Civil War historian James I. Robertson Jr. said that the monuments were not a " Jim Crow signal of defiance " . He called the current climate to dismantle or destroy Confederate monuments as an " age of idiocy " , motivated by " elements hell-bent on tearing apart unity that generations of Americans have painfully constructed " . But Civil War historian David Blight asked : " Why , in the year 2016 , should communal spaces in the South continue to be sullied by tributes to those who defended slavery ? How can Americans ignore the pain that black citizens , especially , must feel when they walk by the John C. Calhoun monument , or any similar statues , on their way to work , school or Bible study ? " The removals were marked by events in Louisiana and Virginia within the span of two years . In Louisiana , after the Charleston church shooting of 2015 , the city of New Orleans removed its Confederate memorials two years later . A few months later , in August 2017 , a state of emergency was declared in Virginia after a Unite the Right rally against the removal of the Robert Edward Lee statue in Charlottesville turned violent
Charleston church shooting
Charleston church shooting
Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials