The deadly violence in Charlottesville over the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee has ramped up a debate over Confederate monuments that has been underway since Dylan Rufe killed nine Blacks in a Charleston church. In some public officials are trying to prevent future violence over Confederate symbols, so under the cover of darkness for instant a statue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson
was removed from Baltimore's Wyman Park. But it's not quite so easy in other states, where there are laws in place banning the removal of the monuments or make it very difficult to do so. Alabama has such a law, and its Attorney general is suing the city of Birmingham after the mayor ordered a Confederate monument to be covered to send a message to white supremacist. Mayor William Bell says he's not against leaving the statue there, but he
wants to put it in some context. How can we tell the full story of what the Confederates represented, so that if the monument is maintained there, that people will know what the full impact of what it represents joining me is Alfred Brophy, professor at the University of Alabama Law School. Alfred, how many states about are there that have laws protecting Confederate monuments and how do those laws vary?
About six of them. They started with South Carolina back in two thousand when there was a movement to take the Confederate flag off the dome of the capital in South Carolina. South Carolina sort of got that started. Then Georgia followed shortly, and now we've got North Carolina which passed one about a year and a half ago. Tennessee, UM, Virginia, Alabama. UM, that's so. And and what they do is they say, UM that you cannot remove a monument, and it's largely
to UM. Oftentimes they're defined as sort of war monuments UM from public property without either the permission of the legislature or the state historical commission. There's their minor variances between those, but that's that's essentially the the You know, if it's on public property and it's a memorial, you need the permission of a state agency to remove it. So in a study in the Southern Poverty Law Center identified about Confederate place names and other symbols in public
spaces across the nation. They're also symbols marking graves in cemeteries. Explain the debate briefly of leaving them there and removing them. Sure, so the case for removing them is that um, you know, particularly Confederate monuments in public spaces, UM are reminders of the era of white supremacy. Their their monuments to white supremacy. They honor um, Confederate um, the fight for to maintain
in slavery, and they should be removed. The case against removing them is they're sort of part of the landscape. They're reminders of the past. They're part of our history, and we shouldn't be taking them down, but we should be perhaps adding some context. As Birmingham's mayor was suggesting, now, what's the best way to do this. The mayor of Dallas is forming a task force to discuss the city's monuments. Some governors want to move ahead to to do something,
but they don't have the authority. For example, Virginia's governor, what's the best way to approach this? So if if it's you're in one of these states that has a history of Monument Preservation Act you're gonna either have to go through the state agency in charge of this or the legislature to get it repealed, or you know, people might take action independently and just you know, hope that
this isn't challenged by the state. A g um that's happened in North Carolina where some building a building was renamed about a year ago on public property and nobody ever challenged it. So, you know, sort of it's a technical violation of North Carolina's monument law, but nobody cares, or the people who can challenge it, you know, don't care. Um. I think these things should be you know, largely local decisions.
The people in the community who have to live with the monuments, I think, you know, should be in charge of deciding what they do. I personally think it's generally a bad idea to take monuments down. I think they're you know, important lessons and markers about our history. But UM, I understand completely the idea that um, you know, for many there are there, uh, you know, a sore spot, and the I think the local community by and large should make that decision. It's a it's a question for
many more of morality than of law. What about moving them to a museum or some kind of museum setting. Sure, so a lot of people who say we should contextualize UM also say, you know, the extent that we move these, you should move it to a museum. A lot of times they get moved to cemeteries quite frankly, which you're usually private property. UM. The UM. I think it's a good idea to keep them up in place, because that gives you a sense of the what the landscape originally was.
It shows you that once there were people in charge who you know, thought it was a good idea to memorialize the era of slavery and civil war or fought to protect slavery. UM. But I think monuments, I think museum moving to museums or you know, a good halfway point rather than just take it down. You know, you can try and and you know, preserve that memory and
the context. UM. And certainly if you're gonna leave monuments up or move them to museums, you need a lot of contextualization right to to UM tell people why these monuments were put up, why they were moved, what then meant at the time, what they mean today. Those sorts of things. Something that stands out to me is that is the state of Mississippi's flag, which has the Confederate emblem on it. Has there been an uproar about that
in anyway? There there has been you I'm sure you followed them, you know, controversy over the removal of the Confederate flag battle flag from the South Carolina's first state House and then the state House grounds. I think that flags present a somewhat different issue from monuments. Monuments, once they're put up, um, you know, sort of will be will be there for a long time. Flags if you don't put a new flag up on a regular basis,
the flag um wears out. And so, you know, Confederate symbols on flags, most of which I think we're added, you know during the Civil rights here in a sort of response to the Civil rights movement, are a much easier case to take them down into to alter them. They don't have the same historical basis um that that some of these older Confederate monuments have. In about thirty seconds, this is tough. But does it strike you as uh strange that this is coming up so many years after
the Civil War. Yeah, it's interesting, it's fascinating why this is coming up at this moment, I think it's UM, you know, yet another front on the culture wars about how we think about American history. Obviously a lot of this was also inspired by the tragedy the of his shooting in Charleston, UM and then sort of that. I think one event dramatically changed how the public was thinking about UM, Confederate flags and Confederate symbols. Well, thank you
for joining us. I hope you'll join us again. That's Professor Alfred Brophy. He is at the University of Alabama School of Law.