Report: 175 Confederate monuments remain in Alabama

Almost 2,100 symbols celebrating the Confederacy remain in the United States, and the pace of removal has slowed down, according to the “Whose Heritage” report published by the Southern Poverty Law Center in April.

In Alabama, about 175 monuments remain while 18 have either been removed or renamed since 2018. Eight were standalone monuments, the names of two buildings and three schools have been changed.

According to the report, 15 Confederate monuments were either removed or renamed in 2015, then increased to 64 in 2017. The removals peaked in 2020 in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, when almost 170 were either changed or eliminated.

The numbers have declined since, going to 73 in 2021, then to 13 in 2023. Last year, just two Confederate monuments were eliminated.

“Part of the point of the report is to take a long view of the history of the movement against Confederate symbols, and this movement has been going on since the 19th Century, the movement to put them up and the movements to put them down,” said Rivka Maizlish, senior research analyst with the SPLC who helped write the report.

The Confederate States of America was a white supremacist government dedicated to preserving the enslavement of Black Americans. The constitution of the government expressly forbade the abolition of slavery. In the late 19th century, monuments to the Confederacy were erected as celebrations of white supremacy or of Jim Crow governments.

While monuments can be found throughout most of the eastern part of the U.S. as well as the west coast, they are especially concentrated in the deep South. Georgia has 296 Confederate monuments, the most of any state. Virginia has 276 and Texas has 245.

This is the fourth year that SPLC has published the report on Confederate monuments.

“There have been close to 480 that have been removed, and there are still a majority that are coming down rather than being put back up or in a stasis situation,” Maizlish said. “But the number that are getting taken down has gotten smaller in the last five or 10 years.”

Julie Noegel Hardaway, president general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), said that the monuments serve to remember soldiers who died fighting for the Confederacy.

“We are very concerned because a lot of these men never came home, and that is the reason why we built these monuments in the first place, was because we didn’t have a grave to decorate, so we still go to these monuments today and we lay flowers and we lay wreaths, to remember these men who came to the aid of their states.” she said. “Their state governments called them up, very much like Vietnam veterans did. It doesn’t matter whether they agreed with their government or not, they were called to do this duty, and they came forward and did it honorably. That is why we remember them. ”

The Alabama Legislature in 2017 enacted the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act, sponsored by Sen. Gerald Allen, R-Cottondale. It prohibits local governments from removing monuments located in public spaces along with preventing public buildings, such as schools and municipalities, from getting renamed without approval from a committee that the legislation established.

The legislation created a committee responsible for reviewing requests to have monuments either removed or renamed.

“It protects Confederate monuments, it also protects civil rights monuments as well,” said Rep. Mack Butler, R-Rainbow City, who sponsored a version of the law in the House.

The report documents Jeremiah Treece, a student at Booker T. Washington High School in Montgomery, petitioned the city to change its flag and remove Confederate symbolism.

Montgomery high school student starts petition to replace city flag

“Every day in this city, we are walking on land that was old plantations, on streets that were built by my ancestors. That history is part of this city,” Treece said in the report. “Of course, there’s a lot of amazing things that have come from this city as well, like the Civil Rights Movement.”

Civil rights groups such as SPLC are urging the public to remove the monuments because those who placed them there originally did so as part of a propaganda campaign to control historical narrative.