Following the violent white supremacist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia, Southern cities have felt a renewed sense of urgency to address Confederate monuments. In Richmond, a task force recommended removing the Jefferson Davis monument while erecting new monuments and exhibit panels to provide a more complete representation of the city's history. In Savannah, Georgia, the city voted to relocate busts of two Confederate officers to a cemetery. None of these recommendations have yet been implemented.

This August, the city of Atlanta confronted the debate by installing large exhibition panels next to four Confederate monuments, visually transforming them into artifacts in an outdoor historical exhibition. With this act, it became the first city to contextualize monuments in a state that bars their removal.

The debate over Confederate monuments extends a struggle rooted in the nation's post-Civil War and Jim Crow history. After the war ended, another conflict started about the war's history and its meaning – a battle that continues today.

Certainly, Confederate monuments to mourn the dead were erected in cemeteries soon after the Civil War. However, most monuments we see today were created years later as Jim Crow segregation laws institutionalized white supremacy and the Confederacy was memorialized as a tragic lost cause.

Although some argue that removing monuments destroys Civil War history, the version of the war that these monuments memorialize is historically inaccurate. Slavery was the primary cause of the Civil War, yet the postwar "lost cause" mythology developed by white Southerners denied this reality and recast the war and Confederacy as solely about honor, economics and states' rights. Southern white communities erected monuments as tools to reinforce this version of the war and uphold the power dynamic of segregation. While an obelisk in a cemetery commemorates loss of life, a statue of a Confederate soldier on horseback guarding a courthouse symbolizes power.

In a society undergoing rapid change, it's likely that much of the resistance to removing or re-examining these monuments is rooted in fear of losing power and position. Many who oppose removal of Confederate monuments are confusing "heritage" with "history" – heritage in this case being history without the bad parts.

After nine African American church congregants in Charleston, South Carolina, were murdered by a white supremacist in 2015, we at the Atlanta History Center began to think more critically about history's role in modern racial tensions.

In 2016, in response to Charleston, the Atlanta History Center created an online toolkit to encourage community-driven, evidence-based discussions, believing that change inspired locally can be more effective than a top-down mandate. After those discussions, it became clear to us that the status quo of leaving a Confederate monument without addressing its historical meaning was not an option. If a monument couldn't be contextualized, it should be removed.

In 2017, Atlanta's mayor and City Council appointed an advisory committee, which I co-chaired, tasked with researching the history of local monuments and street names, gathering community input and making recommendations. Like much of the country, Atlantans who submitted comments were divided. Final recommendations included erecting information panels adjacent to two funereal monuments in a city-owned cemetery, renaming several streets and removing two monuments. In the end, since Georgia law prohibits monument removals, the city placed exhibition panels adjoining all four monuments.

Contextualization transforms an object of veneration into an historical object to be studied. Exhibition panels can answer fundamental questions about the object's history: Who created it? When? Why?

Since Atlanta placed exhibition panels near its monuments, other cities have followed suit. In September, officials in Decatur, Georgia, placed a plaque near a Confederate monument. In October, three signs will go up in Franklin, Tennessee.

We realize that our work doesn't end with exhibition panels. To come to terms with our past, conversations must continue.

So, if we must yell, let's yell at a monument. Let's argue about what it says about our history, and what that history means today. Let's discuss our own experiences and thoughts about the past. Let's ground our conversations through physical context beside monuments, and have the courage to approach these conversations with empathy, humility and patience. Through constructive dialogue centered on our shared past, we can work toward building the future we all want – and need.