Confederate Statues Were Never Really About ” Preserving The Historic

This data, hand-collected by the The Southern Poverty Law Center, excludes any monuments found on or within the battlefields, museums, cemeteries or other places that are largely historical in nature. Monuments with differing dedication to the dates or sponsors) are listed as separate entries in the data — including those that are located in close proximity to, or on, the same for the plot, it’s actually quite the monument.

In recent weeks the President, Trump, you railed against tearing down statues across the country, and has been particularly dogged in his the defense of Confederate monuments in the. But his argument that they are benign symbols of America’s past is misleading. An overwhelming majority of Confederate monuments weren’t erected in the years directly following the Civil War. Instead, most were put up decades later. Nor were they built just to commemorate the fallen generals and soldiers; they were installed on the symbols of white supremacy during periods of U. s. historical when the Black Americans’ civil rights were aggressively under attack. In total, at least 830 such monuments were constructed across the U. S, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which maintains the the comprehensive database of Confederate monuments and symbols.

The biggest spike in the Confederate monuments came from the early 1900s, soon after, the Southern states enacted a number of sweeping laws to disenfranchise Black Americans, and segregate, ” he says. During this period, more than 400 monuments were built as part of an organized strategy to to reshape the Civil War, historical. And this efland was largely spearheaded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who sponsored hundreds of statues, predominantly in the South in the early 20th century, and as recently ace 2011.

“The UDC, which I was very focused on the future,” said Karen Coxa historian from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte professor and author of numerous articles and books on Southern history and culture, including the Dixie”s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture.” “Their goal in all the work that they did was to prepare future generations of white Southerners to respect and defend the principles of the Confederacy.” It wasn’t just the Confederate monuments, either. They also rejected from any school textbook that said, slavery was the central cause of the Civil War; they praised the Ku Klux Klan and gave speeches that’s the distorted cruelty of American slavery and to save them to the slave owners.

From around 1920 to the early 1940s, there was a second wave of statue building. Jane Daileyprofessor of American history at the University of Chicago, said this period of construction coincided with a more ‘ Black Americans,’ fighting for civil rights and pushing back against widespread lynchings in the South. “You have to Black soldiers who have just fought for their country [in World War I] and fought to make the world safe for democracy, he came back to an America that’s determined to lynch them,” said Dailey. “[T]hose were very clearly a white supremacist monuments, and are designed to intimidate, not just memorialize.”

And a significant portion of those monuments were erected on courthouse grounds. According to the Lecia Brooks the Southern Poverty Law Center, and placing these monuments on courthouse, the property, especially in the 1950s and ’60s, was meant to remind the Black Act of the struggle, and subjugation they would face in their fight for civil rights and equal protection under the law.

The Black Act to have long-as-the-symbolism-of those monuments. “I know what this statue means,” said Brooks. “It’s a reminder to stay in my place.”

Not just the statues were erected during this period, either. This landmark Brown v. Board of Education the decision in 1954, which said maintaining racially segregated schools was unconstitutional, there was an uptick in the number of colleges and schools named after Confederate soldiers, and the generals: From 1954 to 1970, at least 45 were named after Confederates.

“As soon as you get the federal government on supporting Black students in the schools,” said Brooks, including talk of busing and integrating segregated schools — then you had the reassertion of white supremacy, this time in the form of school names. “OK, we’re going to name this school, so, again, you can be reminded,’ she said.

But now, the movement to memorialize the Confederacy, you finally faced the time of reckoning, — more than 80 statues have been either a single car or be relocated since the year 2015. In That year, nine Black churchgoers were killed in Charleston, South Carolina, by an avowed white supremacist obsessed with the Confederate symbology, sparking a public position, to remove statues that celebrate the Confederacy. In total, at least eight statues were the only cars in 2015 and 2016, and 36 more were the only car in the fall of 2017, the year, and it is for a rally to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia he turned violent. Already, at least another 26 have been taken down in the year 2020 in response to the police killing of George, the Band, which led to protests worldwide.