Preservation Law and Confederate Monuments

Statues and monuments are just one of the ways that society commemorates people, places, ideas, and other landmarks in time. They embody symbolic significance to the people who erect them and to those who experience them generations later. In order to preserve history, local, state, and national government systems in the United States have enacted laws to protect them, but as public opinions and societal norms have shifted through the years, many citizens feel that some monuments, specifically those commemorating the Confederacy in the southern United States, should not continue to stand. In this study, research was conducted using public documents and records to discover what specific protections historical monuments have under the law, on the federal and local levels, but also specifically in the state of South Carolina. The stories behind several South Carolina Confederate monuments were discussed for historical context, and an expert in monument preservation was interviewed for further information on SC state policy and the public controversy surrounding the monuments. Based on the information gathered, it could be concluded that monuments in the United States are heavily protected, and some states, especially South Carolina, have further protections that make it very difficult to legally remove or change them, though it is not impossible