Rewriting the Landscape

What happens when Confederate monuments fall into the hands of predominantly Black urban communities who have both the desire and the means to resist them? Framed by the author’s reflection of her past and recent engagements with the Confederate monument in her hometown of Florence, Alabama, this chapter explores the efforts of Black communities in Memphis, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama to intervene in the power of the Confederate monuments that they inherited after white flight. While the exact means of resistance are different in each community, their efforts are connected by a common desire to disrupt the illusion of permanence from which Confederate monuments gain their authority and thus disrupt their function as blueprints for the future. The chapter concludes with a meditation on Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War.