Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials

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

See also: List of monuments and memorials removed during the George Floyd protests, List of monument and memorial controversies in the United States, and List of Confederate monuments and memorials

More than 700 such 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. Efforts to remove them increased after the Charleston church shooting in 2015, the Unite the Right rally in 2017, and the murder of George Floyd in 2020.

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; and that they memorialize an unrecognized, treasonous 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.

Opponents view removing the monuments as erasing history or a sign of disrespect for heritage; white nationalists and neo-Nazis in particular have mounted protests and opposition to the removals. Some Southern states passed state laws restricting or prohibiting the removal or alteration of public monuments.

By The Washington Post's count, five Confederate monuments were removed between 1865 and 2014, eight in the two years after the 2015 Charleston church shooting, 48 in the three years after the 2017 Unite the Right rally, and 110 in the two years after Floyd's 2020 murder.

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.

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

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.