No Common Ground, Second Edition

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Debates over their meaning have sparked legislative battles, courtroom fights, and public protests that sometimes turn destructive. These conflicts have persisted for over a century, but never with todays intensity.In No Common Ground, historian Karen L. Cox examines the rise, preservation, and contestation of Confederate monuments. She explores what these statues meant to their builders and how movements arose to challenge them. Cox traces the forces behind symbols of white supremacy and how antimonument sentimentsuppressed during the Jim Crow erareemerged with the civil rights movement and grew after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders used gerrymandering and heritage laws to block removals, while civil rights activists fought to reclaim public space and history.This second edition includes a new preface tracing developments in the monument conflict since 2020from George Floyds murder to the removals, legal battles, and federal actions that followedrevealing a nation still divided, with no common ground in sight.