans such as these are largely unique to states with high concentrations of public Confederate markers. There are 125 public Confederate markers still standing in Alabama, 229 in Georgia, 146 in Mississippi, 176 in North Carolina, 200 in South Carolina, 107 in Tennessee, 202 in Texas, and 283 in Virginia.⁶¹ Outside of the eight states with monument-alteration bans, no other state in the Union has more than 200 Confederate markers, and Louisiana is the only other state with more than 100 (with 112 markers).⁶² States with fewer public Confederate markers than the eight aforementioned typically do not have such stringent proscriptions on municipal governments’ actions toward local monuments.⁶³ The alteration bans and concentrations of public Confederate markers correlate so starkly as to make the idea that such laws are coincidental inconveniences seem unlikely. Most likely, state government regimes created these laws intentionally to protect Confederate markers and prop up their Lost Cause negationism.

These monument-alteration bans bar citizens and their municipal representatives from altering political monuments that they might otherwise remove democratically.⁶⁴ With no legal ability to remove monuments from their midst, these states compel their cities to appear to endorse public Confederate markers’ implied messages about their subjects, regardless of the actual views of the municipal government or city’s residents.⁶⁵ Unlike the first two contributing factors, this is not a cause of public support for Confederate markers; instead, it is a legal inability for certain cities and their residents to act on their desires to remove such markers from the public square. By prohibiting municipalities from legally removing Confederate statues, such state laws contribute to the continued presence of Confederate markers in public.

Consequences

Worse Health Outcomes for Black Americans

By signaling racist messages, public Confederate markers may intensify Black Americans’ physiological burdens and stress experienced, leading to worse health outcomes and higher mortality. As anthropologist Chelsey R. Carter observed, “As a Black woman, every time I pass a Confederate monument I am offended . . . More important than how monuments provoke me affectively [are] the perpetual assaults [that] are unequivocally deteriorating my health and shortening my life span.”⁶⁶

While this relationship between public Confederate markers and health is extrapolative, it is a reasonable extrapolation from decades of medical research. Psychological stress can affect physical health, building up as a cumulative negative impact called allostatic load.⁶⁷ At the same time, racial discrimination inflicts stress that correlates negatively with mental and, in turn, physical health. Research from academics and the Centers for Disease Control has concluded that Black Americans continue to experience worse health outcomes than White Americans—such as premature aging, shorter life expectancy, and more frequent chronic health issues—because of the allostatic load generated by racial stress.⁶⁸ For example, as of 2014 Black Americans experienced 98 more deaths per 100,000 annually than White Americans (851.9 versus 735.0), a disparity of 15.9%.⁶⁹

Public Confederate markers are not the only or even the most significant contributor to high allostatic loads and worse health among Black Americans; researchers often identify comparatively lesser education, unequal home ownership, and higher poverty and unemployment rates as significant contributors to this chronic stress.⁷⁰ However, public Confederate markers potentially also add to Black Americans’ allostatic loads. Although randomized, controlled studies have yet to narrow down a specific relationship between public Confederate markers and disparately worse health outcomes for Black Americans, given that stress born of racial discrimination is linked to higher allostatic loads and worse health outcomes, and given that Black Americans do describe Confederate markers as “offensive,” “insulting,” and “embarrassing” and a majority call for statue removals, a causal connection is very possible.⁷¹ Confederate markers reinforce racist psychosocial stressors within society, magnifying them and increasing Black Americans’ allostatic load. This disproportionate load of stress could contribute to the aforementioned health disparities.

Economic Losses

Higher Poverty for Black Americans

Economic research also links the presence of Confederate monuments in a community to greater economic disparity between Black and White Americans, with Black Americans having lower incomes than White Americans.⁷² First, socioeconomic research suggests the presence of public Confederate markers—specifically ones that explicitly support the Lost Cause narrative—in Southern counties with a historically “low-slave” population closely correlates with Black–White poverty inequality in the area and may causatively connect.⁷³ In other words, a Southern county that historically hosted fewer slaves tends to nevertheless have greater Black–White poverty inequality if it also has Confederate monuments that promote the Lost Cause.

Distinguishing historically “high-slave” and “low-slave” counties matters because the relationship between a Lost Cause–promoting monument and Black–White poverty inequality is weaker in counties that historically had high concentrations of slaves.⁷⁴ Counties with historically higher slave populations exhibit consistently high Black–White poverty inequality, regardless of the presence of Lost Cause–promoting Confederate markers, possibly because anti-Black resentment in such counties is higher.⁷⁵

The language on the base of this memorial to Confederate soldiers in Fayette, Alabama, qualifies the memorial as a public Confederate marker that promotes the Lost Cause. The inscription praises Confederate soldiers “whose principles of right as a sacred heritage we bequeath to our children.”

Source: “Fayette County Confederate Monument.” Jimmy Emverson, DVM, October 29, 2019. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/auvet/48985600213/in/pool-csmonuments/. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/. 

Historically low-slave counties with a Lost Cause monument nevertheless match high-slave counties for Black–White poverty inequality. Confederate monuments effectively “shore up” Black–White disparity in low-slave counties, bringing the disparity in line with that of high-slave counties, even though the latter’s history seems to have given rise to more explicit racial resentment than the former. While monuments themselves do not take action, Confederate markers are “powerful symbols” which might suggest support for the Confederate cause of White supremacist racial hierarchy and thereby signal public sanction of anti-Blackness.⁷⁶ By publicly signalling approval of a movement that supported slavery and Black–White difference, residents may perceive community approval of anti-Black prejudice in the present, in turn giving rise to more manifestations of anti-Black racism in the area. This link would explain how Confederate monuments amplify Black–White poverty inequality in their localities to match those of counties with historically-derived higher racial resentment.

Other research illustrates the general economic gaps between Black and White Americans nationwide. As of 2020, Black men and women in the United States made eighty and seventy cents respectively for every dollar earned by White men, resulting in about $225,000 to $300,000 in lost lifetime income each.⁷⁷ As with worse health outcomes, public Confederate markers are not the only contributors to Black–White wage gaps, and researchers also note anti-Black bias, unequal access to housing and education, mass incarceration, and voter suppression as contributors.⁷⁸ However, this general data can still illustrate the Black–White poverty inequality that monuments contribute to, as the aforementioned research on Black–White poverty inequality demonstrates that Lost Cause-promoting monuments are connected and do play a role.⁷⁹

National Economic Drag

In addition to the negative consequences Black Americans experience from reduced income, Black–White poverty inequality also creates a multi-trillion dollar economic drag on the United States as a whole.⁸⁰ Racial wage and wealth gaps, among other economic gaps, represent trillions of dollars in lost Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the United States and for the global economy overall.⁸¹ For example, over the last twenty years wage gaps in the United States between Black men and women and White men contributed to a net loss of more than $2 trillion in potential GDP.⁸² Again, other contributors exist, but Lost Cause–promoting monuments’ connection to Black–White poverty inequality suggests public Confederate markers may also play a role in this general economic drag.

Public Confederate markers have adverse economic effects. The presence of Confederate markers in a community correlates with higher Black–White poverty inequality, and Confederate markers’ contribution to racism in the United States means that these markers may also play a part in an enormous drag on the national economy.

Financing Pro-Confederate and Negationist History Messages

Continuing support for public Confederate markers also finances pro-Confederate groups and sites as well as negationist history messages. Between 2008 and 2018, at least $40 million in American taxpayer funds financed upkeep of Confederate markers and heritage sites, often going toward Confederate heritage groups that use the sites to propagate the Lost Cause narrative.⁸³ By funding pro-Confederate groups through the public markers, the state requires taxpayers to financially sponsor the false negationist history that confuses public understanding of the Civil War and the Confederate States of America.

For example, private owners operate the Jefferson Davis Home and Presidential Library, also called Beauvoir. Most members of Beauvoir’s board of directors are also members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a heritage group that openly defends the Confederate States and its principles.⁸⁴ Nevertheless, each year the state of Mississippi grants $100,000 to Beauvoir’s private owners, ostensibly to fund the building’s preservation as a historic site. The entire complex includes only one acknowledgment of slavery’s existence or Davis’s status as a slaveholder.

Beauvoir staff members claim there are few references to slavery because the state of Mississippi requires the site to focus on the period of time in which Davis lived in the building, which was after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. However, in spite of this apparent mandate, Beauvoir also celebrates Confederate soldiers with battle flags, uniforms, weapons, and reenactments.⁸⁵ Researchers who visited Beauvoir discovered that tour guides “routinely denied the realities of slavery” in presentations.⁸⁶ Thomas Payne, Beauvoir’s director until April 2018, even claimed in an interview that sometimes slavery could positively affect the lives of the enslaved, despite overwhelming historical evidence of slavery’s brutality.⁸⁷

Beauvoir is only one example of how Confederate heritage groups use the taxpayer funds granted to them. Other monuments and sites, such as the Confederate Memorial Park, First White House of the Confederacy, and Stephens State Park each receive staggering annual sums from state governments ranging from $150,000 to $600,000 in a single year, totaling to the aforementioned $40 million annually. Virtually all of these sites obscure Civil War history in some manner or other, whether by overt negationism or covert silence on the subjects of slavery and the Black experience.⁸⁸ These Confederate sites’ continued existence as markers and monuments, as well as the ongoing support for them, both cost taxpayers enormous sums and promote the very Lost Cause negationism that engenders favor for such markers, in spite of their negative consequences.

Attracting Violent White Supremacy

Public Confederate markers also act as lightning rods for White nationalist activity. As one scholar described, “Confederate sites play to the White supremacist imagination. They are treated as sacred by White supremacists and represent what this country should be” in their view.⁸⁹ While randomized testing has yet to causatively link Confederate markers and violent White nationalism, episodes of violence surrounding or involving Confederate markers in the last six years suggest a reasonably probable relationship.

For example, the perpetrator of the June 2015 African Methodist Episcopal Church shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, committed the act of violence after spending the preceding day touring a Confederate museum and former plantations.⁹⁰ Five weeks later, a White man carrying a semi-automatic rifle menaced anti-monument protestors at a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse in Denton, Texas.⁹¹

In May 2017, pro-monument counter-protestors convened at a statue of Robert E. Lee in New Orleans, Louisiana, to confront a pro-removal march and demonstration.⁹² Although journalists report the day ended largely peacefully, a few fights did break out, and the pro-monument group came prepared for violence, bringing body armor, bats, pepper spray, and firearms. Some held signs reading, “I’m only here for the violence.”⁹³ One counter-protestor said aloud that there would be “antifa blood” on the end of his pole by the end of the day, as “there’s going to be no mercy today.”⁹⁴

Participants in the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Confederate, Nazi swastika, and Gadsden “Don't Tread On Me” flags are visible.

Source: “Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ Rally.” Anthony Crider, August 12, 2017. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/acrider/35780276094/. CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

Then in August 2017, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, took place near At Ready, a statue depicting a Confederate soldier.⁹⁵ Attended by hundreds of open neo-Nazis and White nationalists, the event ended in violence when a demonstrator deliberately drove his car into a group of pro-removal demonstrators, killing 1 and injuring 34 others.⁹⁶

In July 2020, a group of 75 demonstrators calling for the removal of a Confederate monument in Weatherford, Texas, encountered 500 counter-protestors.⁹⁷ Some carried Confederate flags, threw water bottles at the smaller group of demonstrators, and even brandished weapons, prompting one eyewitness to call the counter-protestors an “armed militia.”⁹⁸ Violence ensued at least twice when counter-protestors attacked demonstrators, shoving one, hitting another, and drawing a knife.⁹⁹ Out of fear for their safety, demonstrators ended their protest early.¹⁰⁰

In both the New Orleans and Weatherford incidents, violence erupted as a result of White supremacist and paramilitary counter-protestors escalating the demonstration. Although pro-removal protestors were already present in New Orleans and Weatherford, the pro-removal camps were nonviolent, wielding neither the weapons nor the threatening rhetoric the pro-monument counter-protests brought.¹⁰¹

These recent events seem to attest, albeit anecdotally, that Confederate monuments may draw violence, particularly from White supremacist groups.¹⁰² In light of this dangerous interplay with violent White supremacy, public Confederate markers may well function as state-sponsored attractions for White supremacist violence.

Practices

Because widespread, multiracial public interest in public Confederate markers is relatively new—generally traceable to the 2015 Charleston shooting, if not to the 2020 murder of George Floyd¹⁰³—there has been virtually no rigorous impact assessment done for any of the following practices; no randomized control testing, professional vetting, or consequence-based outcome evaluations yet exist. As such, analysis of the impact of and gaps in practices relies mostly on anecdotal evidence, extrapolation, and scholars’ critical thinking.

Removal From the Public Square

Widespread advocacy for the total removal of public Confederate markers from the public square has existed since 2015 but has especially gained strength since the summer of 2020 and the nationwide surge of Black Lives Matter protests.¹⁰⁴ Since George Floyd’s death in May 2020, 168 public Confederate markers have been removed from the public square.¹⁰⁵ This solution is premised on the idea that public markers exercise psychosocial power by virtue of their placement in public places of prominence.¹⁰⁶ (For example, many public Confederate markers are statues in front of courthouses, monuments by major thoroughfares, and names of public buildings.¹⁰⁷) Advocates assert that removing Confederate markers from public display will prevent them from inflicting stress on Black Americans as well as from signalling approval of racism to communities.¹⁰⁸

Once communities remove Confederate markers from the public square, the question remains of where these markers go. (This question does not apply to some markers, such as street or building namesakes, for which “removal” necessitates oblivion.) Many advocates and writers in the topic area recommend relocating public Confederate markers, especially statues and monuments, from the public square to heritage sites or museums.¹⁰⁹ Advocates claim museum settings will confer different meaning on Confederate markers—whether statues, plaques, or monuments—changing them from tools of propaganda to artifacts and historical documents that reveal insight into their time and place, whether that be the era of Jim Crow or the anti-Civil Rights reaction.¹¹⁰

Within the broad idea of relocation, several possible approaches exist. First, markers could be relocated to existing museums, and museums could provide robust interpretation of them as relics of Jim Crow and White supremacy.¹¹¹ The Houston Museum of African American Culture did this in August 2020.¹¹² This approach, advocates argue, can refashion markers from tributes to artifacts and thereby teach patrons about the historical racism they were part of and the contemporary racism they inflict.¹¹³

Second, markers could be relocated to a new, centralized institution—perhaps an open-air park—and displayed without additional adornment or flair.¹¹⁴ The American Historical Association suggests this approach, basing it on Budapest, Hungary’s Memento Park, a public repository of Soviet-era statues and memorials.¹¹⁵ One blogger who visited Memento Park said the Soviet monuments seemed more “sterile” when displayed next to each other, suggesting this type of relocation might indeed rob monuments of their power.¹¹⁶ Memento Park’s conceptual designer Ákos Eleőd said, “This Park is about dictatorship. And at the same time, because it can be talked about . . . this Park is about democracy.”¹¹⁷ Likewise, a national park of relocated Confederate markers could be about racism and, because it can be talked about, simultaneously about racial justice.

Third, markers could be relocated to a new, centralized institution like an open-air park, but instead of being displayed without adornment, could be displayed in a “statue graveyard,” intentionally posed in felled positions or with damage.¹¹⁸ Two cultural geographers advocating this approach to the display claim the “somber” atmosphere this approach creates might help promote grieving without reverence.

A Soviet monument on display in Memento Park in Budapest, Hungary.

Source: “Memento Park.” Espino Family, July 30, 2011. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021. https://www.flickr.com/photos/espinos/6033170192/. CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.

A toppled Soviet monument left on its side in Memento Park.

Source: “Memento Park.” Espino Family, July 30, 2011. Flickr, March 8, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/espinos/6032614015/. CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.

Impact

Current evidence in support of relocation is anecdotal but points toward positive impacts, at least for individuals.¹¹⁹ However, without further assessment, the extent to which relocation would reverse public Confederate markers’ negative consequences remains theoretical. Some writers have anecdotally claimed that there is less racism in Europe and even attributed this to the public memorial landscape.¹²⁰ For example, post–World War II German society physically “de-Nazified” the country by removing swastikas from public display, demolishing statues, and destroying flags.¹²¹ However, whether America is more or less racist than Europe remains a matter more of public perception than data (how one would comparatively measure is not clear, and some dispute the claim itself), and even if one assumes the claim is true, there is not clear data that isolates part of that difference to monument removal.¹²² Nevertheless, as one history professor observes, “if just removing statues and icons doesn’t force a change in outlook,” as with Germany and Nazi imagery, then “venerating and fetishizing them, and refusing to be honest about their meaning,” as with the United States and public Confederate markers, “almost ensures that the country won’t fully confront its past.”¹²³ Therefore, the potential correlation between monument removal and alleviating the Consequences described in this brief remains worth considering.

Gaps

Despite widespread enthusiasm for relocating public Confederate markers to museums, there are major hurdles to how effective this practice can be. First, preserving and displaying Confederate markers is expensive and often beyond most museums’ existing budgets, and government bodies that relocate markers often do not invest in financing preservation and exhibition.¹²⁴ Forced to anticipate funding gaps from legislatures hesitant to finance preservation and meaningful exhibition, many American museums balk at accepting Confederate markers, even when it might seem appropriate to their collections.¹²⁵

Second, museums’ perceived authority may unintentionally reinvigorate Confederate markers as symbols, therefore subverting the attempt to disempower them through relocation. Patrons often look to museums as places of pride and honor, so instead of turning markers into artifacts, museum displays might make monuments into martyrs and museums into mourning grounds for neo-Confederates and other sympathizers.¹²⁶ In this case, relocation would merely transplant Confederate markers without disempowering their racist messages.¹²⁷ For example, in Memento Park, even in 2001, guests could buy T-shirts commemorating Nikita Khrushchev, former president of the Soviet Union.¹²⁸ Such paraphernalia seems less like somber insight into a terrible history and more like kitschy nostalgia for a half-remembered past, and a scholar criticized the park for being more like a “tourist attraction” than a “professional exhibition.”¹²⁹ This problem already seems to haunt heritage sites like Beauvoir (see Consequences: Financing Pro-Confederate and Negationist History Messages).¹³⁰ Additionally, because American opinion on Confederate monuments and the Civil War itself remains polarized, attempts to recontextualize public Confederate markers may be especially prone to misuse.¹³¹ Maintaining a balance between using public Confederate markers as historical documents and repudiating Lost Cause–inspired negationist revivals of racist messages may be more precarious than would seem on the surface.

Alternatives

The high cost of preservation and relocation prompts some advocates to recommend either abandoning public Confederate markers to remote locations with no effort made at preservation or even wholesale destroying them.¹³² In addition to being less expensive in the long-term, abandonment or destruction would avoid the possibility of museums reinvigorating markers with implied public meaning.

Another alternative is foregoing relocation and instead adding contextualizing signage, such as plaques describing the history of slavery and the Lost Cause. Advocates of this approach say signs can challenge the Lost Cause narrative which public Confederate markers communicate, weakening their psychosocial power.¹³³ However, critics argue signage is insufficient to overcome public Confederate markers’ effects. Some markers, such as monuments, are too massive and too offensive for explanatory plaques to make a difference to the people who see them.¹³⁴ However, many cities contend with repressive anti-removal laws that prohibit taking public Confederate markers out of the public square at all (see Contributing Factors: State Laws Prohibiting Marker Removal by Local Authorities).¹³⁵ For municipal governments where removal is impossible, adding contextualizing signage may be the most viable option to lessen Confederate markers’ psychosocial effects.

Protestors marching in support of removing a Confederate monument in New Orleans, Louisiana. The yellow signs that read “Take down all symbols of white supremacy” are associated with Take ’Em Down NOLA.

Source: “Celebrate Taking Them Down.” Infrogmation of New Orleans, May 7, 2017. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021, https://www.flickr.com/photos/infrogmation/34175708640/. CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

Protest: Take ‘Em Down NOLA

Because public Confederate markers are generally owned by municipal governments or by states, before anything can be legally done to public Confederate markers—whether added to, relocated, or destroyed—communities generally need to pressure governments to take action. Protest has been one of the main tools monument-removal movements use to pressure their governments.¹³⁶ For example, Take ’Em Down NOLA is a grassroots New Orleans group that lobbies to remove or rename “symbols of White supremacy” in New Orleans, which Take ’Em Down identifies as statues or namesakes of slave owners or Confederate leaders, as well as monuments that highlight Black–White disparity.¹³⁷ Founded in 2015, Take ’Em Down organizes protest marches, hosts public forums, and on its website publishes excoriating statements against Confederate marker support.¹³⁸

Impact

Take ’Em Down does assert that it views statue removal “as a necessary step in the direction of racial and economic justice,” suggesting interest in consequence-based outcomes, but it does not articulate the details of the desired racial and economic justice, leaving the target outcomes vague and ill-defined.¹³⁹ Take ’Em Down does track how many of its target monuments have been removed since its 2015 founding: 7 statues out of 17 targets, not including namesakes such as schools and streets.¹⁴⁰ Their output measurement is inconsistent, however, as Take ’Em Down does not provide comprehensive, public-facing information about the number of statements made or protests hosted.

Scholars suggest that short-term success—actually pressuring governments into doing something about public Confederate markers—is unlikely, as usually protests succeed in the short term only in rare, highly extreme scenarios.¹⁴¹ For example, although more than 8,400 protests connected to Black Lives Matter occurred between May and August 2020 alone, only 168 public Confederate markers have been removed from the public square between May 2020 and March 2021, a disparity of nearly 2 orders of magnitude.¹⁴²

Research does suggest protests can be effective in the long-term, however, as protestors’ organizing creates a breeding ground for demonstrators and advocates to later enter political office or otherwise influence change at a broader level.¹⁴³ However, while this suggests protests against Confederate markers will eventually achieve their goals, this suggestion does not necessarily prove that protests will also achieve sought-after consequence-based outcomes.

Gaps

By Take ’Em Down NOLA’s own reporting, over 5 years it has seen the removal of less than half of its target statues, and none of its 70 target namesakes have had name changes.¹⁴⁴ Compared to the over 1,800 public Confederate markers that remain in the United States, Take ’Em Down’s protest efforts seem ineffective at solving the broader social issue in the short term.¹⁴⁵ Additionally, Take ’Em Down is intentionally local, meaning its efforts focus solely on New Orleans; spreading Take ’Em Down’s influence would require replication across many other cities. As for long-term change, it is too early to make a judgment on recent statue removal initiatives’ impacts or gaps, and more research and data are needed.

Alternatives

Take ’Em Down NOLA is a grassroots effort, but other groups, such as the NAACP, organize protests and petition efforts at a national level.¹⁴⁶ While the NAACP has had some successes—such as boycotting South Carolina to press the state legislature into removing the Confederate battle flag from its capitol grounds—these have also been relatively slow and modest compared to the number of public Confederate markers. The NAACP’s boycott lasted from 2000 to 2015 and only ended after the Charleston Church Massacre sharply escalated pressure on the South Carolina legislature.¹⁴⁷

The South Carolina State House grounds while the Confederate battle flag still flew. To protest the presence of the Confederate flag, the NAACP led a boycott on South Carolina products from 2000 to 2015. In 2015, the South Carolina legislature took down the flag, but the memorial to Confederate soldiers next to the flagpole remains.

Source: “Confederate Flag.” Jason Eppink, April 11, 2013. Flickr, accessed March 8, 2021. https://flickr.com/photos/jasoneppink/9223638649. CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/.

Preferred Citation: Hunter, P. Makoto. “Public Confederate Markers in the United States.” Ballard Brief. May 2021. www.ballardbrief.org.

Viewpoints published by Ballard Brief are not necessarily endorsed by BYU or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints