“Since they don’t want to move fast enough, we need to bring attention to all symbols to white supremacy. You need to know that it is representative of the same kind of state sanctioned violence that allows for all of these brothers and sisters who have been gunned down with no consequence from police because the reality is when we talk about symbols they are representative of oppressive systems.”

Angela Kinlaw, Take ‘Em Down Nola

A confederate monument is not neutral. Monuments, like that of Robert E. Lee, represent celebrations of racial violence and make them ordinary features of shared, public spaces. For Black and Indigenous people of color whose right it is to use these spaces; attend public schools named after segregationists; or, who live on streets named after white supremacists, these “memorials” are reminders of violent histories and their enduring structures. A study by the Southern Poverty Law Center identified 1,747 publicly sponsored symbols honoring Confederate leaders, soldiers or the Confederate States of America. These include monuments and statues, flags, holidays and other national observances; as well as the names of schools, highways, parks, bridges, counties, cities, lakes, dams, roads, military bases and other public works. (See this interactive map to learn more:Confederate Monument Map). These include: 780 monuments and 103 public schools and universities named for Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis or other Confederate icons; 80 counties and cities named after Confederates; 9 observed State holidays in Five States; and 10 U.S. Military bases. In the 21st Century why is there so much resistance to revising the names of these places, removing the statues, and releasing the myth of the past? What, precisely, do these monuments ask us to remember or be reminded of; what are they preserving; and for whose benefit do they still stand?

In the film, C.J. documents the 2017 white supremacist gathering at the University of Virgina (UVA) that was organized after local community members in Charlottesville expressed to City Council that they considered the statue of Robert E. Lee to signify values that should be contemporarily repudiated (Mason, 2018). Charlottesville and UVA’s historical significance as a home in which white supremacist ideology would be celebrated and cultivated was an important organizing factor for white nationalists who identify with the legacy of Lost Cause mythology and many organizers were alumni of UVA (commonly referred to as “Jefferson’s University”). C.J. captures white nationalists chanting “Blood and Soil,” one of the Nazi Party’s populist slogans from the 1930’s as they marched through UVA’s campus holding flaming torches. As viewers, we must grapple with how - on the one hand white people defending Confederate monuments suggest it has nothing to do with histories of white supremacy; but on the other - how white nationalists who fight to defend symbolically significant spaces and statues repeat chants that echo historically genocidal ideas rooted in racial violence.

Whiteness, often, gains its power from its invisibility - in other words, how it has been covertly made into “normal” aspects of systems, structures; or, as we see in the Neutral Ground, statues as part of the infrastructure of American cities. It has also been framed as a force, a framework, and a set of ideas that is bound by relationships of power. Contemporary examples of white supremacy have been fought in public and intentionally made visible by white people supporting racist values and ideas like in Charlottesville in 2017, or on the U.S. Capitol grounds in January 2021. Even if everyday white Americans disagree with these violent actions, what are they called to do to actively resist it? How can white people understand their unique inheritances with regards to history? How can white people use this to inform contemporary responsibilities to resist and refuse systems and structures of white supremacy, and to fight for racial justice?

Douglass Blackmon (2008) wrote, “When white Americans frankly peel back the layers of our commingled pasts, we are all marked by it. Whether a company or an individual, we are marred either by our connections to the specific crimes and injuries of our fathers and their fathers. Or we are tainted by the failures of our fathers to fulfill our national credos when their courage was most needed. We are formed in molds twisted by the gifts we received at the expense of others. It is not our “fault.” But it is undeniably our inheritance.” Black activist and organizer, Kwame Ture made the distinction that expressions of racial violence and racism is a white peoples’ problem, but that it became a problem for People of Color when people harboring racist views are granted power to exercise violence with impunity. This is evidenced in the UDC’s propaganda campaign the power white Confederates held to script the Lost Cause and name it “history.” In Ture’s words, “Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power.” The questions The Neutral Ground invites us to grapple with are, ultimately, questions of power, historical inheritance, and responsibility. The questions this film leaves us with are urgent. As a nation, we are reminded of the need to grapple with our different histories, with the history of this country, especially if we collectively aspire to unravel and undo the contradictions that founded this country’s present.

This list, however, is specifically Confederate figures and does not include monuments or street names dedicated to slave owners, segregationists, and/or colonizers. Inclusion of these additional markers would increase the number of what is considered monuments in this study tremendously.