Monuments outlive history: Confederate monuments, the legacy of slavery, and black-white inequality

The conceptual linkages among Confederate monuments, slavery, and race suggest that Confederate monuments are relevant for explaining contemporary black-white inequality, yet we have little evidence on these relationships. I aim to further develop these possible connections. My analysis relies on a unique data set of Confederate monuments located in public spaces in the US South. I find that counties with Confederate monuments - specifically monuments inscribed with rhetoric glorifying either the soldiers as "heroes" or the cause as "pure" - have higher than expected levels of black-white poverty inequality. However, this relationship is stronger where the legacy of slavery is weaker, namely in counties with smaller historical concentrations of slaves. Confederate monuments are intertwined with a complex history, one that may continue to be reflected in the contemporary landscape of black-white inequality. The presented results are only suggestive, but they provide guidance for important avenues of future research.