The Southern Poverty Law Center's Whose Heritage? project tracks these symbols, which include statues, school names, highways and military bases. Its research shows two building booms: the early 1900s, as Southern states passed Jim Crow laws, and the 1950s and 1960s, during resistance to the civil rights movement. Groups such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy paid for many statues and placed them at courthouses.
Removals sped up after a white supremacist killed nine Black worshippers at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015. They sped up again after the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and the 2020 protests over George Floyd's killing. The SPLC counted more than 400 Confederate symbols removed, renamed or relocated since 2015. Richmond took down its Robert E. Lee statue in 2021.
In 2023, the Army renamed nine bases that honored Confederates. In 2025, the Defense Department restored the old names by assigning them to different service members with the same surnames.