海角大神

Confederate memorials are under attack, from speeches to petitions to outright vandalism.聽

Last week, a white supremacist was charged with killing nine innocent black men and women. This week, flags and statues associated with the Confederacy have been tried and convicted before the suspected gunman sets foot in court.

Dylann Storm Roof聽is accused of opening fire inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church聽in Charleston, S.C., killing nine people. Images of Mr. Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag have surfaced since the deadly attack.

The fact that the Confederate battle flag has remained flying on South Carolina state property at full height has resonated in and outside the state. It has led to a campaign of petitions against the flag and others like it, as well as a spate of vandalism against public monuments to the Civil War. In Mississippi, Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn is calling to remove the Confederate battle emblem from their state flag: "As a 海角大神, I believe our state鈥檚 flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed."

On Tuesday, officials found that a Civil War memorial in Charleston's Battery had been spray painted with the words, 鈥淏lack Lives Matter,鈥� while a second historic statue, in a park near Emanuel AME Church, was also vandalized. Red spray-painted letters edited the John C. Calhoun statue in Marion Square, changing "Calhoun" to "Calhoun, racist" and adding "and slavery" to the epigram "Truth Justice and the Constitution." Mr. Calhoun was a prominent champion for slavery in the decades leading up to the Civil War, praising white supremacy and slavery as "."

Vandalizing Calhoun is nothing new, ; the Calhoun statue was defaced so regularly in the 1880s and '90s聽that the statute was placed on a much higher pedestal to discourage vandals.

Other memorials to the Confederate past are also facing negative attention. In Baltimore, Maryland, "Black Lives Matter" was spray painted in yellow on another statue honoring Confederate soldiers.

In Austin, Texas, students are using a different approach to rid themselves of an unwanted memorial. Hundreds of University of Texas students have signed a petition calling for the university to of Jefferson Davis, who was president of the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. "Given Jefferson Davis鈥� vehement support for the institution of slavery and white supremacy, we believe this statue is not in line with the university鈥檚 core values," says the petition.

鈥淚t鈥檚 times like this when the truth has to fight for its life,鈥� says Ben Jones, former Georgia congressman and spokesman for the (SCV), in an interview. 鈥淭hey are painting us with the broad brush of racism and nothing could be further from the truth. I personally fought the Ku Klux Klan many times and have the very real scars to prove it.鈥�

Mr. Jones refers to the call for the flag鈥檚 removal and the vandalism of the statues as attempts at 鈥渃ultural cleansing鈥� and 鈥渞evisionist history.鈥�

Revisionist history is not all bad, says Laura T. McCarty, vice president of the聽. 鈥淚n effect, all history is revisionist history, because it is put together after the fact and from a perspective," she writes via email. "Even if you photograph or videotape an event as it happens, you don't get every possible piece of evidence to provide the complete and only account of what happened and why.鈥�

Heidi Beirich, who directs the Intelligence Project for , agrees with Jones on only one point: 鈥淚t is vandalism. Whether you support or don鈥檛 support these Confederate memorials, that鈥檚 not the appropriate way to deal with backlash against racism. We shouldn鈥檛 be destroying historic things, period."

However, she told the Monitor, 鈥淭he cause of removing the Confederate battle flag from public property 鈥撀爊ot historical things, but public property 鈥撀爄s legitimate and the right thing to do."

鈥淔rankly, I would say the revisionists that exist are the pro-Confederate groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans,鈥� Beirich continues. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e the ones who are trying to whitewash the history of the Confederacy.鈥�

Jones disagrees. 鈥淲e鈥檙e not whitewashing anything," he says. "We鈥檙e honoring our ancestors. We鈥檙e not going to feel any different about our ancestors because of these attacks. It鈥檚 just going to make them feel bad and stubborn. I know that鈥檚 how I鈥檓 feeling.鈥�

Historian James Grossman, executive director of the in Washington, D.C., says via email, 鈥� 鈥楻emembering the Civil War鈥� has seldom (if ever) been the purpose of public display of the flag.鈥�

鈥淭he Confederate flag had very little presence in public life until 1948, and into the 1950s," he writes. It attained prominence as "a reaction to the civil rights movement and federal actions on behalf of the rights of African Americans."

Ms. McCarty, an author and historian, says, 鈥淧ublic memory is shaped by what people learn from their families, in school, as well as what they encounter in public spaces like the media, museums, squares, and capitol grounds."