Racism and Confederate Monument Construction: Temporal Regimes Distinguishing the 1900s, 1960s, and Contemporary Decades

Abstract

The bulk of Confederate monuments were constructed by White southerners in the early 1900s, but some were built much later. Recent research has assessed average relationships across the decades, but comparable evidence for distinct peaks in construction is lacking. My objective is to determine whether the timing of monument construction is connected to unique social contexts, particularly different manifestations of racism. I use multinomial regression analysis and a rich dataset spanning the U.S. South. Results confirm the central role of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), but also suggest stronger attachments to slavery and greater reliance on lynching increase the risk of erecting a monument in the early 1900s. In contrast, the resurgence of construction in the 1960s is unrelated to the presence of a UDC chapter and positively related to the presence of an National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter. Construction in the decades after the 1960s shift again, suggesting the renewed importance of the UDC (in addition to the location of Civil War battles), but no role of racialized dynamics. Results suggest three distinct regimes of Confederate monument construction that broadly reflect the structural racism that dominated the early 1900s; the group threat/countermovement dynamics of the 1960s; and the “colorblind” era of racism associated with contemporary decades. This research contributes to knowledge of the factors associated with Confederate monument construction and provides a foundation for public and academic discussions of how racism is intertwined with these divisive public symbols.