Historic Statue Removal
The debate over whether to remove Confederate statues from public spaces has raged for decades, but 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, and before the shooting he had reportedly posed in Facebook photos with the battle flag of the Northern Virginia Army (also known as the “Confederate battle flag,” though it never represented the Confederate States) and toured historical Confederate locations. [1][2][3][4]
Explore the ProCon debate
The debate rose to prominence again in 2017 after an August 12 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent and deadly. The rally, called “Unite the Right,” protested the proposed removal of statues of Confederate Army generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. [5]
The debate received still more attention during and after the nationwide protests that followed the killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020. The activist movement Black Lives Matter, which has played a significant role in the battle to remove Confederate monuments, also played a major role in these protests. The Virginia statues survived the demonstrations but were tagged with graffiti and then removed on July 10, 2021. The protestors that summer damaged and removed not only statues and monuments to Confederate figures but also those honoring Founding Fathers who were slave owners, Abraham Lincoln, and even abolitionists against slavery such as Frederick Douglass. The Confederate battle flag was also widely removed from public display after the Charleston shooting, Charlottesville rally, and the protests surrounding the death of Floyd.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][54]
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), 59 Confederate statues and 9 markers or plaques were removed from public land in 19 U.S. states between June 17, 2015, and July 6, 2020. The SPLC reported at least 160 monuments were removed in 2020 after Floyd’s death, more than the prior four years combined, and 73 Confederate monuments were removed or renamed in 2021, leaving about 723 Confederate monuments on public land as of 2022. From 2022 to 2024, an additional 63 Confederate memorials were removed. [14][55][57][68]
While Confederate statues tend to be at the forefront of the debate, statues of Christopher Columbus and others have also been targeted for removal. There were 149 monuments to Columbus, according to the Monument Lab, the third most of anyone in the United States—more than those of Lee (59) and Jackson (33) combined.[58]
In June 2021, during the presidency of Joe Biden, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to remove all Confederate statues and the bust of Roger B. Taney (the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice who wrote the notorious Dred Scott decision) from the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall. Taney’s bust was replaced with one of Thurgood Marshall (the Court’s first Black member). On July 13, 2022, Florida erected a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune to replace their Confederate soldier statue, also in Statuary Hall. Bethune’s is the first state-commissioned statue of a Black person to be included in Statuary Hall. [56]
After the large outdoor bronze statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his horse Traveller was removed from a park in Charlottesville in 2021, it was given to an organization that promised to dissemble it, melt it down, and reuse the statue’s material for a new work of public art. Part of a project called “Swords Into Plowshares,” the installation will be “one that turns historic trauma into an artistic expression of democratic values and inclusive aspirations.”[59]
Upon his reelection in 2024, Donald Trump promised to restore the removed statues. On March 27, 2025, Trump signed an executive order—“Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”—that instructed the Secretary of the Interior to:
determine whether, since January 1, 2020, public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction have been removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology [and then] take action to reinstate the pre-existing monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties, as appropriate and consistent ... [with the law and also] take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure that all public monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties within the Department of the Interior’s jurisdiction do not contain descriptions, depictions, or other content that inappropriately disparage Americans past or living (including persons living in colonial times), and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape. [61]
How many monuments the order applies to is unclear. Seth Levi of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks Confederate and other memorials, said monuments on public land are “normally [on] land that’s owned and controlled by municipalities or state governments. I’m not actually aware of any removals on National Park Service land.” He explained, “there have been removals on land that’s controlled by the Department of Defense with the names of military bases, [but] it’s unclear to us how many monuments have already been removed that this would actually apply to.” [62]
In keeping with Trump’s executive order, the National Park Service announced on August 4 it will restore and reinstall in Washington, D.C., the bronze statue of author, poet, orator, lawyer, and Confederate Army general Albert Pike, which was toppled and vandalized in June 2020.[64]
Trump also indicated that Army bases would revert back to the names honoring Confederate generals (including forts Bragg, Benning, Gordon, and Walker), reversing a law passed at the end of Trump’s first term over his objections and veto. The Army, however, stated that the original names would now honor other Army figures with the same names (for example Fort Gordon now honors Master Sgt. Gary Gordon rather than Confederate John Brown Gordon). [63]
Removing historic statues is also an international phenomenon. In the U.K., statues of slave traders Edward Colston and Robert Milligran were removed. In Belgium, statues and busts of King Leopold II, who led Belgium to seize and exploit Congo in the 19th century, were removed. In Bulgaria, Hungary, and other post-Soviet countries, monuments to the Soviet era have been removed or moved to museums. And in Mexico, monuments to communist revolutionaries Fidel Castro and Che Guevera, former right-wing Mexican president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, and Christopher Columbus have been removed.[65][66][67]
So, should historic statues be taken down? Explore the debate below.
Pros and Cons at a Glance
| PROS | CONS |
|---|---|
| Pro 1: These statues misrepresent history, glorifying people who perpetuated slavery and seceded from the country. Read More. | Con 1: Statues are useful “teachable moments”—removing them is to censor, whitewash, and potentially forget history. Read More. |
| Pro 2: These statues are racist and offensive and pay homage to hate. Read More. | Con 2: These statues do not cause racism but can be used to fight it if put into historical context. Read More. |
| Pro 3: These statues should be replaced with monuments that reflect the country’s historic progress and diversity. Read More. | Con 3: Statue removal is a slippery slope that can endanger monuments to worthy heroes, no matter how imperfect these heroes or their times may have been. Read More. |
Pro Arguments
(Go to Con Arguments)Pro 1: These statues misrepresent history, glorifying people who perpetuated slavery and seceded from the country.
When 11 Southern states seceded from the Union in 1861, they were very clear that the reason was the impending abolition of slavery. Mississippi’s secession declaration states, “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.…There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.” [15][16]
However, after the Confederate States lost the Civil War, the South revised history. The states declared they had not been fighting to preserve slavery and, instead, “fashioned a set of ideas and arguments that they were fighting to hold back the massive industrialization of America, they were trying to preserve rural agrarian civilization,” according to David W. Blight, American history professor at Yale University. [17][18]
The “Lost Cause” mythology was used to continue the idea that Black people needed to be subjugated for their own good and as justification for Jim Crow laws. Erecting statues to the lost heroes of the Lost Cause was part of the campaign to revise history. [14][17]
Other statues of historic figures, such as slave-owning presidents or imperialists like Christopher Columbus, promote similar oppressive and revisionist messages. Glenn Foster, founder of the Freedom Neighborhood, states of the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts Abraham Lincoln over a kneeling freed enslaved person, “When I look at that statue, I’m reminded my freedom and my liberation is only dictated by white peoples’ terms. We’re trying to let the government know we’re not going to wait any longer for our freedom to happen.” Celebrations of Columbus have long been criticized due to his colonization and genocide of Indigenous people, as well as the false narrative that he discovered America when he never set foot on North America. [19][20][21]
These statues, like their Confederate counterparts, serve a revisionist purpose, allowing people to maintain a racist ideology.
Pro 2: These statues are racist and offensive and pay homage to hate.
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, notes that “enduringly charged symbols of the former Confederacy.…[add] to our fears that, instead of embracing the promise of democracy in a diverse society, some want to return us to a far more restrictive time, when freedom was circumscribed by race.” [22]
“We can’t get to learning from our history if we keep accepting that racism should be celebrated in American history,” according to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race, and public policy at Harvard University. [1]
The statues were built to honor and enforce white supremacist views, and the intent or damaging effect have not been erased by time.
A Black resident of Richmond, Virginia, Tommye Finley, remarks of the city’s Monument Avenue, which is home to five Confederate statues, “When I first moved here from Mississippi, I thought these statues were ridiculous. Why build a street for losers?…Psychologically, it’s perpetuating a system. It’s saying, ‘We still have the upper hand.’ ” [23]
Finley hit not only on the current psychological impact of the statues but also on the intended historical impact. As James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, notes, “It’s not just that the statues represent white supremacy, but the purpose of building the statues was the perpetuation of white supremacy. This is why they put them up in the first place; to affirm the centrality of white supremacy to Southern culture.”[1]
Because the statues were intended to promote white supremacy, Richard Rose, president of Atlanta’s NAACP, argues, “You can’t contextualize racism or compromise on racism.” He states that the contextualization plaques added to Atlanta’s Confederate statues “establish that racism is valid.”[24]
The statues still appeal to white supremacists, as demonstrated by the 2017 rally to defend the Lee and Jackson statues in Virginia and in the pre-massacre tour of plantations and a Confederate museum conducted by Dylann Roof, the mass murderer responsible for the Charleston church shooting in 2015.[4]
Monuments are ultimately about which values we want to honor and put on public display. For example, the Confederate statues in the Capitol building “should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation. Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals. Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed,” according to former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). [23][25]
Further, Americans pay to have Confederate statues and the associated values on display. A 2018 investigation published in the Smithsonian Magazine found that over the prior 10 years, at least $40 million in taxpayer dollars were allocated for Confederate statues, other monuments, and heritage organizations. [4]
As Karen Cox, historian of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, concludes, “The state is giving the stamp of approval to these Lost Cause ideas, and the money is a symbol of that approval. What does that say to Black citizens of the state, or other citizens, or to younger generations?” [4]
Pro 3: These statues should be replaced with monuments that reflect the country’s historic progress and diversity.
Of about 5,193 public statues of people in the United States, only 394 are of women, and far fewer are of Black Americans or other people of color.[26]
George Gerbner and Larry Gross coined the term “symbolic annihilation” in 1976 to describe the lack of representation of a group of people. Symbolic annihilation can result in society valuing certain groups less, internalizing negativity toward those groups. Statues celebrating the diversity of the country could help remedy symbolic annihilation of Black Americans, women, and other groups. [27][28]
A petition in Tennessee gained 22,736 signatures (and counting, as of July 8, 2020) to replace all Confederate statues in the state, including the statue of Confederate Army general and KKK grand wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest that stands in the state’s capitol building, with statues of Dolly Parton. [29][30]
Walmart donated $100,000 to help Arkansas replace statues of Confederate sympathizers Governor James P. Clarke and attorney Uriah Rose in the U.S. Capitol with statues of Johnny Cash and civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates. [31]
In Louisville, Kentucky, a statue of Confederate soldier John Breckinridge Castleman was removed. Residents offered replacement suggestions ranging from boxer Muhammad Ali to writer Wendell Berry. A monument to the victims of slavery has also been suggested. [26][32]
Statues could be built to honor George Washington Carver, Madam C.J. Walker, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Owens, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ruby Bridges, Mae Jemison, Charles Richard Drew, Mary Jackson, and countless others. A 1908 confederate memorial in front of the DeKalb County Courthouse in Decatur, Georgia, was removed in 2020, and in 2024 it was replaced with a statue of Civil Rights icon John Lewis. [60]
Beyond building monuments to honor Black Americans, monuments could employ and elevate living Black artists, such as Kehinde Wiley, whose 2019 “Rumors of War” statue depicts a Black man on horseback in a pose reminiscent of statues of Robert E. Lee. [32][33]
Con Arguments
(Go to Pro Arguments)Con 1: Statues are useful “teachable moments”—removing them is to censor, whitewash, and potentially forget history.
Of the calls to take down Confederate monuments, President Donald Trump states, “This cruel campaign of censorship and exclusion violates everything we hold dear as Americans. They want to demolish our heritage so they can impose a new oppressive regime in its place.” Trump argues the plight to save the statues “is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country!” [9][34]
Citizens of the United States have the right to hold controversial opinions and build statues to honor their beliefs. The First Amendment protects everyone’s speech, not just the speech approved by the majority.[35]
The history of the United States is multilayered, complicated, and ever-evolving. Those who disagree with the beliefs upheld by the statues should work to understand the history these monuments represent, rather than try to simply remove them and the history from sight.
As explained by John Daniel Davidson, political editor at The Federalist, “That they were wrong about slavery does not excuse us today from the burden of trying to understand what motivated them to fight—and what motivated them and their families to undertake a flurry of monument-building decades later as the surviving veterans began to die off.…A more mature society would recognize that the past is always with you and must always be kept in mind. There’s a reason Christians in Rome didn’t topple all the pagan statues and buildings in the city, or raze the Colosseum.” [36]
Each Confederate monument is a reminder not only of the Civil War and the end of slavery but also the assertion of the federal government’s dominance over states’ rights; to some, each statue is healthy reminder of systemic racism. [37]
Lawrence A. Kuznar, professor of anthropology at Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne, states, “Removing Confederate statues amounts to whitewashing our history, turning our heads away from the inconvenient truths of our past. We should let them stand and use them to remind ourselves of what we are and are not, the cost our forebears paid for our freedom and to educate our children.” [38]
Con 2: These statues do not cause racism but can be used to fight it if put into historical context.
Author Sophia A. Nelson, who notes she is the granddaughter of an enslaved person, states that she does not “fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men.” Nelson argues that her classmates at Washington & Lee University “didn’t hate [Black students] because there were statues of Robert E. Lee or George Washington (our nation’s first President and a slave owner) on campus. They didn’t like having black classmates because they had racist hearts. They honored racial prejudice. They harbored cultural bias. That, my friends, is what we must work toward eradicating.” [50]
Ellis Cose, senior fellow at the ACLU, states that the statues should remain with “plaques and other material in place that point out that these men were traitors, not American heroes, and that their ugly legacy haunts us still. In illuminating how vulnerable Americans have long been to ugly racial appeals, and how willfully blind we have been to racial injustice, those statues could remind us of the catastrophic consequences of not putting bigotry aside.” [51]
Some jurisdictions have chosen to put explanatory plaques beside Confederate monuments to teach a more complete history. The plaques can not only detail the history of slavery and the Civil War but also the white segregationist history that promoted the building of such statues to promote the revisionist Lost Cause history. [52]
Next to the Peace Monument in Atlanta, a plaque reads, “This monument should no longer stand as a memorial to white brotherhood; rather, it should be seen as an artifact representing a shared history in which millions of Americans were denied civil and human rights.” [24]
Sheffield Hale, president and chief executive of the Atlanta History Center, stated of the plaque, “I do think it gives [people] a starting point, which is sorely needed right now, in our society, as a way to deal with contentious issues. Let’s argue about the facts, let’s put them down on paper—or on a marker—and have a conversation about them.” [24]
Scientist and human rights activist Sir Geoff Palmer, the first ever Black professor in Scotland, disagreed with removing statues, warning against being distracted by the simple act of taking down a physical thing: “We don’t want to leave this so that people looking back in 50 years will say: you know, they took the statues down, why didn’t they do something about racism?” [53]
Con 3: Statue removal is a slippery slope that can endanger monuments to worthy heroes, no matter how imperfect these heroes or their times may have been.
During the protests following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, many Confederate statues were damaged or toppled, as were statues of presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant.[10][11][12]
Washington, Jefferson, and Grant had undeniable ties to slavery. Washington owned over 300, Jefferson over 600, and Grant worked on his wife’s family plantation and inherited one enslaved person upon his father-in-law’s death. [39][40][41]
However, Washington led the Continental Army to victory over the British, held together the country as the first president over two terms, resisted calls to become king of the country, and, in his will, freed his enslaved people upon his wife’s death. [42]
Jefferson is the author of two of our most dear principles as a country: equality and religious freedom. He was also an abolitionist, though a hypocritical and pragmatic one who understood the country would not give up slavery so easily. While he hoped the next generation would abolish slavery, he wrote in 1820 that maintaining the institution of slavery was like holding “a wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” [40]
Grant came from an abolitionist family, freed the one enslaved person he owned in 1859, supported Black enlisted Army men, led the Union Army in the Civil War to abolish slavery, and was endorsed by Frederick Douglass for president. [41]
Should we not honor the contributions of Washington, Jefferson, and Grant to the United States because they owned enslaved people, as did many men of their standing at the time, even though they struggled with the institution? Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of American legal history at Harvard University, explains, “There is an important difference between helping to create the United States and trying to destroy it. Both Washington and Jefferson were critical to the formation of the country and to the shaping of it in its early years.…No one puts a monument up to Washington or Jefferson to promote slavery.…I think on these two, Washington and Jefferson, in particular, you take the bitter with [the] sweet. The main duty is not to hide the bitter parts.”[43]
Eight U.S. presidents owned enslaved people while in office, with an additional four owning enslaved people while not in office. Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the white suffragists purposefully excluded Black women. Martin Luther King, Jr., regularly cheated on his wife.[44][45][46][47]
Do we exclude the achievements of these figures from public display because they displayed controversial and offensive behavior? Where do we draw a line? [48]
Or should those also be destroyed? The line is subjective, difficult to draw, and easy to reinterpret, leaving no memorial protected. The slippery slope goes further, allowing anyone to destroy any statue they disagree with. For example, a statue of Black abolitionist and former enslaved person Frederick Douglass was damaged over the July 4, 2020, weekend in Rochester, New York. And a statue of Black tennis star and civil rights activist Arthur Ashe was tagged with “white lives matter” graffiti in Richmond, Virginia.[9][49]
Assessment Quiz
After reading the above debate, take our assessment quiz to test your knowledge of this issue. Good luck!
1-minute Survey
After reading this debate, take our quick survey to see how this information affected your opinion of this topic. We appreciate your feedback.
Discussion Questions
- Should historic statues be taken down? Explain your answer with examples and reasoning.
- Do the statues represent or misrepresent the country’s history? How?
- Regardless of whether historic statues are removed or remain, what sort of statues, memorials, or other art would you like to see in public spaces? Explain your answers.
Take Action
- Explore the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Whose Heritage: Public Symbols of the Confederacy” resource, which promotes the removal of Confederate statues.
- Consider the idea of placing the removed statues in museums with the American Alliance of Museums.
- Consider the existence of Confederate statues as ways of honoring the past with the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization devoted to the memory of Confederate soldiers.
- Consider Henry Louis Gate, Jr.’s argument for the erection of new monuments in his special Britannica essay, “Monuments of Hope, Memorials to a Poisoned Past.”
- Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the “other side of the issue” now helps you better argue your position.
- Push for the position and policies you support by writing U.S. senators and representatives.
Sources
- Jasmine Aguilera, “Confederate Statues Are Being Removed amid Protests over George Floyd’s Death. Here’s What to Know” (June 24, 2020), time.com
- Jack Jenkins, “How the Charleston Shooting Is Linked to the Confederate Flag, According to a South Carolinian” (June 19, 2015), thinkprogress.org
- Amanda Holpuch, Ed Pilkington, and Oliver Laughland, “Charleston Shooting: Confederate Flag at Heart of Growing Political Storm” (June 20, 2015), theguardian.com
- Brian Palmer and Seth Freed Wessler, “The Costs of the Confederacy” (December 2018), smithsonianmag.com
- New York Times, “From 2017: Confederate Monuments Are Coming down across the United States. Here’s a List.” (August 28, 2017), nytimes.com
- Richard Allen Greene, “King Leopold II Statues Are Being Removed in Belgium. Who Was He?” (June 11, 2020), cnn.com
- CBS News, “Protesters in England Topple Statue of Slave Trader Edward Colston into Harbor” (June 7, 2020), cbsnews.com
- Gino Spocchia, “Christopher Columbus Statue Torn Down, Set on Fire and Tossed in Lake by Anti-Racism Protesters in Virginia” (June 10, 2020), independent.co.uk
- Scottie Andrew and Anna Sturla, “A Statue of Frederick Douglass Was Toppled over the Fourth of July Weekend, the Anniversary of His Famous Speech” (July 6, 2020), cnn.com
- Phil Davis, “George Washington Monument in Druid Hill Park Spray-Painted with ‘Destroy Racists,’ Anti-Police Sentiment” (June 21, 2020), baltimoresun.com
- Latisha Jensen, “Portland Man Describes Tearing Down Thomas Jefferson Statue: ‘It’s Not Vandalism’” (June 20, 2020), wweek.com
- Caleb Parke, “From George Washington to Ulysses S. Grant: Statues, Monuments Vandalized Extend beyond Confederates amid Black Lives Matter Protests” (June 22, 2020), foxnews.com
- Ted Mann, “Lincoln Statue with Kneeling Black Man Becomes Target of Protests” (June 25, 2020), wsj.com
- Southern Poverty Law Center, “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy” (February 1, 2019), splcenter.org
- The Avalon Project, “Confederate States of America - A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union” (accessed July 8, 2020), avalon.law.yale.edu
- The Avalon Project, “A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.” (accessed July 8, 2020), avalon.law.yale.edu
- Becky Little, “How the Cult of Robert E. Lee Was Born” (August 14, 2017), history.com
- Adam Serwer, “The Myth of the Kindly General Lee” (June 4, 2017), theatlantic.com
- Aishvarya Kavi, “Activists Push for Removal of Statue of Freed Slave Kneeling Before Lincoln” (June 27, 2020), nytimes.com
- BBC, “Confederate and Columbus Statues Toppled by US Protesters” (June 11, 2020), bbc.com
- Valerie Strauss, “Christopher Columbus: 3 Things You Think He Did That He Didn’t” (October 14, 2013), washingtonpost.com
- Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “Monuments of Hope, Memorials to a Poisoned Past” (May 25, 2018), britannica.com
- Robert Draper, “Toppling Statues Is a First Step toward Ending Confederate Myths” (July 2, 2020), nationalgeographic.com
- Khushbu Shah, “Atlanta’s Confederate Monuments: How Do ‘Context Markers’ Help Explain Racism?” (August 3, 2019), theguardian.com
- Kelly Grovier, “Black Lives Matter Protests: Why Are Statues So Powerful?” (June 12, 2020), bbc.com
- Ashlie D. Stevens, “As Confederate Monuments Come down, What Should Replace Them?” (June 17, 2020), salon.com
- Juan De Anda, “Why Representation Matters Now” (April 21, 2020), mediapost.com,
- Charisse L’Pree, “Racial and Gender Exclusion from Media Affects Novel Group Identity; An Experimental Investigation of Symbolic Annihilation” (accessed July 8, 2020), sites.google.com/site/charisselpree2
- Dessi Gomez, “Hello, Dolly? Petition Pushes for Parton Statues” (June 23, 2020), arkansasonline.com
- Alex Parsons, “Replace All Confederate Statues in Tennessee with Dolly Parton” (accessed July 8, 2020), change.org
- Catherine Thorbecke, “Walmart Donates $100K to Replace Arkansas’ Confederate-linked Statues at the U.S. Capitol” (July 7, 2020), abcnew.go.com
- Nellie Peyton, “As the Men of Stone Fall, Who Should Rise up and Take Their Place?” (July 2, 2020), news.trust.org
- Kehinde Wiley, (June 4, 2020), instagram.com
- Donald Trump, (June 30, 2020), twitter.com
- Greta Anderson, “When Free Speech and Racist Speech Collide” (June 23, 2020), insidehighered.com
- John Daniel Davidson, “Why We Should Keep the Confederate Monuments Right Where They Are” (August 18, 2017), thefederalist.com
- George Martin, “Why Confederate Monuments Should Be Preserved and Honored” (July 6, 2017), charlotteobserver.com
- Lawrence A. Kuznar, “I Detest Our Confederate Monuments. But They Should Remain.” (August 18, 2017), washingtonpost.com
- Mount Vernon, “Slavery” (accessed July 7, 2020), mountvernon.org
- Monticello, “Jefferson’s Attitudes toward Slavery” (accessed July 7, 2020), monticello.org
- Sarah Fling, “The Formerly Enslaved Household of the Grant Family” (April 17, 2020), whitehousehistory.org
- Stephen E. Ambrose, “Founding Fathers and Slaveholders” (November 2002), smithsonianmag.com
- Colleen Walsh, “Must We Allow Symbols of Racism on Public Land?” (June 19, 2020), harvard.edu
- Evan Andrews, “How Many U.S. Presidents Owned Enslaved People?” (September 3, 2019), history.com
- NPR Morning Edition, “For Stanton, All Women Were Not Created Equal” (July 13, 2011), npr.org
- Linda Lopata, “If Susan B. Anthony Was Racist” (accessed July 7, 2020), susanb.org
- Jeff Kelly Lowenstein, “Martin Luther King Jr., Women, and the Possibility of Growth” (January 18, 2019), chicagoreporter.com
- Elliot Ackerman, “The Confederate Monuments We Shouldn’t Tear Down” (July 7, 2020), nytimes.com
- Rebecca Klar, “Arthur Ashe Statue on Richmond’s Monument Avenue Tagged with White Lives Matter Graffiti” (June 17, 2020), thehill.com
- Sophia A. Nelson, “Opinion: Don’t Take Down Confederate Monuments. Here’s Why.” (June 1, 2017), nbcnews.com
- Ellis Cose, “Keep Confederate Monuments, but Put Their Horrific History on Center Stage” (August 21, 2017), usatoday
- Hannah Natanson, “There’s a New Way to Deal with Confederate Monuments: Signs that Explain Their Racist History” (September 22, 2019), washingtonpost.com
- Natalie Huet, “Sir Geoff Palmer, ‘Don’t Take down Statues - Take down Racism,’” (June 11, 2020), euronews.com
- Jason Hanna and Ralph Ellis, “Charlottesville Removes Two Confederate Statues as Onlookers Cheer” (July 10, 2021), cnn.com
- Neil Vigdor and Daniel Victor, “Over 160 Confederate Symbols Were Removed in 2020, Group Says” (February 23, 2021), nytimes.com
- Annie Grayer and Clare Foran, “Statue Honoring Mary McLeod Bethune Unveiled in Statuary Hall in US Capitol” (July 13, 2022), cnn.com
- SLPC, “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy (Third Edition)” (February 1, 2022), slpc.org
- Monument Lab, “National Monument Audit” (accessed July 6, 2023), monumentlab.com/audit
- “Swords Into Plowshares” (accessed January 29, 2025), sipcville.com
- Amanda Holpuch, “Statue of John Lewis Replaces a Confederate Memorial in Georgia” (August 18, 2024), nytimes.com
- White House, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” (March 27, 2025), whitehouse.gov
- Isabella Gomez Sarmiento, “Trump Wants to Restore Statues and Monuments. Will That Happen?” (March 28, 2025), npr.org
- Chris Cameron, “Trump Says Army Bases Will Revert to Confederate Names” (June 10, 2025), nytimes.com
- National Park Service, “National Park Service to Restore and Reinstall Albert Pike Statue” (August 4, 2025), nps.gov
- The New York Times, “How Statues Are Falling Around the World” (June 24, 2020), nytimes.com
- Juliet Jacques, “Post-Soviet Countries Don’t Know What to Do With Their Monuments” (March 27, 2024), novarmedia.com
- James Wagner, “Removal of Castro and Guevara Statues Ignites Outcry in Mexico” (July 26, 2025), nytimes.com
- SLPC, “Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy (Fourth Edition)” (April 24, 2025), slpc.org