# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Fight to remove Confederate statues in the South face legal hurdles

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Should Confederate monuments be taken down?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A multi-ethnic democracy requires grappling honestly with the past-and recognizing the symbols of the Confederacy for what they are.

Joshua Roberts / Reuters

On Saturday in Charlottesville, a rally in defense of a statue of Robert E. Lee turned into a reenactment of the cause he led-white supremacists marching behind the Confederate battle flag, their opponents left injured or dead on the ground.

But like Lee's soldiers, today's defenders of white supremacy are fighting for a losing cause, a defeat that their violence will only serve to make deeper and more lasting than it otherwise would have been. Across the United States, the statues are starting to topple, the streets renamed, the memorials removed. These visible inscriptions of white supremacy into the American landscape are being erased.

In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu recently hauled down three public monuments to the Confederacy and to white supremacy. "These statues were a part of ... terrorism as much as a burning cross on someone's lawn; they were erected purposefully to send a strong message to all who walked in their shadows about who was still in charge in this city," he explained. In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington responded to Charlottesville by accelerating his efforts to move statues of two Confederate leaders from the courthouse lawn to a public park. This was the rising tide of change that the Charlottesville rally hoped to stem.

As of August 2016, there were still more than 1,500 public commemorations of the Confederacy, even excluding the battlefields and cemeteries: 718 monuments and statutes still stood, and 109 public schools, 80 counties and cities, and 10 U.S. military bases bore the names of Lee, Jefferson Davis, and other Confederate icons, according to a tally by the Southern Poverty Law Center. More than 200 of these were in Virginia alone.

And one sits in the center of Charlottesville. It was commissioned exactly 100 years ago, a gift to the city from a local philanthropist, to honor his parents with a physical incarnation of Southern ideals. But the statue was hardly the only contemporary effort to enshrine and defend these ideals. As it was being commissioned, sculpted, and erected, the second Ku Klux Klan was surging through the country. In Charlottesville, the local Klan gave $1,000 to the University of Virginia's Centennial Endowment Fund in 1921, funds it gratefully received; there was a second Klan chapter for the students on campus.

The statue stands 26-feet tall, despite its oddly small pedestal. "Let it stay that way," urged a speaker at its dedication. "The planet as a pedestal would be too small for Robert Edward Lee." It was unveiled in 1924, as the conventions of the Confederate Veterans and Sons of Confederate Veterans met, with "the greatest procession that ever threaded its way through the streets of Charlottesville." The Boy Scouts policed the route; the National Guard and governor marched; the president, board, faculty, and students of the university joined in. The man who introduced the ceremonies praised the "deathless devotion" of the veterans, who had fought "at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg," and now worked "to keep the record of Confederate heroism free from the stain of calumny!"

It was less a dedication than a canonization. The master of ceremonies called Lee "the greatest man who ever lived." The president of Washington and Lee proclaimed him "a Christian saint." Lee, he explained, embodied "the moral greatness of the Old South," with its "unusual combination of manly courage and womanly tenderness, its habitual tenderness toward the weak and helpless." (When three slaves escaped, Lee had them tied to posts and whipped -50 lashes for the men, 20 for the woman-and then had their backs washed with stinging brine.)

His defenders today insist that Lee's heroism lay not least in his laying down his sword when the war was done, deciding to "promote harmony once he recognized defeat." The speakers at the dedication likewise stressed Lee's role as a peacemaker; one went so far as to imagine the statute depicted "not the lurid splendor of the battlefield," but instead, Lee riding to Lexington to begin his tenure as a university president.

Yet this is not what the statue depicts. Not this one, nor the others. Where are the statues of Lee seated at Appomattox, signing the terms of that surrender? Where are the marbles and bronzes of Lee the college president, wearing civilian clothes, ensconced behind a desk piled high with paperwork? Why is this peacemaker always immortalized girded for war?

Perhaps it's because this, too, is largely myth, as my colleague Adam Serwer has so ably documented. Grant excoriated Lee for "setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized." And the reconciliation he offered was between whites-it pointedly excluded those he had held as property, whose freedom the war secured, but whose equality he bitterly contested.

Lee himself, after the war, encouraged a friend to banish the 90 newly freed women, children, and old men working on his plantation. The government could pay for their care, Lee advised; better to replace them with white labor. "I have always observed that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving." That is the harmony Lee promoted.

But the Lee memorialized in Charlottesville isn't even the conciliator of myth. He's attired in uniform, riding his horse. He's the general who took an invading army north into Pennsylvania in 1863, in defense of a slave society. And not merely in the abstract. Lee's army was ordered to respect white property, but chose to regard the blacks it encountered as contraband-to be seized and returned to the South, whether born free, manumitted, or escaped. The army seized scores of their fellow Americans as slaves, actions sanctioned at the highest level of command; it took as many as a thousand back to Virginia. Those actions are among the "calumnies" that speakers at the statue's dedication praised the veterans of Gettysburg for contesting.

"Some of the colored people who were raised here were taken along," wrote Rachel Cormany in Chambersburg. "I sat on the front step as they were driven by just as we would drive cattle." Women, children, and infants alike were marched off to slavery. Philip Schaff, a prominent theologian, watched as Lee's army seized neighbors born and raised in the town. "One, Sam Brooks, split many a cord of wood for me." He appealed to the conscience of one of their captors; he insisted he felt "comfortable," because they were merely reclaiming stolen property.

Lee's army, retreating in defeat, released some, but most were hauled South to the auction block. For the crime of refusing to cross back to Virginia, one boy was horribly mutilated, doused in turpentine, his genitals sliced off, and left to die in a barn by his Confederate captors. If there is no evidence that Lee, the living embodiment of womanly tenderness, sanctioned such crimes, neither is there evidence he acted to stop them. Nor was the Gettysburg campaign an anomaly; slave raids were a persistent feature of Confederate campaigns out of Virginia. At the Battle of the Crater, Lee's army slaughtered black prisoners; one soldier lamented that some survived because "we could not kill them as fast as they [passed] us." This is what the uniform Lee wore represented; this is what the army he commanded did; this is the pose in which he is immortalized in the center of Charlottesville.

There is a reason why statues of Confederate generals are still powerful political symbols; a reason why a candidate came a hair's breadth from securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Virginia by campaigning to preserve them. The statues in public squares, the names on street signs, the generals honored with military bases-these are the ways in which we, as a society, tell each other what we value, and build the common heritage around which we construct a nation.

The white nationalists who gathered in Charlottesville saw this perhaps more clearly than the rest of us. They understood the stakes of what they were defending. They knew that Lee was honored not for making peace per se, but for defending a society built upon white supremacy-first by taking up arms, and then when the war was lost, by laying them down in such a way as to preserve what he could.

On Saturday, President Trump told Americans they "must be united" and "condemn all that hate stands for." He deplored the "violence on many sides." A century before, such remarks would have been heartily applauded in Charlottesville. At the statue's dedication, the keynote speaker deplored the violence of the Civil War, and praised Lee for his efforts at "reunion and reconciliation," and for forging a nation with "hearts unspoiled by hate."

The myth of reunion was built around this understanding, that the nation should treat both sides in a war that killed three-quarters of a million Americans as equal, or at least not inquire too closely into the merits of each cause. And that unity would come not from honestly grappling with events, but from studiously ignoring injustice, and condemning those who oppose it as hateful.

But the swift backlash against the president's remarks by leaders of his own party and leading figures of his own administration signaled that the United States of 2017 is not the same nation it was in 1924. Republicans and Democrats alike saw the white nationalists in the streets of Charlottesville for what they were, and rejected their vision of a nation built on white supremacism.

This is why the city council of Charlottesville voted, a century after it was commissioned, to remove the statue of Robert Edward Lee.

And ultimately, it is why the others will come down, too. The statues will be moved, the streets renamed, and the military bases will honor patriots who fought for their country and not against it. Because a century and a half after Reconstruction began, America is still working on the project of constructing a more equal society, and reinvesting in the experiment of a multi-ethnic democracy.

The white nationalists in Charlottesville hoped to halt this project. Instead, they have simply given it fiercer, redoubled urgency.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

Yoni Appelbaum is a senior editor at The Atlantic, where he oversees the Ideas section.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A multi-ethnic democracy requires grappling honestly with the past-and recognizing the symbols of the Confederacy for what they are. On Saturday in Charlottesville, a rally in defense of a statue of Robert E. Lee turned into a reenactment of the cause he led-white supremacists marching behind the Confederate battle flag, their opponents left injured or dead on the ground.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"A great nation does not hide its history, it faces its flaws and corrects them."-President George W. Bush, Opening of the NMAAHC, September 24, 2016

A great Nation does not hide its history. Let that sink in for a moment.

Truer words were never spoken than those offered at the grand opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture last September, by the man who signed the legislation authorizing the Museum, George W. Bush.

Remembering is powerful. Remembering, forces us to become wiser.

We think of the words Never Forget and we instantly remember 9-11 or the Holocaust. We connect because we remember. We look. We learn. We discover. And hopefully, with a little faith, self-discovery and humility we grow into better, more loving human beings.

We do not learn when we run from our wrongs. We learn when we face them.

This is why I, as a black woman, who is a direct lineal descendant of African slaves in my maternal family tree (my grandmother "Viney" was brought to America in the hull of a slave ship in the early 1800s, around 1803 we believe from Africa and was sold to the Henry plantation in Georgia), am opposed to the removal of Confederate statues in the south whether it be here in Richmond, Virginia or deeper south in Alabama.

Although I agree with the powerful words and sentiments expressed by Mayor Landrieu of New Orleans last week about why he thinks Confederate statutes and symbols should come down, I do not think it reflects the great first amendment freedoms America was founded upon.

Let me be clear: I felt very differently about the Confederate flag because it was a waving symbol of hate, rebellion and division flying over modern day state capitols throughout the south. However, I am not opposed to people wearing the confederate flag on their hats or flying it in their yards. That's called "free expression" and in America it is sacrosanct.

Just as we cannot tell people not to buy Nazi paraphernalia or collect it in their homes (no matter how abhorrent we may find it), we likewise cannot tell people they are not allowed to honor family members who fought for the confederacy or that their forbears could not raise monuments to southern heroes like Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson-both of whom were decorated and beloved West Point graduates and union officers before the south seceded from the union in rebellion.

In July 2015 when former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, now UN Ambassador Haley, ordered confederate flags down after the horrific shootings of nine black church members in the historic AME church in downtown Charleston, she was 100% correct.

The symbol was used by Dylan Roof to stoke his murderous rage one night after a Bible study where he killed nine God-fearing black church members. After that incident, the public sentiment shifted and the flag had to come down. More powerfully, South Carolinians taught us all a profound lesson of love, compassion and reconciliation as tens of thousands of them marched together on the famed Arthur J. Ravenel Bridge.
Related: Opinion: Racial Hate Is Infecting College Kids in America
But here is my point: In America, we pride ourselves on free thought. Free expression. Freedom to worship as we believe. Freedom to speak our minds without terrorizing or harassing others (hate speech is not free speech as defined by the US Supreme Court). Freedom to associate with groups and have ideas that may differ from each other, even if they are the "wrong" ideas.

At the end of the day, I don't want statutes of Robert E. Lee to come down.

I attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington Virginia as a first-year law student. It was an experience I will never forget. We had racial threats made against us as the largest black class of law students in the schools storied history, (which I wrote about in a 1998 Washington Post article entitled, "A Black Law Students First Trials"). But our white classmates were as outraged as us, and the Dean reacted swiftly and firmly to handle the perpetrators. We endured.

I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we see in real time in 2017 on social media and in our political rhetoric.

The people who hated having black classmates at their school didn't hate us because there were statues of Robert E. Lee or George Washington (our nation's first President and a slave owner) on campus. It wasn't because of a Gen. Stonewall Jackson monument VMI or downtown.

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.

And we won't do it by hiding from our racist, slave owning, segregated past. If we start taking statues down, well, we better go for old Thomas Jefferson (master of a slave who was his mistress and mother of at least four of his children). And let's not forget President Trump's favorite president, Old Hickory-Andrew Jackson. Another slave-holding Indian-killing president of our nation. Get my point?

We do not learn when we run from our wrongs. We learn when we face them.

Keep the statues where they are so that people can explain history to their kids. Keep them so that we can have a constructive dialogue at places like Montpelier (the home of President James Madison, who is considered the father of the Constitution).

Montpelier has a series called The Mere Distinction of Colour, a provocative new exhibition examining the institution of slavery and its legacy. Mount Vernon has done something similar with its new slave exhibit as of last year. Monticello announced earlier this year a new wing about Sally Hemings and of course, the new National Museum of African American History and Culture (which was the victim of yet another hateful racial act yesterday) is the place that every American family should go and take their kids, and their grandkids. And teach them, so that they do not repeat our mistakes.
Related: Is Removing Confederate Monuments Like Erasing History?
America is different because we value freedom. Freedom of thought. Of Speech. Of Heritage. Of celebration.

I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we are seeing in real time in 2017 on social media, on our college campuses, in our workplaces and in our political rhetoric (i.e.: Kathy Griffin).

America is advanced citizenship. You have to want it, work at it, and trust that it ultimately works for us all.
Sophia A. Nelson is an NBCBLK Contributor and author of the new book, "E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders Vision for a United America." Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion: Confederate monuments should stay and here's why

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I don't fear 150-year-old statues of old dead white men. What I fear is the hatred we see in real time in 2017 on social media and in our political rhetoric.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee sits at the center of the park formerly dedicated to him, the site of recent violent demonstrations, in Charlottesville. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Comment Gift Article
As an anthropologist who has studied the meaning of monuments and sacred spaces in other cultures, the recent controversy and violence surrounding Confederate monuments has been ethically challenging. I love my country, and part of my professional responsibility is to foster tolerance. I have also worked with our military to help thwart the Islamic State, an organization that instituted slavery in our time. As such, I detest the legacy of division, bigotry and slavery these monuments represent. But I think they should remain.

In the 1980s, I worked as an archaeologist at ancient Mayan ruins in Central America and saw how monuments to their rulers were defaced during the tumultuous fall of their civilization. The Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten similarly defaced and destroyed statues of earlier Egyptian gods in his religious reform 3,300 years ago, and Spanish conquistadors destroyed Aztec and Inca monuments and statuary in their war on idolatry in the New World.

And there are plenty of examples of the desecration of monuments in the 21st century. The Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001; we aided Iraqis in toppling the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in 2003; and nothing can compare to the scale of destruction of monuments at the hands of the Islamic State.

Simply removing monuments and moving them so they are out of sight is likewise not new, either. The Inca Empire of South America removed icons of conquered peoples' gods and effectively held them hostage in a temple in the Incan capital of Cuzco. In our time, the post-Soviet Russian government removed many statues of Lenin and others, which now reside in Muzeon Arts Park in Moscow.

People effectively act as though destruction of a monument exorcises its power and removal banishes the power from their midst. But these pieces of metal and stone only have the meaning we assign to them, and that meaning can take any form we like. They can be revered or reviled; honored or ridiculed; or co-opted for a new purpose.

I understand the affront that Confederate monuments are to those whose ancestors were held as slaves or died preserving our country, and to those who suffer and oppose racism today. However, destroying monuments takes a page out of the playbook of mobs across the centuries, lowering one's self to that moral plane.

Further, 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.

And the facts are plain: The South seceded from the United States over the issue of slavery. Many Americans believed in the superiority of Europeans over Africans at that time. Slave owners used that belief to justify the owning and abuse of millions of human beings. In the late 1800s, the era of Jim Crow disenfranchisement of blacks was ushered in and continued until the 1950s. This period witnessed the greatest spike (especially from 1900 to 1930) in monument building honoring the Confederacy. A smaller spike occurred from 1954 to 1968, in reaction to the civil rights movement.

The Civil War was the single most devastating war our nation ever fought. Nearly as many Americans died in that war than all of our other wars combined. Americans never paid so dearly for their country and what it was to be. With regard to fighting against racist ideology, World War II claimed 400,000 American lives. These two wars may account for 80 percent of the blood spilled for our country.

Civil War monuments bear a constant testimony to all of this history, none of which should be forgotten. The monuments should remain, and we should constantly remind ourselves of what they represent.

When racists revere these monuments, those of us who oppose racism should double our efforts to use these monuments as tools for education. Auschwitz and Dachau stand as mute testimonials to a past that Europeans would never want to forget or repeat. Why not our Confederate monuments?

Destroying or removing monuments is the easy way out of our obligation to understand our past and improve our future. Monuments to our nation's racism can be as much a tool to counter it as they can be a tool to foment it. The choice and obligation is ours.

The Post's View: It's time for a full and fair reckoning with Confederate statues
Read more on this topic:
Tony Horwitz: Is the Confederacy finally about to die for good?

Bree Newsome: Go ahead, topple the monuments to the Confederacy. All of them.

E.J. Dionne Jr.: There's a right way to judge America's past
Dana Milbank: Obama offers the perfect response to the Confederate flag wavers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Opinion | I detest our Confederate monuments. But they should remain.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Comment Gift Article As an anthropologist who has studied the meaning of monuments and sacred spaces in other cultures, the recent controversy and violence surrounding Confederate monuments has been ethically challenging. I love my country, and part of my professional responsibility is to foster tolerance.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
More than 30 cities across the United States have removed or relocated Confederate statues and monuments amid an intense nationwide debate about race and history.

After a "Unite the Right" rally in Virginia in August to protest against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee resulted in the death of a woman who was demonstrating against white supremacy, other cities have decided to remove Confederate statues.

Many of the controversial monuments were dedicated in the early twentieth century or during the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Discussions are under way about the removal of monuments in Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, Pensacola, Florida, Jacksonville, Florida, Richmond, Virginia, Birmingham, Alabama, and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Here is a running list of all the monuments and statues that have been removed and the cities that have taken them down:
Annapolis, Md.
Under cover of darkness, city workers removed a statue in August 2017 of former Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney that had been on the State House's front lawn for 145 years. Taney authored the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott decision, which held that African-Americans could not be U.S. citizens. The city's Republican mayor said through a spokesman that it was removed "as a matter of public safety."
Austin, Texas
The statues of four people with ties to the Confederacy - Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnson, John H. Reagan and former Texas Gov. James Stephen Hogg - were removed from pedestals on the University of Texas campus on Aug. 17, 2017. UT's president said in a written statement the deadly clashes in Charlottesville made it clear "Confederate monuments have become symbols of modern white supremacy and neo-Nazism." Separately, a 1,200-pound bronze statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis that was removed from UT's campus in 2015 has now returned to the campus, at the Briscoe Center for American History.

The Austin school board voted to strip Confederate names from five district schools, though they haven't been renamed yet. The board had previously renamed Robert E. Lee Elementary School in 2016.

The Austin City Council approved renaming Robert E. Lee Road and Jeff Davis Avenue.
Baltimore, Md.
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh told reporters she wanted to move "quickly and quietly" to take down four Confederate statues or monuments - statues of Lee and Thomas, J. "Stonewall" Jackson and monuments for Confederate Soldiers and Sailors and Confederate Women - from the city's public spaces. Although the plan had been in the works since June 2017, the Baltimore City Council approved it only two days after the deadly events in Charlottesville. On March 10, 2018, the space where the Confederate statues had stood was rededicated to abolitionist and civil rights pioneer Harriet Tubman.
Bradenton, Fla.
Mantee County removed a Confederate soldiers memorial obelisk on Aug. 24 after the city commission voted 4-3 to take it down and place it in storage. The monument, which had stood there for more than 90 years, was accidentally broken into two pieces when city workers removed it. The removal came after days of protests from residents and activists, most of whom were in favor of taking it down, and it cost $12,700 to remove.
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Plaques honoring Lee were removed from an episcopal church's property on Aug. 16, 2017 and the governor called on the Army to remove the names of Lee and another Confederate general from the streets around a nearby fort. "It was very easy for us to say, 'OK, we'll take the plaques down,'" said Bishop Lawrence Provenzano, of the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, who called them "offensive to the community." New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has called for a review of all the city's public art to identify "symbols of hate" for possible removal.
Dallas, Texas
A bronze statue of Robert E. Lee, formally called the Robert Edward Lee Sculpture, was removed in mid-September 2017 from Robert E. Lee Park, which was also named in honor of the Confederate general. The Dallas City Council voted 13-1 to remove the statue, which has stood in Lee Park for 81 years.

The park was dedicated to Lee by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936 during a renaming ceremony of the park.
Daytona Beach, Fla.
Three Confederate monuments were removed from a city park Friday morning. A city spokesperson said the plaques were going to be cleaned up and taken to a nearby museum. The decision to remove them did not require public input, the spokes-person told FOX35, because they were donated and not purchased with taxpayer funds.
Chapel Hill, N.C.
Protesters toppled the "Silent Sam" statue that has stood on the University of North Carolina's Chapel Hill campus since 1913 on Aug. 20. More than 200 people had gathered and were chanting "hey, hey, ho, ho, this racist statue has got to go." In a statement, UNC Chancellor Carol Folt called the act "unlawful and dangerous," adding that law enforcement were investigating the incident. The statue had been a source of controversy, with school officials claiming that state law prevented them from removing it.

Durham, N.C.
A nearly-century old statue of a Confederate soldier was toppled not long after Charlottesville by protesters associated with the Workers World party. North Carolina Central University student Takiyah Thompson, along with three others, were arrested and charged with felonies in the days following. As the bronze statue lay crumpled on the ground, protesters could be seen kicking it on social media. A Worthington assistant city manager said the community seeks to be one that "promotes tolerance, respect and inclusion."

A statute of Lee was removed from the entrance to Duke University Chapel on Aug. 19, 2017 and is set to be preserved in some way to study the university's "complex past."

"I took this course of action to protect Duke Chapel, to ensure the vital safety of students and community members who worship there, and above all to express the deep and abiding values of our university," university President Vincent Price wrote in statement to the school.
Franklin, Ohio
A monument to Lee was removed in August 2017 by Franklin workers.
Gainesville, Fla.
A chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy paid for the removal of a monument to Confederate soldiers known locally as "Old Joe" that stood in front a building in downtown Gainesville for 113 years. It was moved to a private cemetery outside the city in August 2017.
Helena, Mont.
The state's capital city on Aug. 18, 2017 removed a memorial to Confederate soldiers that had been in a public park since 1916. the granite fountain, which was dismantled, had been donated by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. City Parks and Recreation Director Amy Teegarden told the Spokesman-Review that the fountain initially will be stored in a city warehouse -- but it could be reassembled at a future date.
Kansas City, Mo.
A Confederate monument was boxed up in summer 2017 and is slated to be removed. The Missouri division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy had asked Kansas City Parks and Recreation to find a new home for it.
Lexington, Ky.
Two 130-year-old Confederate statues were removed from downtown Lexington on October 18 after the state's attorney general issued an opinion giving the city permission to take them down and move them to a private cemetery. Lexington used private funds to take the statues, of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and John Breckinridge, a former U.S. Vice President and the last Confederate Secretary of War. Private funds will cover the cost of their upkeep in the cemetery.
Los Angeles, Calif.
A large stone monument commemorating Confederate veterans was taken down Aug. 16 from the Hollywood Forever Cemetery after hundreds of people demanded its removal. The 6-foot granite marker was loaded into a pickup truck and taken to a storage facility. A petition calling for it to be taken down had garnered 1,300 signatures.
Louisville, Ky.
A statue of a Confederate soldier was removed from the University of Louisville campus after a legal battle between the city residents, the mayor and the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It was relocated to Brandenburg, Kentucky, which hosts Civil War reenactments.
Madison, Wis.
A plaque honoring Confederate soldiers was removed Aug. 17 from a cemetery not long after residents and city leaders began calling for it to be taken down. "The Civil War was an act of insurrection and treason and a defense of the deplorable practice of slavery," said Mayor Paul Soglin in a statement. "The monuments in question were connected to that action and we do not need them on city property."
Memphis, Tenn.
Crews removed two Confederate statues from Memphis parks on Dec. 20 after the city sold them to a private entity. The City Council voted unanimously earlier in the day to sell both Health Sciences and Fourth Bluff Parks where the Confederate statues, of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were located.
Nashville, Tenn.
The legendary Ryman Auditorium, where stars like Dolly Parton, Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn made their Grand Ole Opry debuts, quietly moved a sign on Sept. 21 hanging from the venue's upper level that read "1897 Confederate Gallery." Honoring an 1897 reunion of Confederate veterans at the Ryman, the sign had been shrouded over the years but has now been permanently removed from the main auditorium and added to a museum exhibit that explains the history of the 125-year-old music hall.
New Orleans, La.
New Orleans city workers removed four monuments in April dedicated to the Confederacy and opponents of Reconstruction. The city council had declared the monuments a public nuisance. The monuments removed were of Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard, Davis and Lee. Also removed was the Liberty Place Monument, which commemorated a Reconstruction Era white supremacist attack on the city's integrated police force. The mayor plans to replace them with new fountains and an American flag.
New York, N.Y.
Busts of Lee and Jackson were removed overnight on Aug. 17 from the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College. Prior to its removal, Bronx Borough president Ruben Diaz Jr. had said "there is nothing great about two men who committed treason against the United States to fight to keep the institution of slavery in tact."
Orlando, Fla.
A Confederate statue known as "Johnny Reb" was moved in June 2017 by officials from Lake Eola Park to Greenwood Cemetery in response to public outcry about it being symbolic of hate and white supremacy. A spokesperson for Orlando's mayor told Fox News that city officials are working with historians on a new inscription to put the monument "in proper historical perspective."
Richmond, Va.
The Richmond school board voted 6-1 on June 18, 2018 to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School. The process began several months prior and involved input from students, teachers, administrators and local stakeholders. Virginia is home to the largest number of Confederate monuments and symbols in the country.
Rockville, Md.
A 13-ton bronze Confederate statue that had stood for decades next to Rockville's Red Brick Courthouse was relocated in July next to a privately run Potomac River ferry named for a Confederate general. The relocation cost about $100,000, according to the Washington Post.
San Diego, Calif.
A plaque honoring Davis was quietly removed Aug. 16, 2017 from a downtown park. "This morning I ordered the immediate removal of a plaque honoring the Confederacy at Horton Plaza Park," Mayor Kevin Faulconer told the Los Angeles Times. "San Diegans stand together against Confederate symbols of division."
San Antonio, Texas
A Confederate statue was removed from Travis Park overnight Sept. 1, 2017 after the City Council voted 10-1 in favor of taking it down the previous day. There were no protesters during or after the removal, according to local media reports. "This is, without context, a monument that glorifies the causes of the Confederacy, and that's not something that a modern city needs to have in a public square," said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg following the council vote.
San Antonio, Texas
A Jefferson Davis highway marker was removed in 2016.
St. Louis, Mo.
The Missouri Civil War Museum oversaw the removal in late June 2017 of a 32-foot granite and bronze monument from Forest Park, where it had stood for 103 years. It shouldered the costs of removal and will hold the monument in storage until a new home can be found for it. The agreement stipulates the monument can be re-displayed at a Civil War museum, battlefield or cemetery. In Boone County, a rock with a plaque honoring Confederate soldiers that had been removed from the University of Missouri campus was relocated a second time after the Charleston AEM church massacre to a historic site commemorating a nearby Civil War battle.
St. Petersburg, Fla.
St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman ordered city workers to remove a bronze Confederate marker at noon on Aug. 15, 2017 after determining that it was on city property. It's being held in storage until a new home can be found for it. "The plaque recognizing a highway named after Stonewall Jackson has been removed and we will attempt to locate its owner," Kriseman said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.
Washington, D.C.
The stewards of the National Mall announced this week that the exhibit alongside the Thomas Jefferson Memorial will be updated to showcase his status as both one of the country's founders and a slaveholder. "We can reflect the momentous contributions of someone like Thomas Jefferson, but also consider carefully the complexity of who he was," an official with the Trust told the Washington Examiner. "And that's not reflected right now in the exhibits."

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker introduced a bill in Sept. 2017 to remove Confederate statues from the U.S. Capitol Building.

The National Cathedral voted that same month to take down two stained-glass windows of Confederate generals. The removal could take a few days and workers seen putting up scaffolding around the windows to start the process.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, signed a bill to replace a statue of a Confederate general at the U.S. Capitol with one of Mary McLeod Bethune, a black woman who founded a school that became Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. She'll become the first black female to be honored in Statuary Hall.
Worthington, Ohio
Worthington removed a historic marker Aug. 18 outside the former home of a Confederate general.
Email christopher.carbone@foxnews.com if you learn new information about the removal of Confederate monuments. Fox News' Nicole Darrah contributed to this report.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Which Confederate statues were removed? A running list

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
More than 30 cities across the United States have removed or relocated Confederate statues and monuments amid an intense nationwide debate about race and history. Here is a running list of all the monuments that have been removed and the cities that have removed them.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Police in North Carolina arrested seven people at protests for and against the presence of a Confederate soldier statue at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the university said.

About 100 people faced off in "highly charged" demonstrations at the university's McCorkle Place - where until a group of protesters pulled it down on Monday, the statue known as "Silent Sam" had stood for more than a century.

Confederate statues have become a flashpoint for protests in recent years, especially after the violence in Charlottesville, Va. in August 2017, when white supremacists gathered partly in support of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

Opponents of the statues say they glorify white supremacy, while some supporters say the statues are an important part of history.

A video from Saturday shows a small group of men walking with flags that feature the Confederate battle flag image, surrounded by counterprotesters shouting, "Nazis go home."

In another video from Saturday, a man holding a Confederate flag argues with counterprotesters.

"All I'm here today to say is, it's not about hate," he says, while a counterprotester says, "It's a traitor's flag."

"Just trying to educate people," the man, identified by member station WUNC only by first name as Mike, said. "They can talk about how this is about hate, but it's not about hate. This is not white supremacy, this is history."

WUNC reports that a counterprotester said Mike had an SS tattoo (associated with Nazism) on his neck, "which he said was 'from his past,' and he had not removed it. He and other protesters argued and debated non-violently for about an hour during a calm among the crowd after police made several arrests earlier in the morning."

Other videos from social media show a chaotic scene as one man is held in a headlock by an officer before police drag the man away.

In another video, a man tries to light a Confederate flag on fire before police stop him.

None of the seven people arrested in connection with Saturday's protests were affiliated with the university, the university said in a statement. It said nobody was seriously injured.

The student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel reports the charges include assault, resisting arrest, injury/damage to property and causing/inciting a public disturbance.

Between 200 and 300 people were present on Monday when protesters brought the statue down with ropes. Police took the statue away, WUNC's Will Michaels reported last week.

Activists protesting against white supremacy considered the statue's toppling a victory. "I mean, it feels biblical. It's thundering and starting to rain. It's almost like heaven is trying to wash away the soiled contaminated remains," university professor Dwayne Dixon told The Daily Tar Heel last week.

The university called the incident "dangerous" and "vandalism."

One person was arrested Monday and three others arrested on Saturday in connection with Monday night's protest, according to the student paper.

The "Silent Sam" statue was erected in 1913, and according to WUNC's Michaels, it's "been the subject of protests and occasional vandalism for decades."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
7 Arrested In Protests Over Confederate Statue At UNC Chapel Hill

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Police in North Carolina arrested seven people at protests for and against the presence of a Confederate soldier statue at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the university said.