The United States’ anti-Confederacy movement refers to the sustained campaign to remove symbols of the Confederacy, a self-declared nation of 11 states that seceded from the Union around 1861. The Confederacy, all of whose constituents had legalised slavery, was dissolved in 1865 after Confederate forces surrendered to the Union army in the American Civil War. The anti-Confederacy movement considers symbols of the Confederacy, including the Confederate flag, statues of generals and heroes, monuments, city seals, the names of streets, parks and schools, and official state holidays to be endorsements of the country’s troubling history of racist oppression of African-Americans. The movement argues that persistent racial disparities in the U.S. today imply that the country is yet to experience reconciliation between these two ethnicities and move past its violent 19th and 20th century history of slavery and segregation respectively.
The most recent wave of the anti-Confederacy movement is rooted in the June 17, 2015 murder of nine African-American churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by white supremacist Dylann Roof. In the immediate aftermath of the murders, photographs of Roof with the Confederate flag were discovered, leading to enormous pressure on political leaders across Southern states to remove Confederate symbols from public offices and spaces. On June 22, 2015, South Carolina’s erstwhile Governor Nikki Haley took down the Confederate flag at the State House. After that episode the anti-Confederacy movement again jumped into fourth gear last weekend when white supremacist protesters descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia, in a rally against the city’s plan to take down a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Following several days of violent clashes between white nationalists, anti-Confederates and other protesters, tensions soared when U.S. President Donald Trump waded into the debate by tweeting that it was “foolish” to take down Confederate statues.
Racial discrimination in the U.S. today, manifested in, for example, deadly encounters between law enforcement and unarmed African-Americans, raises serious questions about the emotional impact of letting Confederate icons remain. Contrarily, the Confederate flag and statues of Confederate generals are viewed by some white Southerners as an “emblem of their heritage and regional pride.” The crux of the argument is whether the legacy of the Confederate movement, in terms of its martial conquests and struggle for secession from the Union, can be viewed in isolation from the premise of legalised slavery, although the latter was the cornerstone of the plantation economy, which was in turn the backbone of the Southern states. It certainly has not helped bolster the case for 21st century Confederate pride that the Confederate flag was used extensively by the Ku Klux Klan. Setting aside overt white supremacy claims, one argument against the removal of Confederate icons is that there is a distinction between retaining the statues of men such as George Washington on the one hand – a founding father of the U.S. who may be considered flawed if measured on the yardstick of modern sensibilities – and those of Robert E. Lee, who may be considered a rebel who tried to break the Union down.
There have been at least 100 attempts at the state and local levels to remove or alter symbols of the Confederacy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, despite which at least 1,503 such symbols still stand, including 718 monuments and statues; 109 public schools; 80 counties and cities; nine official holidays in six states; and 10 U.S. military bases. The authority to remove a Confederate symbol varies depending on the specific symbol and the public space it occupies, as well as the state laws applicable. In many cases removal was authorised by Governors, Mayors, City Councillors, County Commissioners, or private persons in the case of private property. Many more Confederate symbols slated for removal have become vectors of protest on both sides. The debate will continue.
