This timeline shows confederate monuments are about racial conflict

A history of confederate monuments, in one timeline.

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Following clashes of violence surrounding protest against the removal of Robert E. Lee's statue in Charlottesville Virginia, America's debate over the legacy of confederate symbolism has reopened. The central questions: Are these monuments meant to commemorate the racial tension underlying the confederacy's secession? Or are they meant to serve as a simple marker of American history?

The Southern Poverty Law Center created this timeline to document the upwards of 1500 monuments constructed between the civil war and today. For a deeper look at the data, you can check out their comprehensive report, "Who's Heritage? Public symbols of the confederacy," available here: https://www.splcenter.org/20160421/whose-heritage-public-symbols-confederacy

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Many of those people were there to protest
the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee.

So, this week, it is Robert E. Lee.

I notice that Stonewall Jackson
is coming down.

I wonder, is it George Washington next week?

And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after?

You know, you really have to ask yourself, where does it stop?

The Confederate monuments President Trump
mentions are more than innocent markers of

American history.

Many exist to celebrate the Confederate cause
to preserve the rights of whites over minorities.

These monuments can be
traced back to the Civil War.

But most of the sites and symbols were actually
created during periods of racial conflict

long after the civil war.

The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled about
1503 confederate symbols in public space.

Each dot on this timeline represents a monument,
a symbol, or an icon.

Some represent statues.

Others are names of schools, parks or military
bases.

The cart starts with the Civil War, when the
monuments first show up.

Then in 1866, thereâs a rise that coincides
with the formation of the Ku Klux klan.

But the chart reveals a significant rise in
the creation of these monuments in two periods:

The first is in the early 1900s, when ex-Confederate
states in the south enacted Jim Crow laws.

The response from this period is clear â the
NAACP was founded during this peak.

And the spike continues through the 1920s
which were marked by the re-emergence of the

KKK.

The next cluster of confederate monuments
were built in the 1950s and 60s.

Construction of the symbols peaked in 1965

- the 100th year anniversary of the end of the Civil War.

During this modern Civil Rights Movement,
until 1970, it became more common for schools

to be named after confederate proponents.

And it didn't stop there.

A movement to erase these symbols of Confederate
ideology has recently surfaced across the

country.

They are not just innocent remembrances of
a benign history.

These monuments celebrate a fictional, sanitized
Confederacy ignoring the death, ignoring the

enslavement, ignoring the terror that it actually
stood for.

Critics of that movement equate these monuments
with Southern pride, white heritage and culture.

But the fact that a vast majority of the monuments
were constructed during racial conflict reveals

the opposite: They honor the Confederacy and
the racism it stood for.