The death of George Floyd at the hands of police on May 25, 2020, reinvigorated a nationwide campaign to remove symbols of the Confederacy from public spaces.
Since that date, 102 Confederate monuments, statues, school names and other symbols have been removed.1
The extrajudicial killings of unarmed Black people in this country did not start with George Floyd, but his unnecessary death has accelerated the need to expose the structures that stand as symbols for white supremacy and that idealize a history of racist violence and oppression. Removing Confederate symbols from public spaces is a step toward reckoning with this history and creating a more just and equitable nation for all.
If you know of a Confederate symbol in your area that is not listed in our Whose Heritage? database, or would like to share an update on a symbol’s removal, relocation or renaming, contact us at confederateupdates@splcenter.org.
The following is a list of Confederate symbols removed since Floyd’s death.
Numbers by Month:
June: 38
July: 38
August: 13
September: 12
October: 1
Numbers by State:
Alabama: 7
Arkansas: 1
Arizona: 2
California 1
District of Columbia: 1
Florida: 6
Georgia: 4
Indiana: 1
Kentucky: 3
Louisiana: 1
Missouri: 2
Mississippi: 2
North Carolina: 18
Oklahoma: 2
South Dakota: 1
Texas: 10
Virginia: 40
West Virginia: 1
1. Whose Heritage only tracks symbols that celebrate the Confederacy on public land. The SPLC does not track Confederate symbols located in graveyards, battlefields, on private property, or those erected in the spirit of reconciliation.
The SPLC does not support erasing history, nor the defacing and/or destruction of any historic artifact, but it does believe that all Confederate symbols should be placed in their proper historical context.
Photo by Getty Images/AFP/Ryan M. Kelly
