Confederate Monuments Are Coming Down Across the Country

Amid widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism, United States citizens and government officials are once again reckoning with public works honoring slaveholders, the Confederacy and other controversial political leaders. Authorities in multiple states have pledged or begun to remove the statues and plaques. Some protesters, meanwhile, have taken matters into their own hands.

Arguments over Confederate monuments are nothing new. As early as 1910, Senator Weldon B. Heyburn lambasted the government’s decision to memorialize Robert E. Lee with a statue in the U.S. Capitol. More recently, white supremacist Dylann Roof’s June 2015 killing of nine African Americans at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, as well as a neo-Nazi’s August 2017 attack on people protesting a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, have reignited the debate. Now, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, the national conversation continues.

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