An Enduring Legacy?

For some, this memorial to Jefferson Davis evokes heritage and history, while for others it symbolizes hate and underscores an intent to exclude African Americans from public life and civil liberties. It was placed here during the modern civil rights movement in the 1950s, when a wave of Confederate monuments and the renaming of public buildings and spaces accompanied resistance to the Supreme Court's invalidation of segregation. In some Virginia cities and counties, schools were closed in "massive resistance," justified as a states' right to determine relations between black and white people. New memorials such as the arch celebrated Confederate heroes as defenders of an unfairly oppressed region in opposition to that federal ruling.

Hampton, Virginia · United States