Confederate monuments and the history of lynching in the American South An empirical examination

The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching, an explicitly racist act of violence. We obtained and merged data on Confederate memorializations at the county level and lynching victims, also at the...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS Vol. 118; no. 42; pp. 1 - 6
Main Authors Henderson, Kyshia, Powers, Samuel, Claibourn, Michele, Brown-Iannuzzi, Jazmin L., Trawalter, Sophie
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States National Academy of Sciences 19.10.2021
Subjects
Aggression
Lynchings
Social Sciences
White supremacy
racism
Confederate symbols
backlash
lynching
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:The present work interrogates the history of Confederate memorializations by examining the relationship between these memorializations and lynching, an explicitly racist act of violence. We obtained and merged data on Confederate memorializations at the county level and lynching victims, also at the county level. We find that the number of lynching victims in a county is a positive and significant predictor of the number of Confederate memorializations in that county, even after controlling for relevant covariates. This finding provides concrete, quantitative, and historically and geographically situated evidence consistent with the position that Confederate memorializations reflect a racist history, one marred by intentions to terrorize and intimidate Black Americans in response to Black progress.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 23
Edited by Susan T. Fiske, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, and approved August 16, 2021 (received for review February 22, 2021)
Author contributions: K.H. and S.T. designed research; S.P. and M.C. analyzed data; and K.H., S.P., M.C., J.L.B.-I., and S.T. wrote the paper.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2103519118