Find Out How Many Confederate Monuments Are in Your Area With This Tool
Amid the unrest and anger of recent weeks, as police clashed with pro-reform protesters following the assassination of George Floyd, the Confederate monuments still in the south were targeted. News is rife with reports of Confederate statues being demolished or overturned by demonstrators and actively demolished by local authorities . These include the monuments in Louisville, Kentucky; Jacksonville, Florida; Montgomery, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee and Alexandria, Virginia, among others. But beyond these highly visible monuments, the legacy of the Confederation is preserved in the names of numerous schools, streets and places throughout America. On a map compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), you can find the location of Confederate monuments within your own community . The SPLC currently lists 1,747 monuments, place names, and other symbols of the Confederation in the United States.
Monuments near where George Floyd grew up
A few miles from George Floyd’s Houston home is the Dick Dowling Monument , named after the Confederate Richard Dowling, and the Confederate Spirit Monument, which is sponsored by the Daughters of Confederation.
While these statues are still standing, the movement to remove such monuments to America’s racist heritage continues. In a sign of progress leading up to Floyd’s death, the eponymous Dowling Street in his neighborhood was renamed Emancipation Avenue in 2017. In 2016, the Houston Independent School District voted to rename seven schools named after the Confederates .
There is no compelling argument in favor of preserving these monuments.
For many years there has been debate over the merits of preserving the Confederate monuments. While the popular argument that the Civil War is not really about slavery but about “state rights” is easy to discount , the notion that they offer a way to “remember history” is more vague, but in is equally rooted in racism .
During the secession, the Confederates made it clear that they were leaving the United States to preserve the institution of slavery. This language was inscribed in their secession claims and echoed by their leaders .
It was only later toned down to concerns about federalism — and even then the “right of the states” in question was the ability to preserve the institution of slavery — and certainly not the right of free states to impose restrictions on slavery. states such as refusing to comply with fugitive slave laws that required the return of fugitive slaves to their owners .
Moreover, as the American Historical Association noted in an essay in response to a tweet by Donald Trump in August 2017, in which he objected to the demolition of these monuments, many of the statues littering the former states of the Confederation were erected decades after the end of the war – mainly during the period from 1890 to 1950s. … These were not modern creatures created to honor the recently deceased; they were intended to pay tribute to the racist heritage of the South in an era of legislated segregation . Moreover, many schools and streets named after Confederate generals received these names in response to the civil rights movement in the 1960s . As Samuel Signangwe eloquently wrote in a 2017 Vox essay about his trip to Barbados, during which he saw his first monument to the freedom of an enslaved man, Bussa, who later led a nationwide uprising: “The monuments in my hometown celebrate the people who fought to to keep in slavery those who are like me, and not those who fought for freedom. “
Respect for our history does not mean glorifying racist actions
If we truly wanted to remember and honor our history, we would not have monuments honoring the men and women who committed treason to the United States in order to preserve the institution of slavery. Instead, we would have monuments dedicated to the lives of enslaved people and those who fought for their freedom. There are such monuments in other countries as well. They must also exist here. This is the story that we must glorify in granite.
There are currently 1,747 public symbols of the Confederation in the United States. It is worth finding the ones that exist in your own community and becoming part of the movement to remove them. If we ever want to turn to our dark history and work for a better future, they need to leave.