Confederate Monuments Haunt American Democracy

As many of America's cities burn and our democracy feels like it's unraveling, attacks on Confederate monuments in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis may seem incongruous to those who believe that these protests are only about what happened there. Yet the uprisings in American cities since Floyd's death, and the vandalizing and tearing-down of statues dedicated to men who fought for the perpetuation of human slavery share a common foe: white supremacy.

From Richmond, Virginia, where the large equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee was marked with the words "No more white supremacy" and "Blood on your hands," to Oxford, Mississippi, where the statue of the common soldier that sits at the entrance to the University of Mississippi was tagged with the words "spiritual genocide," citizens are railing against systemic racism and accurately tying it to the legacy of white supremacy that these monuments represent.

Time and again -- particularly in the aftermath of white supremacist-fueled violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, but also after the Charleston massacre of 2015 -- Confederate symbols, both flags and monuments, have come under fire, prompting calls for the removal of monuments from shared public spaces. And yet, largely white-led GOP legislatures throughout the South have passed laws to protect these memorials and leave them firmly in place as what, for many, is a demonstration of white authority over the levers of power across the region.

A crucial thing to know here is that these attacks on Confederate monuments are not a new phenomenon. They have long been the target of individuals who have felt the inequality of American justice. When the Lee monument was unveiled in 1890, John Mitchell, editor of the local black newspaper The Richmond Planet, saw in the monument a symbol meant to deter racial progress and noted that it "(forged) heavier chains with which to be bound."