Confederate Monuments and the Fight for Racial Justice

Realms of Memory

For communities to determine the fate of the hundreds of remaining monuments to the Confederacy they need to understand the context and purpose for which they were built. University of North Carolina at Charlotte historian and professor emerita Karen L. Cox stresses that these monuments were erected to restore and perpetuate a system of white supremacy. Situated in prominent public spaces, particularly outside courthouses, monuments to the Confederacy worked in tandem with Jim Crow laws and racial terror to create a system of white domination that lasted another hundred years after emancipation. A conversation with Karen L. Cox about her book, No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice, coming July 2nd on Realms of Memory.