ST. LOUIS — The angry, divisive fight over public symbols of the Confederacy has swept through Columbia, S.C., Birmingham, Ala., and New Orleans. This week, the debate made its way some 600 miles north, up the Mississippi River, to St. Louis, the home of a Confederate memorial many residents did not know was in their midst.

Here in a graceful public park stands this city’s own grand monument to the Confederacy, a 32-foot-tall granite column adorned with an angel and bronze sculpture of a stoic group of figures. It rises in a thicket of trees, next to a trail teeming with runners, bicyclists and wanderers.

Many residents said that until very recently, they had no idea that the 103-year-old memorial honored Confederate soldiers.

“Not till they started making all that hoopla over it,” said Larry Randall, 54, who was setting off on a bike ride one afternoon this week in front of the memorial. “I’ve been coming out here for years. I never paid it no mind.”