These confederate Monuments

Turns out, the State with the most confederate Memorials is my home State, Virginia. Some of the Historical reasons is tha a good part of the Civil War was fought here, a number of the key military Generals (Lee, Jackson, Stuart) were Virginians, and the fact that Richmond was the Capital of the confederacy. The descendants of those families still live here.There has been a push to remove the Monuments or rename buildings and roads named after them through the years – but the connection to Virginia born people tends to moderate the responses from both sides. At least it did until Charlottesville where a bunch of outsiders came in in their Nazi gear to wreak havoc.

One of those dots on the map is near where I live, and I have seen the monument. It is to the local soldiers who died in the “War Between the States”. The fact that they all fought as confederates, well…Is what it is.The family names of those guys live on today as part of the local population. Hard for me, at least, to work up any ire over this. Let it be.

The State was as segregated under Jim Crow as any in the South. Let it be. You can get a confederate license  plate in Virginia by joining the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Let it be.

There is a historical context in Virginia because that is where a large part of the war was, and that was where these folks fought. There simply is no relevance to a Lee, Jackson, or Stuart statue in any state other than Virginia, Maryland (Antietam), and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania where they fought. In Virginia at several of the Battlefields there are still bullets, cannonballs, and bones lightly buried in the battlefields where they fought.So this is part of our living history.

So I am not sure all of these need to come down – and support moving some to historically significant places. You want to move those confederate generals from Monument Avenue in Richmond to the Battlefields at Bull Run, Manassas, Fredericksburg, or Cold Harbor…I won’t object at all.

So what I am arguing here is a common-sense approach…Although I still never expect to see a statue of Sherman in Georgia.

Virginia’s 204 confederate Monuments and Memorials

Symbols of the Confederacy still dot the South

Highest density

Virginia, the birthplace of Robert E. Lee, is home to more than 220 Confederate symbols, including three military bases named for Confederate war heroes. Texas and Georgia have the second- and third-most symbols, at 178 and 163, respectively.

confederate Monuments in the US

Schools

109 public schools are named for Confederate icons, including Gens. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart, and the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. Of these schools, nearly 25 percent have a student body that is primarily black, while almost a tenth of the schools have a student body that is more than 90 percent black.

Monuments and statues

Of the more than 700 statues and monuments, more than 25 percent are located in Virginia and Georgia alone. Texas, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi combined make up an additional 30 percent. Nearly 77 percent were built or dedicated before 1950, while 6 percent were built or rededicated during the era of the civil rights movement. Four percent were built or rededicated after the year 2000.

Roads, highways and bridges

From General Lee Avenue in Brooklyn, New York, to Jefferson Davis Highway in San Diego, California, nearly 500 roads, highways and bridges memorialize the Confederacy.

Counties and cities

There are 80 counties and cities named for Confederates, including Fort Davis, Texas, and Lee County, North Carolina, among others.