I examine the meaning of Confederate Civil War monuments. I determine that they, along with lynching of black Americans, were inter-related parts of a media campaign to reject the results of the Civil War and to proclaim a belief in continued racism and a justification for the dominance of black Americans by whites.

1. Examining the Meaning of
Confederate Civil War Monuments
Greg Babinski, MA, GISP
URISA GIS-Pro Conference
New Orleans - September 30, 2019

2. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
“Greg – Don’t tell me we should remove civil war
monuments from public places. They are a symbol of
my southern heritage and culture.”
‘The medium is the message’
-Marshall Mcluhan

3. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Elgin Marbles (above)
Marcus Aurelius (left)
Many cultures erect monuments as
symbols of their heritage

4. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Where are these monuments?
Persians in Ancient Greece
Carthaginians in Ancient Rome
Nazis in Russia, France, Poland, Britain, or even in Germany
No monuments in the United States to the Redcoats and Hessians who fought
against the 13 Colonies in 1775-1783 and against the United States in 1812-1815
What about burial grounds?
Most civilized nation would not begrudge respectful burial grounds for their
enemies even on their own soil.
Many WWII German dead are buried in Russia, France, Poland, Britain and in the
land of other foes of the Nazis.

5. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
What about civil war monuments?
What is a civil war?
The goal of a civil war or interstate war is to change the government of a nation or
to achieve independence for a portion of an existing nation
Notable examples during the last 100 years include:
• Russian Civil War of 1918-1921
• Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939
• Chinese Civil War of 1935-1949
But the victors did not erect monuments to the vanquished side, nor did the
victors countenance the losers erecting monuments to remember those who fought
on their losing side.

6. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
What is culture and heritage?
Culture encompasses the social behavior, and norms found in human societies, as
well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities and habits of the
individuals in these groups.
Humans acquire culture through the learning processes of enculturation and
socialization, which is shown by the diversity of cultures across societies.
“Heritage" refers to events or processes that have a special meaning in group
memory

7. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
‘…government of the people, by the people, for
the people shall not perish from the earth.’

8. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
1865-1870: 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments
Reconstruction period: 1863-1877

9. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
The hypothesis of this paper is that Confederate Civil War monuments and place
names were intended as symbols of an undefeated belief in white racial superiority
and of continued hatred, exploitation, and intimidation of the black community.

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Charles Seguin and David
Rigby, National Crimes: A
New National Data Set of
Lynchings in the United
States, 1883 to 1941

12. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Charles Seguin and David Rigby, National Crimes: A New National Data Set of
Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941

13. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Charles Seguin and David Rigby, National Crimes: A New National Data Set of
Lynchings in the United States, 1883 to 1941

14. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Combined data from:
• Project HAL - Historical American Lynching Data Collection Project, University of
North Carolina, Wilmington:
(http://people.uncw.edu/hinese/HAL/HAL%20Web%20Page.htm)
• Whose Heritage? - Public Symbols of the Confederacy, Southern Poverty Law Center:
https://www.splcenter.org/data-projects/whose-heritage
Research limited to the 10 states covered by HAL Data:
• North Carolina
• South Carolina
• Georgia
• Florida
• Alabama
• Mississippi
• Louisiana
• Arkansas
• Tennessee
• Kentucky

15. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
During the era when most lynching occurred (1865 to 1920) national and
statewide media had limited impact.
Counties were a focus for most people in the study area – insulated from state and
national control in many day-to-day activities.
During this era, in order to declare local resistance to the Constitution, Federal
Law, and State statutes, subsets of some local white communities used various
visible indicators that declared their refusal to accept the outcome of the Civil War
and its impact on their local communities.
Two of these visible indicators are characterized by correlation in time and space:
• The placement of monuments in prominent places that glorified the Confederate
cause in the Civil War
• Extra-legal lynching of blacks
The temporal and spatial correlation between the spread of Confederate
monuments and incidents of black lynching exposes their true purpose.

16. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Summary research findings:
10 study states have a total of 875 counties
10 study states have 571 monuments
10 study states had 2412 documented lynchings
Total lynchings counties with monuments: 1456
Total lynchings counties without monuments: 956
Total counties no lynchings: 308
Total Counties no monuments: 480
Total lynchings per 875 counties: 2.76
Total lynchings per monument: 4.22
Total lynchings per county with monument: 4.76
Total lynching per county with no monument: 1.99
306 counties with monuments and lynchings: 306
Total counties with generational correlation between monument and lynchings: 253

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Did a lynching occur during the
same generation as a monument
was erected in a county?

25. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
2412 documented lynchings
is a statistic.
Timothy Snyder in
Bloodlands – We need to look
the individual victims of
genocide in the eye to
validate their humanity.
Each individual lynching
constituted the end of the life
of a brother or sister human.
100 years ago today in
Montgomery, Alabama, John
Temple was the third black
man to be lynched in three
days.

26. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
The records of Confederate Monuments and lynching of blacks show positive
spatial and temporal correlation.
Mcluhan would have recognized Confederate monuments and black lynching as
inter-related components of an organic media campaign: Rejection of the equality
of all Americans that the end of the Civil War and of the destruction of the
Confederacy should have achieved.
The meaning of Confederate monuments in the future needs to be defined and
discussed in terms of their original purpose.

27. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Future research regarding the meaning of Confederate monuments:
• Analyze Monroe Today lynching data
• Examine temporal and spatial correlation between monuments and the Ku Klu
Klan and other regimes
• Examine the racial makeup of individual counties when monuments were
erected
• Other suggestions?

28. Examining the Meaning of Confederate Civil War Monuments
Erecting confederate civil war monuments is protected by First Amendment
Freedom of Speech.
But freedom of speech includes to right to question the meaning of civil war
monuments.
Contact information:
Greg Babinski, MA, GISP
gbabinski@gmail.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-babinski-b7042b6/