BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – 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 a month.
The study – released Monday by the Southern Poverty Law Center – shows 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.”
FILE – In this June 21, 2015, file photo, people join hands against the backdrop of an American flag as thousands of marchers meet in the middle of Charleston’s main bridge in a show of unity after nine black church parishioners were killed by Dylann Roof during a Bible study, in Charleston, S.C. A study released Monday, June 4, 2018, by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows about 110 Confederate monuments have been removed nationwide since 2015, when the shooting energized a movement against such memorials. (AP Photo/David Goldman, File)But the change is notable considering 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 change the national dialogue.