What Richmond Got Right About Taking Down Confederate Monuments

By David Cunningham, Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis | The Conversation | Word In BlackThe Confederate leader Jefferson Davis has new digs in Richmond − a museum where he’s displayed prone and paint-splattered. David Cunningham, CC BY-SA(WIB) – In a symbolic rebuke of the American South’s racist history, an old Confederate monument now has a meaningful new life, four years after it was toppled in Virginia.In June 2020, protesters in Richmond used ropes to pull down the bronze statue of Confederate leader Jefferson Davis, splashed paint on its surface, and slung a toilet paper noose around its neck. Charged discussions& over what should become of it& followed.In 2022, the statue – carefully and controversially preserved in its degraded state and displayed on its back instead of its original upright position – went on display in a Richmond museum.This year, I visited the Davis statue in its new home. I am traveling to each of the& 113 communities& that removed or relocated Confederate symbols between 2015 and 2023 during the national reckoning sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement. As a& sociologist who studies legacies of historical conflict, my goal is to understand how those sites –...