Though national news outlets are paying less attention, efforts to remove Confederate statues and other memorials are alive and well

Shortly after the horror of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, there was extensive reporting on the snap decisions of many cities and counties to remove commemorations of the Confederacy, many of which were erected long after the conclusion of the war. Eighteen months later, the national news cycle has largely moved on.

The good news that most media, aside from small local outlets, are not covering is the continuing success of grassroots activists fighting to remove statues and plaques, rename landmarks and delete dedications from state houses.

One example of this progress is in Jefferson county, West Virginia, where a freshly minted state house delegate is celebrating a victory after a public fight over a plaque outside a courthouse.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Slaves were once sold on the steps of the Jefferson county courthouse and the trial for the Harpers Ferry raider John Brown was held there. Photograph: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

It began in 2017, in the wake of the rally, when activists sought to have a bronze plaque commemorating Confederate soldiers – which was only affixed in 1966 – removed from the local courthouse.

The Jefferson county native Sammi Brown was in another state doing activist work when she received the call from local activists. In the wake of Charlottesville, she says, there was “heightened concern”, especially from members of the community “who had seen [the] civil rights [movement] and had seen segregation, and who were afraid that all that could happen again”.

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The original call to remove the plaque had come from a group of older African American women.

“They called and said, ‘We need your help,’” said Brown, who flew home to attend a hearing about the plaque.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This plaque honoring Confederate soldiers is just feet from the entrance to the Jefferson county courthouse. Photograph: Michael S Williamson/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Other attendees at the public meeting ceded their time to allow Brown to speak longer, but the county board president refused to allow her to continue, and ordered that she be forcibly removed. That meeting, which voted to keep the plaque, drew national coverage.

What went less noticed was the way that the debate around the plaque influenced subsequent elections – Brown made a second run for the state house and won. The plaque was removed in December after many heated debates and another commission vote.

It was a victory for what Brown calls “a movement” that is “finally being heard”.

As last weekend’s failed rally at Stone Mountain Park near Atlanta shows, white nationalists are struggling post-Charlottesville to muster any real numbers in defense of pro-Confederate monuments and are still facing serious pushback from counter-protesters.

Meanwhile, despite a recent setback in Virginia, which is still refusing to pass a bill allowing local authorities to remove monuments, progress has been made, and the movement against monuments and memorials continues to grow.

Texas

A plaque in the state capitol erected in 1959 by the Children of the Confederacy was removed in January. The state preservation board voted to remove it at the Dallas-area representative Eric Johnson’s request, which came days after Charlottesville, and are now considering what to do with it.

Florida

A group of representatives from Confederate organizations attempting to prevent the removal of a statue in Lakeland lost their lawsuit last week after a judge ruled that it was a matter of government speech, not free speech. The city is planning to relocate the monument from a park to a cemetery, where it will stand alongside monuments to veterans of other wars.

North Carolina

A statue in downtown Winston-Salem, which has been repeatedly vandalized, was scheduled to be removed on 31 January after the city council pointed to “safety reasons” for taking it out of the downtown area. But the Daughters of the Confederacy, who erected the statue in 1905, are engaged in legal action to keep it in place. The land it stands on is privately owned, which means the council’s move would not violate state laws that prevent the removal of statues on public property.

Wisconsin

The college town of Madison has a 4,000lb Confederate cenotaph erected in a cemetery in 1906 commemorating the Confederate dead (even though 12,000 men from the state died fighting for the Union). In October, the city council voted to remove it after sustained pressure from activists and a continuing community debate. It plans to put the monument in a museum.

Nevada

Nevada’s third-highest peak, named for the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, could be renamed. After Charlottesville, the Shoshone tribe began campaigning to return the peak to its original name, Doso Doyabi, which means “white mountain”. In January, the Nevada board of geographic names voted to recommend the name change to the federal government.