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With Confederate monuments center-stage in last weekend’s violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, followed by incidents involving Civil War symbols in other cities around the country, Californians might be surprised to see similar campaigns here on the West Coast, far removed from the once Confederate States of America. Related Articles Trump bemoans Confederate statues’ removal

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They shouldn’t be: While most of these statues, plaques and monuments are located in the Deep South, 2016 data from the Southern Poverty Law Center shows an estimated 1,500 Confederate symbols still exist on public land more than 150 years after the conclusion of the Civil War.

And as a national debate over these monuments rages this week, residents from one end of the country to the other are now calling for either their removal, as symbols of racism, or their protection, as valuable reminders of an American legacy many Americans would rather forget.

The law center data shows nearly half of the symbols — 718 of them as of last year — are monuments and statues.Three-quarters of them were built before 1950, but at least one in 10 of them were dedicated during the civil rights movement or since the year 2000.

In California, calls to remove such symbols increased as the week unfolded. On Wednesday, a plaque honoring Jefferson Davis was removed in San Diego while a monument commemorating Confederate veterans was removed in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, a response to requests from hundreds of activists that it be taken down or, in some cases, risk behind vandalized.

After getting dozens of calls and emails about the monument’s removal, the owner of the cemetery, as well as the owner of the monument — the Long Beach Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy — agreed to move it to an undisclosed location, cemetery spokesman Theodore Hovey told the LA Times.

Map of Confederate symbols in the U.S. (Source: Southern Poverty Law Center, data as of 2016)

“It was thought that it would become impossible for us to maintain an atmosphere of tranquility, harmony and inclusion for all of our families and all of our visitors with the monument present here,” he said of the marker which has stood in the Confederate section of the cemetary since 1925.

The tall, granite monument includes a tablet emblazoned with three Confederate flags, two crosses and the words, “In memory of the soldiers of the Confederate States Army who have died or may die on the Pacific Coast.” It went on to say, “Lord God of hosts, be with us yet, lest we forget — lest we forget.”

Calls to remove the marker have quickly accelerated following the violence in Virginia, with more than 1,700 people signing a Change.org petition calling for the removal of the monument. Earlier this week, someone wrote “No” in black marker across the monument’s bronze plaque.

“We feel they have a right to commemorate their dead, but Confederate flags and guns can be disturbing to our visitors,” Cassity said.

Even the ultra-liberal bastion of the San Francisco Bay Area has its own piece of Confederate memorabilia. The law center’s national map has a small dot in Monterey County that marks Confederate Corners, an unincorporated community two miles south-southwest of Salinas, on State Route 68. Originally known as Springtown or Spring Town, the place was named Confederate Corners after some Southerners settled there in the late 1860s. It was also the inspiration for the fictional small town “Rebel Corners” in John Steinbeck’s novel The Wayward Bus. Today, Confederate Corners is little more than a few buildings and a Beacon gas station.

But with last week’s violence, a dormant effort to change the town’s name could be resurrected. Back in 2015, after the furor over the use of the Confederate battle flag in South Carolina, the California Legislature considered a bill that would have required most place names, schools and other public places linked to the Confederacy to be changed to something else.

Senate Bill 539, authored by state Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), was eventually vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown. But on Thursday, Glazer released a statement condemning the white supremacist movement and asking cities and towns around the country to “remove symbols honoring the Confederacy from our public places.”

Asked whether Glazer would re-introduce any name-changing legislation at this point, a spokesman said only that the senator was “evaluating the situation.”

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Other Confederate symbols on public land can be found elsewhere in California, according to the law center’s survey. The city of Fort Bragg was named for Capt. Braxton Bragg in the summer of 1857. Bragg later became a general in the Army of the Confederacy and was considered by historians as among the worst generals of the Civil War, given his record of defeats on the battlefield.

And while the town has no statues commemorating Bragg, suggestions of a municipal name change have been floated around town for years. After the Virginia protest threw Confederate monuments into the news again, Fort Bragg Mayor Lindy Peters told KCBS that the naming issue comes to town whenever current events collide with Confederate history.

“It’s always funny,” said Peters, “because it’s someone from the outside that brings this issue to us.”

This time, it was people like California Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, representing San Diego, who helped get the conversation going once again.

“You become immune to these things at some point until someone points it out to you, then you really have to assess it,” Weber said. “So we’re optimistic that cities like Fort Bragg will eventually have that conversation.”

If Fort Bragg were to change its name, the mayor says chaos could ensue. Peters said “the cost of changing all the addresses, all the companies, all the institutions, it would be a nightmare for the post office, a complete nightmare for our local post office.”

Besides, said Peters, Bragg “never set foot in our town, we have no statues, and we’re Fort Bragg because we’re Fort Bragg gosh darn-it, and we’re proud of being from Fort Bragg, and we don’t want anyone from outside coming in and telling us to change our name.”

This week in Seattle, which seems to exist in another solar system compared with the Antebellum South, a news report featured that city’s very own monument to the Confederacy – a 10-ton slab of Georgia granite, shaped like a doorway and made of two stone columns topped by a pediment just north of Volunteer Park.

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