David Cunningham on Contesting Confederate Monuments (JP)

About this episode

David Cunningham discusses his research on the removal and relocation of Confederate monuments across the U.S. from 2015 to 2023.

David Cunningham joins John to speak about his pathbreaking article about visiting each of the 113 communities that removed or relocated Confederate symbols between 2015 and 2023. After discussing his co-authored Social Problems article, “Contesting Commemorative Landscapes” which first got him thinking about monument removal, he posits that “expungement, amplification, and repositioning” are three ways contemporary communities contest the monuments of the past.. The conversation from there ranges onward through various kinds of contested removal, ending with Cesar Chavez and his ongoing de-monumentalization. David is author of There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence and the award-winning Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era KKK,, a member of the City of St. Louis Reparations Commission and recently has been engaged in exploring political signalling in public art and monuments, including a forthcoming article on the political and cultural work of murals in Protestant and Catholic communities and in the interface areas that connect them in Belfast. His earlier Recall This Book episodes include on racialized…

People in this episode

Host: John

Guest: David Cunningham

Topics covered

• Confederate monuments
• monument removal
• commemorative landscapes
• political art
• community engagement
• historical memory

Keywords

• Confederate symbols
• monument contestation
• social problems
• public art
• political signaling
• racialized policing
• January 6th
• 2024 presidential election

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: City of St. Louis Reparations Commission

Books & works: Contesting Commemorative Landscapes, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence, Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era KKK

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