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. 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 ' and the objects that for decades stood upon them ' are reshaping where and how the Confederacy bears upon the nation's current identity. Seven of the Confederate statues taken down over the past decade commemorated Jefferson Davis. A Mississippi congressman and U.S. secretary of war, Davis led the Confederacy between 1861 and the end of the Civil War four years later. Before it was damaged...
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