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While the debate whether Confederate statues should be taken down has been gaining momentum for years, the issue gained widespread attention after the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The shooter was said to have glorified the Confederate South, posing in Facebook photos with the Battle Flag of the Northern Virginia Army (also known now as the “Confederate flag,” though it never represented the Confederate States) and touring historical Confederate locations before the shooting.
The issue rose to prominence again in 2017 after an Aug. 12 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent and deadly. The rally protested the proposed removal of statues of Confederate Army Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
The Virginia statues still stood amid the protests following the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, though they were tagged with graffiti. During the global Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, calls to take down the statues were met with citizens not only actively damaging or removing statues of Confederate figures, but targeting statues of slave-holding Founding Fathers in general, as well as historic monuments to Abraham Lincoln and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center(SPLC), 59 Confederate statues and nine markers or plaques were removed from public land in 19 US states between June 17, 2015 and July 6, 2020. The SPLC reported at least 160 monuments were removed in 2020 after George Floyd’s death, more than the prior four years combined At last count, about 704 Confederate monuments remained on public land.
Pro
- The statues misrepresent history, and glorify people who perpetuated slavery, attempted secession from United States, and lost the Civil War.
- The statues are a painful reminder of past and present institutionalized racism in the United States.
- There are many other people who could be represented by statues who would better represent the historical progress and diversity of the country.
Con
- The statues represent the country’s history, no matter how complicated. Taking them down is to censor, whitewash, and potentially forget that history.
- Removing statues is a slippery slope that could lead to the brash removal of monuments to any slightly problematic person.
- The statues do not cause racism and could be used to fight racism if put into historical context.
This article was published on January 20, 2022, at Britannica’s ProCon.org, a nonpartisan issue-information source. Go to ProCon.org to learn more.