Abstract
This study examines whether the presence of Confederate monuments corresponds to experiences of historical anti-Black violence in the surrounding areas. At stake is not only the current debate around the removal of these monuments, but also broader links between such monuments and latent processes of White supremacy. We utilize three data sets for our analyses: data on Confederate monument locations (O’Connell in Ethn Racial Stud 43(3):1–19, 2019); and two complementary data sets on lynchings (Seguin and Rigby in Socius 5:2378023119841780, 2019; Beck and Tolnay in Confirmed Inventory of Southern Lynch Victims, University of Georgia, 2004). Correlation analyses indicate a positive statistical relationship between the relative presence of Confederate monuments and historical lynchings at the county level—a relationship that increases with adjustments for spatial clustering. These results contribute to ongoing discussions around the removal of Confederate monuments as well as to the use of monuments as forms of oppression. By connecting lynching to Confederate monuments, whose ties to violence have been abstracted away, we understand racial violence not as disorder, but instead as part of a larger order.
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Acknowledgements
A version of this paper was presented virtually at the 2020 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. We would like to thank A. Alexander Priest for his work on an earlier version of this paper. We also thank Elizabeth Roberto, James Elliott, and the Spatial Processes and City Environments (SPACE) working group at Rice University for their guidance, as well as Heather O’Connell for allowing us use of her data.
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Turner, K.L., Binkovitz, L. Violence in Stone: Confederate Monuments and Lynchings in the US South. Spat Demogr 9, 397–412 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-021-00098-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40980-021-00098-3