BY AINSLEY CARRY

Founded in 1816, Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the oldest Black churches in the South. Black leaders in South Carolina were nurtured in this church and advanced to national prominence. Mother Emanuel—as referred to by locals—is the heartbeat of the Black community in Charleston, SC. On June 17, 2015, a twenty-one-year-old white male wandered into the predominantly Black church in time to join a weekday bible study session. The visitor was welcomed and sat through the hour-long session. As parishioners stood and bowed their heads in a closing prayer, the visitor revealed his true intention—to kill as many Black people as possible. He began shooting at parishioners with a Glock .45-caliber pistol, eventually killing nine of the twelve in attendance. The gunman walked out of the church and was arrested the following day. He worshiped the Confederate flag and was a self-proclaimed white supremacist.

The Charleston church massacre shined a light on the link between Confederate memorials and violent white extremism. Following the church massacre, South Carolina lawmakers ended a four-decade-long legislative stalemate and voted to remove the Confederate flag from statehouse grounds. Other tragedies, including the Charlottesville riots in 2017 and the murder of George Floyd in 2020, furthered uncovered this dangerous connection. These events prompted city officials to evaluate Confederate memorials in public realms. Mayors in several US cities—including New Orleans, LA; Baltimore, MD; Gainesville, FL; Memphis, TN; Austin, TX; and Louisville, KY—removed Confederate memorials. At the state level, Mississippi lawmakers approved a measure to remove the Confederate flag emblem from the state’s flag in 2020. The federal government passed a bill to examine 10 U.S. military bases named after Confederate soldiers in the 2020 renewal of the National Defense Authorization Act. From 2015 to 2020, the nation experienced the most significant reckoning of Confederate memorials in its history. Hundreds of monuments have been removed, yet more than 90 percent remain.

On campus, many universities heard renewed calls to remove controversial memorials. The most newsworthy disputes included John C. Calhoun at Yale University, Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University, Silent Sam at the University of North Carolina, and Robert E. Lee at the University of Texas. University campuses host thousands of memorials commemorating white supremacists and other controversial figures. In 2021, the University System of Georgia (USG) charged an Advisory Group to review named colleges and buildings at twenty-six state institutions. The Group identified 75 building names with ties to slavery and white supremacy. The Group recommended removing these names to align with contemporary values. However, the USG rejected the Group’s recommendations and left renaming decisions to individual universities.

The challenge: universities lack frameworks and principles to navigate complex memorial disputes. Although universities have progressed in cultural and racial representation, they have not paid adequate attention to commemorative landscapes. The diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) movement has expanded to include campus landscapes. A campus’ memorial landscape is the most overlooked aspect of systemic and structural racism. Memorials to Confederate soldiers and Ku Klux Klan leaders are not passive and insignificant; they embody decades of generational trauma and enduring consequences. Consequences remain active in American race relations, voting rights, health care, wealth gaps, and educational achievement. Campus memorial disputes are difficult to navigate and often devolve into shouting matches. Universities and Chief Diversity Officers need tools and frameworks to facilitate the conversation and negotiate meaningful solutions.

Is Washington Next?

In August 2017, protestors gathered in Charlottesville, VA., to protest a proposal to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Counter protestors gathered on the streets to support the proposal. Eventually, protestors and counter-protestors collided. A self-proclaimed white nationalist rammed his car at full speed into the crowd of counter-protestors, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. In response, then-President Donald Trump defended violent white extremism by casting blamed “on both sides.”  He also offered an equally offensive defense of Confederate memorials, Trump asked, “So, this week, it’s Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week?”

“Is George Washington next?” is not a rhetorical question. Memorials to national and world leaders are under scrutiny. Should America’s colonizers and founding fathers—Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, James Adams, Samuel Adams, John Jay, and many others—be exempt from examination? Does their involvement in setting the framework for a new nation and fighting for independence grant them untouchable status? Should their ownership of enslaved people and genocide of Indigenous people be ignored because they did other good deeds for the country? Cities and universities need frameworks to grapple with these difficult questions.

In Washington Next? Disputed Monuments, Honorees, and Symbols on Campus I analyzed 25 university responses to disputed memorials between 2015 and 2020, a period of intense debate on this topic. My research sought to answer two questions: What are students protesting? What patterns and themes are consistent among university responses? Stanford University, the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Clemson University, Princeton University, and 20 other universities are included in the analysis. In the book, “memorials” refer to statues, monuments, symbols, and building names. Honorees were called to account for colonization, segregation, eugenics, massacres, voter suppression, and Ku Klux Klan and Confederate leadership.

Confederate memorial controversies generated the most significant resistance from lawmakers and white conservatives. The Southern Historical Society, organized in 1869 by former Confederate soldiers, published volumes of misinformation about the Civil War. Southern journalists orchestrated a campaign to rewrite the cause and outcome of the Civil War. Edward A. Pollard’s “Lost Cause” mythology served as a template for the misinformation campaign. The campaign recast Confederate leaders as heroes, minimized slavery as an aggravating factor, and portrayed the North as the aggressors. They substituted treason with patriotism and inserted “southern culture” and “state’s rights” as the primary motivators for war. Confederate sympathizers used public schools, universities, courthouses, and government agencies to legitimize Confederate memorials. Confederate leaders including Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, P.G.T Beauregard, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, and Nathan Bedford Forrest were idolized in the alternative narrative of the war. Statues, monuments, and symbols became fundamental to the misinformation campaign.

The Four Frameworks

In the book, I advance a multi-frame model for memorial review. Many universities had adopted a single-issue lens (e.g., slavery, colonization, eugenics, segregation) to examine complex honorees and monuments. Yet honorees lived multifaceted lives, and single-issue thinking tended to undermine the depth of the dispute, silence diverse perspectives, and limit response options.  In my approach, every conflict is considered from the perspective of at least four frames: (1) what was the honoree’s principal legacy (2) what is worthy of being preserved, (3) how are marginalized communities impacted by the landscape, and (4) which moral standards – past or present – should be used to make decisions.

I was drawn to this work because I wanted to understand what impacted students so deeply about controversial building names and statues. Students were in tears about century-old memorials to segregationists and obscure Confederate symbols, but I wondered if there was something deeper involved. I realized, how universities settle memorial disputes and ignore racial attacks does not address the trauma of not being heard. The complex issues and emotional labor involved in memorial disputes mean that we have to elevate the conversation beyond names and statues. Universities are places where students, faculty, and staff join because of an alignment with an identity and set of values; they are disappointed when they discover memorial landscapes that contradict purported values. Campus landscapes embody who we are and who we want to become. Students and academic leaders need better tools to grapple with the contradictions of our world.

Dr. Ainsley Carry is the Vice President for Student Affairs and Honorary Professor of Teaching at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He previously served as Vice President for Students at Auburn University and the University of Southern California. Dr. Carry’s education includes higher education administration, counseling, business, and law.