110 Confederate monuments have been removed in U.S. since 2015
It took generations to erect all the nation’s Confederate monuments, and a new report shows they’re being removed at a pace of about three each month. The study — released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center — shows that 110 Confederate monuments have been removed nationwide since 2015, when a shooting at a black church in South Carolina energized a movement against such memorials. The number — which includes schools and roads that have been renamed in California, a repurposed Confederate holiday in Georgia, plus rebel flags and monuments that have been taken down in Alabama, Louisiana and elsewhere — represents a relative handful compared with the more than 1,700 memorials that remain to hail the Southern “lost cause.” But the change is notable considering that removing such memorials wasn’t widely discussed until the killing of nine black people at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, said Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal activist organization based in Montgomery that monitors extremism. White supremacist Dylann Roof has been sentenced to death for the 2015 attack. After the Charleston shooting, photos surfaced of Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag, helping to change the national dialogue. “I think it kind of signifies something monumental,” said Beirich, director of the organization’s Intelligence Project. “I think people are finally willing to confront the history and come to terms with it.” Many of the Confederate monuments that are now controversial were erected in the early 1900s by groups composed of women and veterans. Some honor generals or soldiers; others bear inscriptions that critics say wrongly gloss over slavery as a reason for the war or portray the Confederate cause as noble. The Old South monuments are supported by groups including the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which is erecting new memorials even as others are removed. “They’re taking them down, and we’re putting them up,” said Thomas V. Strain Jr., commander in chief of the organization. He said the group isn’t tracking monument removals or name changes, but to him, 110 “seems a little high.” Members have raised two giant Confederate “mega-flags” on private property and erected four monuments in Alabama alone this year, Strain said, and they’re asking to place a new Confederate monument outside the courthouse in Colbert County, in northwest Alabama. Commissioners are considering the request. The organization also is building a new headquarters that will include The National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee. The organization, on its website promoting the project, said the museum will counter attempts by opponents “to ban any and all things Confederate through their ideological fascism.” The museum will tell the “Southern side” of the war, Strain said. “It’s not just dedicated to the soldiers, it’s dedicated to the wives and children who had to endure that five years of hell also,” he said. “We’ll have Southern uniforms there, not Union uniforms. We’ll have Southern artillery shells, not Northern ones.” Beirich said the law center’s list of monument removals was compiled through news accounts, tips and crowd-sourcing sites that let people make online reports. Both in tallying removals and remaining memorials, the group counted only monuments that “glorify” the Confederacy and didn’t consider historical markers that denote specific events or sites with a link to the past, such as informative signs at battlefields, Beirich said. While the organization lists 1,730 Confederate monuments nationwide, Beirich said there’s no doubt a lot more exist. “I am sure we have missed many,” she said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Group gathers at Alabama Capitol to protest removal of the Confederate flag
The Confederate flag waved proudly on Alabama Capitol grounds again Saturday, as a group of nearly 1,000 gathered at the Capitol building for the “Southerns Rally” to protest the removal of Confederate flags from the Capitol grounds. Held at the State’s Confederate War Memorial located on the north side of the Capitol, the rally was organized by the Mike Williams, a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, to send a message that the flag is about pride in heritage, not racism or hate. On Wednesday, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley had ordered the removal of four Confederate flags from the Capitol grounds, drawing mixed emotions from across the Yellowhammer state. Bentley’s actions were in response to calls to remove the Confederate emblems after the massacre of nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. last week. The suspect, Dylann Storm Roof, posed in photos displaying Confederate flags and burning or desecrating U.S. flags, re-igniting national disapproval over the flag’s symbolism. Saturday’s rally puts on display the growing momentum to reinstate the flag. Shortly after the removal of the flags, a Change.Org petition to reinstate the flags was started by Phillip Giddens from Gadson. Four days later the petition now has 17,500 supporters and counting (June 27, 2015: 12:33 p.m. CST). Photos from the rally:
Angi Stalnaker: No flag can erase all of the hate and racism and violence in the world
I wish that we could erase all of the hate and racism and violence in the world by eliminating the Confederate Flag. Oh how I wish it was that easy. If taking down displays of that flag would turn our world into a place where racism no longer existed and where hate crimes never again happened, I would tear the flags off of the Confederate Memorial myself. I would make it my life’s mission to eradicate the Confederate Flag from this planet. The fact is, though, that flag didn’t cause the tragic events in Charleston. Those who are using the deaths of 9 innocent churchgoers as an opportunity to focus on a flag are doing a disservice to the memories of those Christian men and women who died last week at the hands of a hate filled mad man and they are doing an even bigger disservice to our society as a whole.Some people are inherently evil. Some people are raised to hate. Some people are insane. Unfortunately, those are the facts of the real world. No flag can change those facts. The tragedy that occurred last Wednesday in a small town in South Carolina is tragic and horrible. Those 9 men and women died at the hands of evil. Their deaths are an opportunity to have a real discussion about what happened and how it could have been prevented. We should discuss why the shooter’s friends are telling news reporters that their “friend” told them he wanted to shoot up a University and told them last Wednesday would be the day he went on that shooting spree, yet none of these friends went to authorities or warned anyone that they knew someone who was planning a mass shooting. We should discuss how certain medications like suboxone have terrible side effects that seem to push certain people to commit unspeakable acts of violence. We should discuss how the mental health community responds to the needs of individuals who clearly need help. We should discuss why racism still exists. We should talk about how children of all races play nicely with each other but as they grow up, some of those innocent children begin to view race in a different way. We should have a lot of candid discussions after the Charleston church massacre but if we focus on a flag, we are missing a real opportunity to have meaningful conversations about hate and evil and violence. Abolishing the Confederate flag won’t change the hearts or minds of a single violent, mentally disturbed racist but why should would be focus on the real problems when we can argue about a square piece of fabric instead. Sure, that makes sense. Angi Stalnaker is Alabama native and political consultant who has worked on numerous statewide, legislative and constitutional amendment races for conservative causes and candidates. She is the founder of Virtus Solutions, a full service government relations and communications firm.
Dylann Roof almost didn’t go through with Charleston shooting because ‘everyone was so nice’
Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old suspect in the shooting of nine people Wednesday evening at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., had been planning the shooting for months, friends say. But he almost didn’t go through with the “mission” at the last minute, reports NBC News, because he said “everyone was so nice to him.” Roof, from Lexington, S.C., was arrested Thursday in North Carolina, and is currently being held at a detention center in South Carolina. He will appear at a 2 p.m. bond hearing through closed-circuit television. After spending about an hour in a prayer meeting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, Roof, a white man, opened fire, killing nine and injuring several others. He then fled and NBC reports Roof was captured in Shelby, N.C., Thursday morning. He waived extradition and was immediately taken back to South Carolina. According to Charleston County Coroner Rae Wooten, the nine victims were: Cynthia Hurd, 54; Susie Jackson, 87; Ethel Lance, 70; Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49; Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41; Tywanza Sanders, 26; Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74; Rev. Sharonda Singleton, 45; Myra Thompson, 59. Pinckney was a pastor of what is referred to as the “Mother Emanuel” AME Church, one of the oldest African-American churches in the United States. He was also a pillar of the local and regional Democratic community, who served as a member of the North Carolina House of Representatives. “Michelle and I know several members of the Emanuel AME church,” said President Barack Obama on Thursday. “We knew their pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who, along with eight others, gathered in prayer and fellowship and was murdered last night. And to say our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families and their community doesn’t say enough to convey the heartache and sadness and the anger that we feel.” Roof has confessed to the shooting on Friday, telling authorities his plan was to start a race war.
