Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner's Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause

Confederate memorials have always been controversial. The US Army resisted memorials at Arlington National Cemetery for decades. In many Southern cities, statues of Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures sprang up in the early 20th century, even though most of the cities involved had nothing to do with Robert E. Lee. The monuments were part of an effort to stifle dissent against the Jim Crow system of segregation and state-sanctioned racial terrorism. Most white citizens of both the South and North may have paid little attention, but the Black citizens of those places understood the intention behind these statues. However, they lacked the political power to challenge them. In the wake of the civil rights movement, many white people in America were tired of racial politics after the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965, and so the question of Confederate monuments did not become an urgent topic of mainstream debate until recently.

The pivotal moment in the challenge to Confederate memorials came in June 2015, when a young white man opened fire on a prayer group at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The young perpetrator was a self-described white supremacist whose social media was rife with pictures of himself surrounded by Confederate flags, as well as the flags of other racist regimes like Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and apartheid-era South Africa. One month later, South Carolina governor Nikki Haley signed a law removing the Confederate flag that had flown above the state capital since 1961.

This kicked off a wave of controversy surrounding the broader topic of Confederate memorialization. After extensive public debate, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia voted 3-2 to remove its statue of Robert E. Lee. In August of that same year, a coalition of various far-right groups including the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and members of the alt-right, a white nationalist political movement whose presence is mostly online, converged on Charlottesville to protest the removal of the statue. Infamously wielding tiki torches, they chanted, among other things, “Jews will not replace us,” a reference to the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, one version of which claims that Jews are co-conspirators in a plan to replace white people in America with nonwhite immigrants (Rosenberg, Yair “‘Jews will not replace us’: Why White Supremacists Go After Jews.” The Washington Post, 14 Aug. 2017). One white supremacist drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors, killing one and injuring many others.

After the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, the movement to remove Confederate memorials gained steam as part of a push to address issues of systemic racism. That same year, Congress included a provision in the annual National Defense Authorization Act mandating the removal of Confederate names from property owned by the Department of Defense. Donald Trump expressed his intention to veto the bill because of several provisions he opposed, including that one. The bill passed anyway, and when Trump vetoed it, Congress managed enough votes to override his veto. It was the only time they did so during Trump’s term in office.

In the time since Floyd’s murder, over 100 Confederate monuments have been removed. While this represents progress, it is only one facet of the white supremacist legacy. For example, the topic of educating citizens, especially schoolchildren, on the history of American racism remains a source of fierce contestation, with states like Florida banning the teaching of history that might make a student uncomfortable due to the actions of their ancestors. There is not likely to be any consensus on the role of racism in American society anytime soon.