More Than 2,000 Confederate Symbols Still Standing Across the U.S.

More than 2,000 Confederate symbols are still standing in public spaces across the U.S., according to a report released Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Of those symbols, 685 are Confederate monuments, the nonprofit legal advocacy group based in Montgomery, Alabama, said. The remaining symbols are a mixture of government buildings, plaques, markers, schools, parks, counties, cities, military property, and streets and highways named after anyone associated with the Confederacy, the report said.

Americans remain divided on how to preserve the Confederate legacy. More than 50% of Americans support preserving the history of the Confederacy, a 2024 survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute poll found, views virtually unchanged from a survey conducted two years prior.

According to the poll, 81% of Republicans support preserving Confederate monuments, compared to 30% of Democrats.

58% of White Americans, 55% of multiracial Americans and 55% of Hispanic Americans support preserving them, compared to just 25% of Black Americans.

Meanwhile, less than 50% of Gen Zers support efforts to preserve the legacy and history of the Confederacy.

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The fourth edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report detailed the challenges that researchers called the “politics of Civil War memory,” citing recent name changes of two military bases as a setback that illustrates the “challenges of continuing the work.”

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The report also noted what it described as “setbacks” in the renaming of two public schools in Shenandoah County, Virginia, to Stonewall Jackson High School and Ashby-Lee Elementary School, honoring Confederate generals Stonewall Jackson, Turner Ashby and Robert E. Lee. {snip}

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