SPLC: Remove Pedestals Glorifying the Confederacy from Public Property

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released new data amending the number of pedestals listed as “removed” in its Whose Heritage? report, which tracks symbols of the Confederacy across the United States.

“The SPLC believes that removing the statue is not enough and that these pedestals represent the unfinished business of reckoning with our country’s Confederate past,” explains Lecia Brooks, Chief of Staff with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “As such, we are now counting any memorial designated ‘statue removed, pedestal remains’ as ‘live.’ If a pedestal has the name of a Confederate or any Confederate symbols on it, it’s considered live.

“In some cases, the pedestal is cemented into the ground and will require significant resources to remove. In other cases, preservation laws protecting Confederate monuments prevent state officials from moving forward with their plans for removal.”

The redesignated states with empty pedestals are:

North Carolina: 9
Virginia: 9
Maryland: 4
Texas: 3
Alabama: 2
Florida: 2
Washington, DC: 1
Missouri: 1
Tennessee: 1

“Our hope is that this redesignation inspires communities to finish the job they started, bringing pressure to remove these symbols of hate in their entirety. Once the pedestal is gone, along with the statue, we’ll change its status to removed or relocated. We realize that removing  a statue will not in itself eradicate hate or white supremacy. But it’s an important first step and symbolizes the importance of countering the Lost Cause narrative by root and by branch,” concludes Brooks.

View a complete list of the Whose Heritage? data here.