Symbolic Conversations in Public Landscapes of the American South: Revisiting the Confederate Legacy

Abstract

Especially in the South, the legacy of the American Civil War (1861–1865) remains entrenched in social conflict. To honor Confederate war dead, hundreds of monuments were erected in the South during the Jim Crow era, an overtly racist period beginning a generation after the war ended, up to the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. This essay examines three prominent public Confederate monuments in the state of North Carolina—located in Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. Bitter controversies over the fate of Confederate monuments in public landscapes have pitted coalitions of Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists against leftist anti-racist counter-protesters. Some argue that monuments are “neutral” historical markers that honor those who died for their beliefs; others argue that they encode and empower intolerable racist ideology. Should such divisive “objects of remembrance” be allowed to remain in public places? This essay explores the responsibilities of designers who purport to represent a broad and increasingly diverse constituency and the function of public memorials for constructing narratives and counter-narratives.