


The latest data documents nearly 800 Confederate monuments that were in the U.S. at the beginning of the year, a number that dwindled to about 700 by the end of 2020. 

In August, the Montgomery, Alabama-based law center, found 38 monuments had been removed in the nearly three months since Floyd's death in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. That number alone was notable, since it had previously taken years for the database to log a similar number of statue removals.



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Thompson said the movement experienced a similar spike in June 2015 when a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners during a Bible study meeting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Interest in removing these statues spiked again in 2017 following the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. which opposed the proposed removal of a statue of General Robert E. Lee, Thompson said.




Thompson, who is writing a book on controversies over American monuments, said attention to Confederate monuments may be waning in the face of other crises and political pushback from state legislatures. 




Thompson said statues have often become a flashpoint amid historical protests like the French Revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union because they are much easier targets than the regime itself. She said it's not surprising that statues arguing that elite white men should hold the power in America became a rallying point amid the racial justice protests.


Contributing: The Associated Press

Follow N'dea Yancey-Bragg on Twitter: @NdeaYanceyBragg