In May 2024, a racial justice organization filed a lawsuit to have a 1902 Confederate monument removed from the front of the Tyrrell County courthouse in North Carolina. The monument bears the inscription, “in appreciation of our faithful slaves.” An attorney for the plaintiffs told reporters that the monument was erected “to communicate to people that members of the Black community could not expect to get justice inside of that courthouse” (Gamble, Reference Gamble2024). The plaintiffs argued that the placement of the statue in front of the courthouse constitutes a violation of equal protection laws, a claim similar to those made by others suing to remove Confederate statues from courthouse grounds in recent years. Indeed, many advocates argue that the placement of such statues in prominent public spaces, like courthouses, symbolizes white supremacist intimidation and has detrimental effects on Black people, particularly when on the grounds of justice-serving institutions (Milián and Bester, Reference Milián and Bester2021). In contrast, monument defenders claim that these statues are benign legacies of the past. Notably, monuments like the one in Tyrrell County are ubiquitous across the Southern United States. According to data collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center, of the approximately 500 remaining Confederate monuments left standing in the South today, two-thirds are on courthouse grounds.
Though much research has been conducted on the American public’s differing views on Confederate symbols themselves, less is known about how these monuments affect individuals’ interactions with public life. How do contested memorials impact the public’s interactions with specific public institutions? Specifically, how do Confederate monuments placed in front of a courthouse affect how people perceive those courthouses and the American justice system more broadly? As mounting legal challenges have arisen in the last decade that argue these monuments are unconstitutional in that they seek to discriminatorily intimidate, this research provides empirical evidence for these claims. Using a survey experiment among Black, white, and Latino residents living in the South, we find that the presence of a Confederate monument in front of a county courthouse leads Black and Latino Southerners to feel less safe or welcome there and lowers Black Southerners’ evaluation of the fairness of the judicial system, while white Southerners overall are unaffected. However, among white Southerners with greater racial prejudice, a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse actually enhances feelings of personal safety and welcomeness at the courthouse.
This study makes two contributions. First, it advances research on Confederate monuments in the U.S. and the comparative study of memorials more generally by focusing on the effects of these monuments. Existing research has firmly established the intents and interpretations of these symbols, showing that Confederate monuments were erected to further racist political causes (Cox, Reference Cox2003; Evans and Lees, Reference Evans and Lees2021; Henderson et al., Reference Henderson, Powers, Claibourn, Brown-Iannuzzi and Trawalter2021), that white and Black people view Confederate symbols very differently (Cooper and Knotts, Reference Cooper and Knotts2017; Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2021; Huffmon et al., Reference Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2017), and that whites with greater anti-Black racial prejudice are more likely to support Confederate symbols (Strother et al., Reference Strother, Piston and Ogorzalek2017; Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2021). There is a consensus in this body of research that the origins of, interpretations of, and support for these symbols are racially motivated. While recent work has explored the impacts of the removal of these monuments on the racial attitudes of surrounding communities (Rahnama, Reference Rahnama2025), less is known about the racially disparate effects of their presence. As current debates about Confederate monuments often center around their potential effects on the people who see them in public spaces, this study helps resolve some of those questions. In particular, it examines the effects of publicly displayed Confederate monuments on perceptions of the justice system and courts, an important way that American(s) interact with political life (Gastil et al., Reference Gastil, Deess, Weiser and Simmons2010).
Second, our study brings in Latino Southerners to a literature that has almost exclusively focused on Black-white dynamics. Because Confederate monuments were erected by white Southerners to reassert white supremacy over Black Southerners, most research on the racial dynamics around Confederate monuments has centered on this dichotomy. However, Latinos represent a growing racial minority, particularly in the South (Zong, Reference Zong2022), who thus also come into contact with these contested symbols.Footnote 1 There has been much debate about the extent to which Latinos will adopt common cause with, or identify with, other minoritized populations such as Black American(s), or instead have political opinions and behavior closer to that of whites (McClain et al., Reference McClain, Carter, Soto, Lyle, Grynaviski, Nunnally, Scotto, Kendrick, Lackey and Cotton2006; Bonilla-Silva, Reference Bonilla-Silva2017; Chan and Jasso, Reference Chan and Jasso2023). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first quantitative study of Latino attitudes toward Confederate monuments specifically.
White Supremacist Origins of Confederate Monuments
Scholars have long demonstrated that Confederate monuments were intentionally utilized to maintain white dominance. After a brief initial period of memorialization in which Confederate monuments were built to memorialize war dead (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2022), the vast majority of Confederate monuments were erected, framed, and politically protected in former Confederate states primarily to reinforce white supremacy (Brundage, Reference Brundage2018) and spread the Lost Cause narrative, which reframed the Confederacy as tragic and heroic (Lees, Reference Lees2021). Contrary to the “heritage not hate” argument forwarded by many proponents of Confederate monuments, these symbols were not primarily erected to memorialize dead soldiers, at least not after the initial period of monument-building during Reconstruction. For example, whether a Civil War battle was fought in a county did not affect whether a Confederate monument was built in that county, indicating they were not primarily about memorializing a particular local event (O’Connell, Reference O’Connell2022). Furthermore, while earlier monuments were often placed in cemeteries, by the turn of the twentieth century, they were increasingly being placed in public spaces (Evans and Lees, Reference Evans and Lees2021). By 1900, the most common design and location for Confederate monuments was a statue of a Confederate soldier erected in a courthouse square (Winberry, Reference Winberry1983), indicating a pivot away from private grief and toward symbolic politics.
The racist motivations for building Confederate monuments are evident in the explicit rhetoric of white supremacy and anti-Blackness exhibited by those who erected Confederate monuments,Footnote 2 as well as the political patterns contemporaneous to the building of these monuments. Many were erected by elite white civil society organizations, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, as a way to reinforce the Lost Cause narrative (Cox, Reference Cox2003; Evans and Sims, Reference Evans and Sims2021). Furthermore, Confederate monuments were more likely to be erected in Southern counties with strong pro-Confederacy organizations and higher antebellum enslaved populations (O’Connell, Reference O’Connell2022), as well as in counties with higher rates of Black lynchings (Henderson et al., Reference Henderson, Powers, Claibourn, Brown-Iannuzzi and Trawalter2021), indicating they were part of a broader effort to intimidate and terrorize Black people. Overall, Confederate monuments both reflected and reinforced the efforts by white supremacists to maintain racial hierarchy.
Public Opinion on Confederate Symbols
Although the historical evidence is clear that Confederate monuments were tools for white supremacist intimidation, not all American(s) view them this way today. Scholars have found that Confederate symbols are understood differently by white and Black American(s). Compared to Black people, whites have more favorable views of the Confederacy (Cooper and Knotts, Reference Cooper and Knotts2017), are more likely to oppose removing Confederate monuments (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2021), and are more likely to oppose the removal of the Confederate flag from state capitals (Cooper and Knotts, Reference Cooper and Knotts2006; Huffmon et al., Reference Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2017). Notably, those living in the South, where Confederate symbols are more prominent, are most deeply divided on this issue. Controlling for other individual factors, Cooper and Knotts (Reference Cooper and Knotts2006) find that white Southerners are less likely to support Confederate flag removal than white non-Southerners, whereas Black Southerners are more likely to support removal compared to Black non-Southerners. In a recent poll, 64% of Black American(s) support removing Confederate monuments from public spaces, compared to only 30% of whites (PRRI, 2024).
Beyond support and opposition, there are significant racial differences in how American(s) fundamentally understand the meaning of Confederate symbols. Research indicates that individuals from different racial backgrounds view the same visual symbol through very different lenses. One survey found that Black Southerners are more than twice as likely as white Southerners to say Confederate monuments represent racial injustice (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020). In his account of landscape inequity in Lexington, Kentucky, Clowney (Reference Clowney2013) describes how Black civic leaders felt about public squares with Confederate monuments, describing them as “not inviting,” “not a center for all,” and “not a comfortable place” (p. 15). In contrast, white Southerners are more likely to say Confederate monuments symbolize any meaning – Southern heritage, history that we cannot change, a Lost Cause, or past events to be learned from – more than racial injustice (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020). Thus, many whites have adopted a sanitized view of the Confederacy and have failed to recognize its racist origins. These views are potentially shaped by an interconnected combination of factors, including history, norms, and socialization. For example, these attitudes could in part stem from the long legacy of slavery and the white backlash to Emancipation and Reconstruction, as racial attitudes can be passed down across generations and communities (Acharya et al., Reference Acharya, Blackwell and Sen2016). Whites’ reluctance to view Confederate symbols as explicit racism may also be influenced by social norms that lead whites to refrain from seeing themselves (or being seen by others) as racist while at the same time upholding existing racial hierarchies (Mendelberg, Reference Mendelberg2001; Bonilla-Silva, Reference Bonilla-Silva2017). Furthermore, in many areas of the South, young people are socialized and educated to believe that slavery was a benevolent institution and the Civil War was primarily about states’ rights (Blight, Reference Blight2009; Brown and Brown, Reference Brown and Brown2010). Talbert (Reference Talbert2022) theorizes that race-neutral views of Confederate monuments among whites are due to the adoption of a colorblind “white racial frame” (Feagin, Reference Feagin2020) that primes antiblackness. These ways of thinking are not exclusive to white people; non-Black racial minorities can also adopt and endorse elements of this framing in order to avoid being the targets of whites’ animus (Feagin, Reference Feagin2020; Talbert, Reference Talbert2022). Ultimately, the adoption of Lost Cause and colorblind lenses through which white Southerners see Confederate symbols appears to be a sign that the rhetoric of groups like the United Daughters of the Confederacy was successful and enduring.
Contrary to claims that Confederate symbols are not racist, scholars have found that racial attitudes strongly predict support for them. Specifically, whites with greater anti-Black racial prejudice are more likely to support Confederate symbols (Clark, Reference Clark1997; Orey, Reference Orey2004; Strother et al., Reference Strother, Piston and Ogorzalek2017; Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2021; Hutchings et al., Reference Hutchings, Walton and Benjamin2010) and perceive them as symbols of Southern heritage rather than racism (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020) than whites who have low levels of prejudice. Furthermore, scholars have found that racial prejudice is a stronger predictor of support for the Confederate flag than Southern identity (Strother et al. Reference Strother, Piston and Ogorzalek2017), and Southern identity does not predict support for removing or recontextualizing Confederate monuments (Cooper et al., Reference Cooper, Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2021). Confederate symbols may also prime racism as well. In one experiment, exposure to the Confederate flag led to a lower likelihood of voting for Obama and more negative evaluations of Black people among whites (Ehrlinger et al., Reference Ehrlinger, Plant, Eibach, Columb, Goplen, Kunstman and Butz2011). In sum, this work suggests that both racial group membership and racial attitudes are deeply tied to views toward Confederate symbols.
Effects of Confederate Symbols
In the past decade, Confederate memorials received significant public pushback and a number were removed in two primary waves: following the 2015 massacre of Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, by a white supremacist, and after the killing of George Floyd by police in 2020. Scholars suggest that these focusing events may have had a liberalizing effect among white residents (Turner and Crabtree, Reference Turner and Crabtree2021). The 2015 Charleston shooting decreased South Carolinians’ support for continuing to fly the Confederate flag on statehouse grounds (Huffmon et al., Reference Huffmon, Knotts and McKee2017), and racial resentment decreased in areas where Confederate symbols were removed (Rahnama, Reference Rahnama2025). However, despite this progress, a large number of Confederate monuments have remained in place.Footnote 3 Given their continued presence in American public life, it is important to consider what impact they may have on people today. And though previous work has explored the range of factors that shape attitudes toward these symbols and the impacts of their removal, we know comparatively little about how their presence affects attitudes.
Confederate symbols, such as statues, can both reflect existing political dynamics and enhance them, directly impacting the people who live in the communities where they are erected. Statues and other public symbols can signify a commitment to the ideas they represent (Bodnar, Reference Bodnar1992) or signal commonly recognized political ideas, such as when candidates use American flags to demonstrate their patriotism (Kalmoe and Gross, Reference Kalmoe and Gross2016) or when group members use political symbols to signal in-group unity (Callahan and Ledgerwood, Reference Callahan and Ledgerwood2016). Symbols representing or promoted by the state hold significant influence when in public spaces, conveying shared values, resource access, and governmental priorities (Sinclair-Chapman, Reference Sinclair-Chapman2018). For symbols as prominent and contested as Confederate monuments, they can send strong signals about who belongs and who does not, or who has the rights of a full citizen and who does not. As the Confederacy was an inherently racist and secessionist movement, American(s) from different backgrounds may see that Confederate monuments represent particular interests—the interests of those who support or feel empowered by the cause that the Confederacy represented. However, whites in particular belong to the group whose interests were protected by the Confederate cause, while Black people belong to groups whose interests were harmed by the Confederate cause.
The negative effect of Confederate monuments on Black Southerners has a long historical precedent. For example, in counties that constructed Confederate monuments, there were higher rates of Black lynchings (Henderson et al., Reference Henderson, Powers, Claibourn, Brown-Iannuzzi and Trawalter2021) and higher rates of Black out-migration (Ferlenga, Reference Ferlenga2023). Moreover, using a survey experiment, Ferlenga (Reference Ferlenga2023) finds that Black Southerners were significantly less likely to say they would accept a job offer in a city with a Confederate monument, an effect twice the size of that for white Southerners. There is also evidence suggesting that government-sponsored efforts to support or protect Confederate symbols—such as state laws preserving Confederate monuments—cause a decrease in feelings of community belonging in one’s state among Black Southerners (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020). As symbols of explicit, targeted violence, exposure to Confederate symbols can also be a form of trauma and emotional harm. For example, in one study, exposure to Confederate flag imagery led Black people, particularly those who have a higher linked fate, to show physiological signs of emotional distress (Orey et al., Reference Orey, Baptist and Sinclair-Chapman2021). In contrast, there is a reason to believe that white American(s) are overall not negatively affected by Confederate symbols, as their group interests are not ultimately harmed by the political sentiment underlying Confederate symbols. For example, informing whites about monument protection laws in their state did not affect feelings of belonging (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020).
Confederate Monuments and Courthouses
To understand how Confederate symbols in public spaces affect perceptions of public institutions, we focus on Confederate monuments on courthouse grounds, as these symbols are both ubiquitous and placed in locations intended to undermine Black Americans’ rights as full citizens. While Confederate symbols can take many forms, Confederate statues have proven to be enduring, as they are integrated into the landscape and physically difficult to remove. As of writing, seven Southern states have passed laws in the past decade to prevent the removal, renaming, or relocation of historic monuments, sometimes singling out Confederate monuments for such protection. Not only does this suggest that, for the time being, many Confederate monuments will continue to occupy public spaces, but it also sends a powerful signal about the status of those whose ancestors are glorified by these symbols and those whose ancestors were enslaved by the leaders of the Confederacy. The vast majority of Confederate monuments still standing are placed in former Confederate states (Southern Poverty Law Center 2022). Of these monuments, approximately 63% are on courthouse grounds. Other, less common locations include colleges (11%) or government offices (8%). This suggests that one of the most common ways people will come into contact with Confederate monuments is via justice-serving institutions.
Although the symbolic imagery of the court system, such as black robes, gavels, and legal language, lends the courts credibility in the eyes of the American people (Gibson and Caldeira, Reference Gibson and Caldeira2009), not all groups view the courts or the justice system the same way. Black and Latino American(s) tend to have more negative attitudes toward the courts and the judicial system’s legitimacy, fairness, and openness. For example, Black and Latino American(s) have more negative assessments than white American(s) of differential treatment, fair procedure and outcome, and concern and respect in the courts (Sun and Wu, Reference Sun and Wu2006) and lower baseline levels of support for the legitimacy of U.S. courts than white American(s) (Gibson and Caldeira, Reference Gibson and Caldeira1992). Furthermore, Blacks and Latinos have stronger perceptions of procedural injustice (perception that the courts are biased, disrespectful, and untrustworthy) when they interact with the court system than white American(s) (Longazel et al., Reference Longazel, Parker and Sun2011). This is partly because Black and minoritized communities experience higher rates of targeting by law enforcement and the carceral system (Alexander, Reference Alexander2012) and are discriminated against during sentencing (Pratt Reference Pratt1998). For example, Black people with recent court experience feel more negatively toward the court than those without recent court experience (Longazel et al., Reference Longazel, Parker and Sun2011). These negative interactions with the justice system can demobilize Black and brown communities, dampen their engagement with democratic institutions (Burch, Reference Burch2011; Burch, Reference Burch2013), and sow distrust toward public institutions (Weaver and Lerman, Reference Weaver and Lerman2010).
The implication of these findings for the context of Confederate monuments standing physically outside courthouses is profound. Drawing together the research on the impact and history of Confederate symbols (which finds deep connections between historical white supremacy and contemporary views of these symbols) and racial differences in perceptions of the courts, the presence of Confederate symbols in front of courthouses could exacerbate already existing racial disparities.
Importantly, many Southern courthouses are the centers of county seats, which in Southern states whose infrastructure was significantly damaged in the wake of the Civil War, such as Georgia, were deliberately planned as the centers of commerce and public life of the county during Reconstruction (Gåddie and Evans, Reference Gåddie and Evans2021). The effect is that courthouses are often at the physical center of public life, and thus, Confederate monuments in front of courthouses serve to remind members of both dominant and subjugated groups that the racial hierarchy will be maintained.
If Confederate monuments are seen as symbolizing exclusionary politics, benefiting only certain groups (white American(s), particularly those who support white supremacy), and implicitly supporting a violent and secessionist cause, then the presence of such prominent symbols outside the institutions of justice would be expected to alienate non-white people, Black people in particular. Given how these monuments, many of which remain in place today, were intentionally erected to maintain white dominance, we consider the impact that Confederate monuments placed on courthouse grounds have on Southerners of different racial identities.
Theoretical Expectations
We theorize that when made aware that a Confederate monument is on courthouse grounds, those of different racial identities will respond with divergent reactions. Building on previous research on public signals as symbols that convey messages about the status of groups, we theorize that monuments and memorials operate as symbols that signal different things to different people depending on their position in society. Objects such as memorials speak, meaning they communicate messages (Foote, Reference Foote2003). When placed in a public space like a courthouse square, these statues become a form of government speech, even when such statues were donated by private groups (Dolan, Reference Dolan2008). They become markers of status, signaling which groups are favored and which are cast out by the government that endorses their meaning by displaying them prominently and even protecting them through law (Mendelberg, Reference Mendelberg2022). However, the interpretations of these messages depend on one’s point of view. This is because Confederate monuments represent a history of war and subsequent conflict over hierarchy that is directly tied to race.
To Black Southerners, who are more likely to view Confederate monuments as symbols of racism (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020), we theorize that a Confederate monument on courthouse grounds conveys a message of racialized institutional exclusion. We expect that it sends the signal to Black American(s) that the institution is endorsing a movement—the Confederacy—that fought to subjugate Black people and that it does not prioritize their inclusion today.
To white Southerners, who are more likely to view Confederate memorials as representing the Lost Cause or race-neutral narratives (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020), we theorize that a Confederate monument will not send strong exclusionary signals. White Southerners are not historically the direct exclusionary targets of these monuments or of the racial hierarchy that Confederate symbols were erected to reinforce, and thus, we do not anticipate that awareness of such monuments will elicit strong negative reactions from them. Given that whites are not as likely as Black people to connect these symbols directly to racial hatred, they are more likely to see them as benign artifacts of public landscapes.
Importantly, we highlight that the awareness of a Confederate monument is critical to signaling. If people are unaware that a monument is associated with the Confederacy, we would not anticipate that it would have such racially disparate responses. And there is evidence that Southerners are cognizant that these symbols exist around them. A 2024 nationally representative survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found that 42% of Black Southerners and 33% of White Southerners report being aware that a Confederate monument is currently in their community. Notably, as of writing, 36% of counties in Southern states contain at least one active Confederate monument (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2022).
We expect that Confederate monuments will negatively affect Black people’s perceptions of the courts, while having no significant impact on white people’s views. We anticipate these effects to manifest in two distinct ways: shaping both immediate attitudes toward the courthouse (“open courts”) and broader views of the justice system (“procedural justice”).
We begin by theorizing the direct impact of Confederate monuments on perceptions of public spaces, particularly courthouses. The quality of public spaces is often assessed based on their inclusivity, safety, and comfort for members of the public (Mehta, Reference Mehta2014). In the context of courts, many state constitutions include “open courts” clauses, which guarantee public access to court proceedings. These clauses are designed to promote transparency and accountability in the judiciary, ensuring that justice is administered openly to the public. As we have documented, Confederate monuments can serve as intimidating symbols, particularly for Black Southerners, due to their historical association with racial violence and marginalization. Their presence in front of courthouses—institutions that are intended to be impartial and just—can create an environment that feels unwelcoming or unsafe for individuals who view these monuments as representations of racial hatred. Intimidation in this context refers to the emotional and psychological impact that such symbols can have on individuals (Orey et al., Reference Orey, Baptist and Sinclair-Chapman2021), potentially deterring them from feeling comfortable or confident in seeking justice, participating in judicial processes, or even just attending public meetings. This undermines open access by creating a barrier to equitable access and participation in the justice system. Therefore, we expect that among Black Southerners, the presence of Confederate monuments should lead them to feel less safe or welcome at the courthouse, or to have lower open court evaluations. Alternatively, given that white Southerners are generally more supportive of Confederate symbols and these symbols are not directly attacking their identity, we expect that they overall will not perceive these monuments in ways that lead them to see the courthouse in a negative or threatening light. Thus, Confederate monuments should have no effect on their perceptions of the courthouse.
• H1a: Among Black Southerners, the presence of Confederate monuments will decrease feelings of safety and welcomeness at the courthouse (open courts).
• H1b: Among white Southerners, the presence of Confederate monuments will not affect feelings of safety and welcomeness at the courthouse (open courts).
Symbols do more than shape perceptions of specific spaces; they also convey messages about institutional values (Sinclair-Chapman, Reference Sinclair-Chapman2018). In addition to shaping views of the actual courthouse, we posit that a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse could have broader implications for Black and white Southerners’ views of the fairness of the justice system, otherwise known as “procedural justice” (Tyler, Reference Tyler2003). Procedural justice encompasses perceptions of the fairness, transparency, and impartiality of legal proceedings and the judicial system as a whole. For Black Southerners, the presence of a Confederate monument may undermine trust and confidence in the judicial system. It may reinforce feelings of alienation and skepticism about the system’s ability to deliver fair and unbiased justice. Conversely, for white Southerners, who are less likely to see it through this lens, the presence of such a monument should not significantly alter their perceptions of procedural justice. These symbols do not challenge their identity, and thus we do not expect them to shape their views of the judicial system.
• H2a: Among Black Southerners, a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse will weaken perceptions of the fairness of the justice system (procedural justice).
• H2b: Among white Southerners, a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse will have no effect on perceptions of the justice system (procedural justice).
Given the historical ties to Confederate monuments, social scientists have almost exclusively focused on how Black and white American(s) relate to these symbols. However, as the U.S. grows increasingly racially and ethnically diverse, it is important to understand the attitudes of groups that fall outside of this dichotomy. On the one hand, some contend that other racial minority groups have experienced racial marginalization alongside Black American(s) and often identify a common cause with Black American(s) (Chan and Jasso, Reference Chan and Jasso2023). Latinos in particular, who comprise a growing portion of the U.S. population and a sizeable minority in the South, have exhibited racial solidarity with Black people, reporting higher levels of support for Black Lives Matter than white American(s) (Corral, Reference Corral2020). Latinos have also been disproportionately negatively affected by the criminal justice system. They are not as activated around reform of the justice system as Black American(s), but once activated, they can be quite supportive of criminal justice reform (Corral, Reference Corral2020). On the other hand, Latinos are not as progressive on many racial justice issues as Black American(s) are (Schaffner et al., Reference Schaffner, Ansolabehere and Shih2023). They have higher levels of racial resentment than Black people but lower levels than whites (Schaffner et al., Reference Schaffner, Ansolabehere and Shih2023), and many Latinos in the South exhibit antiblackness (Haywood, Reference Haywood2017), distance themselves from Black people by endorsing anti-Black stereotypes, and are more likely to identify with whites than Blacks (McClain et al., Reference McClain, Carter, Soto, Lyle, Grynaviski, Nunnally, Scotto, Kendrick, Lackey and Cotton2006). These patterns are consistent with work suggesting that as different racial and ethnic groups diversify the U.S., they fall into a racial hierarchy characterized by a desire to be closer to whiteness (Bonilla-Silva, Reference Bonilla-Silva2017). Among Latino immigrants, knowledge about U.S. politics can take time to acquire (Carlos, Reference Carlos2018), so depending on the composition of the Latino population (by generation removed from immigration) in an area, there may be varying levels of background knowledge on the debates around and meanings of these symbols. Given that Latinos, in particular, have demonstrated a level of support toward Confederate symbols that places them between those of Black and white American(s) (Talbert and Patterson, Reference Talbert and Patterson2020; Talbert, Reference Talbert2022), the effects of these monuments on Latinos could be similarly situated. In light of these competing tensions, we also explore what effects Confederate monuments might have among Latinos in regard to their perceptions of the courthouse and courts more broadly.
• R1 How does a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse affect Latino Southerners’ perceptions of safety/welcomeness of the courthouse?
• R2 How does a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse affect Latino Southerners’ perceptions of procedural justice?
Our hypotheses and research questions were preregistered with the Center for Open Science.
Data and Methods
To test our hypotheses, we fielded an original survey experiment evaluating how the presence of a Confederate monument on courthouse grounds shaped the way Black, Latino, and white people saw the courts. We specifically focus on those who live in former Confederate states,Footnote 4 who are more likely to encounter these monuments in everyday life.
Before the embedded experiment, respondents answered a series of demographic items. They were also asked whether their local community contained various public features (“In your town, city, or county in which you live, do you have any of the following? Check all that apply”), followed by a randomized list that included Confederate monuments, Vietnam War monuments, community centers, historic landmarks, a public library, parks and green spaces, hospitals, museums, and malls. Subjects were also asked questions that measured their political and racial attitudes. Racial attitudes were measured using the racial resentment scale, a standard measure of anti-Black racial attitudes among whites (Kinder and Sanders, Reference Kinder and Sanders1996). As attitudes toward Confederate monuments may also be closely tied to Southern identity, respondents were also asked about the degree to which they identified as Southerners. Respondents then completed a distractor task, followed by an attention check question used to screen out inattentive respondents.
After answering pretreatment items, respondents were asked to read a brief news report coming out of their state. All respondents were randomized to receive either the control or treatment (see Figure 1). The control condition included an image of a courthouse and a statement that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the courthouse’s construction. The treatment used the same image as the control condition but included the Confederate statue that is situated in front of the building, indicating that it is the 100th anniversary of the erection of the monument. The control is meant not to cue Confederate monuments at all but rather to get respondents thinking about a county courthouse in their own state. The courthouse and monument pictured is the Bartow County Courthouse, located in Cartersville, Georgia. The Confederate monument pictured in front of the courthouse was erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy and was dedicated on December 5, 1908. These images were selected for the experiment because they are realistic and not easily identifiable, helping us to avoid any potential biases that might result from using a courthouse in the survey that the respondents could recognize and view through any preexisting views about the particular monument.
Figure 1. Experimental Conditions.
After respondents read the treatment, they were then asked to complete a 5-item battery that was intended to gauge if they perceived the courthouse to be a safe and welcoming place for people like themselves (“Open Courts Index”). Respondents were then asked to respond to a 5-item battery that measured their perception of the court system more broadly (“Procedural Justice Index”), which is similar to the question wording used in previous studies (Sun and Wu, Reference Sun and Wu2006; Higgins et al., Reference Higgins, Wolfe, Mahoney and Walters2009). The wording of these questions is provided in Table 1. All court attitude questions were designed to measure how the respondent saw themselves in relation to the court, emphasizing subjective experience. This approach ensures that the questions capture the respondents’ perceptions as they directly relate to their own potential interactions with the courthouse and court system. By focusing on personal experiences, we aim to understand how individuals perceive their own treatment and place within the judicial environment.
Table 1. Dependent Variable Wording
In addition to these items, we also included a question to gauge whether, even if someone does not personally feel impacted or targeted by a Confederate monument, they may still see that it could be discriminatory to others. Following questions about the courts, we also asked respondents about their personal experience with the court system, as personal experience with the court system can shape court attitudes (Sun and Wu, Reference Sun and Wu2006).
Findings
Our study includes a total of 2,768 respondents recruited by the survey firm Lucid who took the survey in April of 2024.Footnote
5
This includes 893 Black, 921 Latino, and 954 White respondents. Internal reliability tests indicate both our Open Courts Index (
$\alpha $
= .78) and Procedural Justice Index (
$\alpha $
= .93) demonstrated high reliability. To obtain more precise treatment effect estimates, all models include preregistered control variables (age, Southern identity, state of residence, partisanship, gender, racial resentment, citizenship status, and whether respondents said that there was a Confederate monument in their community).
We begin by examining the impact that the treatment (a Confederate monument on courthouse grounds) had on perceptions of the courthouse (Open Courts Index). Table 2 presents the results of a series of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models that estimate the effect of the treatment by respondent race (white, Black, and Latino). As expected, we find that the treatment had no measurable effect overall on attitudes toward the courthouse among white respondents (Model 1). Conversely, among Black respondents (Model 2), the coefficient for the treatment condition is statistically significantly and negative (
$\beta $
= 0.06 on a 0–1 scale,
$p$
$ \lt $
0.01), suggesting that the monument led Black people to be significantly less likely to view the courthouse as safe and welcome compared to those in the control. These results provide support for our first hypotheses, H1a and H1b. Interestingly, answering R1, Latino respondents were also significantly less likely to perceive the courthouse as open when a Confederate monument was on its grounds (Model 3), although the coefficient on the treatment term is smaller than the coefficient for Black respondents.
Table 2. Average Treatment Effects by Race on Perceptions of the Courthouse
Note: OLS estimates include covariate adjustment.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.
To test if the treatment effect for the Open Court Index is significantly different for Black, Latino, and white respondents, we pooled the data and included interaction terms in a single regression model, allowing us to directly compare the coefficients for the treatment effect across the racial groups. Model results are provided in Table 3. Model 1 includes both Latino and Black respondents. The coefficient for the interaction term (Treatment x Latino) is positive and statistically significant (
$p$
$ \lt $
0.05). This suggests that while both Black and Latino respondents perceived the courthouse as less safe/welcoming, this effect is even larger among Black respondents. The second model is similar to the first but only includes white and Latino respondents. The coefficient for the interaction term is not significant, indicating that the treatment effect for Latino respondents is not statistically different from the treatment effect for white respondents. Finally, the third model in Table 3 only includes white and Black respondents. Again, the interaction term is statistically significant (
$p$
$ \lt $
0.01), suggesting that the treatment effect for Black respondents is significantly different than that for white respondents.
Table 3. Comparative Treatment Effects by Race on Perceptions of the Courthouse
Note: OLS estimates include covariates.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.
Overall, these findings further support our first set of hypotheses (H1a and H1b), as these results suggest that the presence of a Confederate monument in front of a courthouse impacts different racial groups differently. Specifically, Black respondents perceive the courthouse as significantly less safe and welcoming compared to both Latino and white respondents when a Confederate monument is present.
Next, we examine whether the treatment shifted perceptions of courts as fair and just for people like themselves (Procedural Justice Index). The results of the models for each of the racial groups are shown in Table 4. We find that the presence of a Confederate monument had no significant impact on how white respondents saw the fairness of the justice for people like themselves, confirming our expectations in H2b. Furthermore, the presence of a Confederate monument had no significant impact on how Latino respondents saw the fairness of the justice for people like themselves, answering R2 with no definitive pattern. However, as we hypothesized in H2a, Black respondents in the treatment condition had significantly weaker perceptions of procedural justice than those in the control. This finding supports our expectations that a Confederate monument will lead Black respondents to see the courts as being less fair toward people like themselves, but will not produce a significant effect among whites in the aggregate.
Table 4. Average Treatment Effect by Race on Perceptions of Courts
Note: OLS estimates include covariates.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.
Prior research demonstrates that perceptions of and reactions to Confederate symbols have strong ties to anti-Black racism, particularly among whites. Thus, we also explore how the effect of the presence of a Confederate monument varies by racial resentment among white and Latino respondents. To explore this possibility, we respecified the models to include an interaction between the treatment condition and racial resentment for each of our two sets of dependent variables (Open Courts and Procedural Justice). The models, for both white and Latino respondents, are presented in Table 5. We find there are statistically significant interaction effects between racial resentment and the treatment condition for perceptions of the courthouse (Open Courts) for both white (Model 1) and Latino (Model 3) respondents. To better facilitate interpretation, we plot the predicted values for Models 1 and 3 by treatment group and across the full range of racial resentment in Figure 2. Overall, among whites, the more racially resentful a respondent is, the more likely they are to say that the courthouse appears safe/welcoming to them. However, this relationship is weaker for those in the control condition than for those in the treatment condition. The figure indicates that among whites who have low levels of racial resentment, a Confederate statue led them to perceive the courthouse as less welcoming/safe for them personally. However, among those who rank high on racial resentment (about .8 or higher on a 0–1 scale), those in the treatment condition said the courthouse was more welcoming. This suggests the presence of a Confederate symbol on public grounds may enhance belonging for racially resentful whites, while diminishing it for those who are less resentful. This is striking: the Confederate monument seems to have similar effects for less racially resentful whites as it does for racial minorities, while it makes the most racially resentful whites feel a stronger sense of welcomeness. On the other hand, Figure 2 indicates that among Latinos, racial resentment appears to have only a moderating effect among those with low levels of racial resentment. In particular, for Latinos who are less racially resentful, the treatment led them to say they would feel less welcome/safe in the courthouse. Overall, racial resentment appears to play a key moderating role in how white and Latino participants responded to the treatment, but this effect is strongest among white respondents.Footnote 6 For attitudes toward procedural justice, we recreate the same predicted value plots, which can be seen in Figure 3. We see no strong interactive effect of racial resentment for either whites or Latinos.
Table 5. Average treatment effect among white and Latino respondents, with racial resentment as a moderating variable
Note: OLS estimates include covariates.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.
Figure 2. Predicted values of the Open Court Index, by treatment condition and level of racial resentment for white and Latino respondents.
Figure 3. Predicted values of Procedural Justice Index, by treatment condition and level of racial resentment for white and Latino respondents.
So far, we have examined if a Confederate monument in a front of a courthouse affects the way white, Black, and Latino Southerners see the courthouse as a place that is open, safe, and welcoming to them personally (open courts), and how it affects their perceptions of equal justice for people like themselves (procedural justice). Continuing our examination of procedural justice, we were also interested if the presence of a monument signals something about serving some group interests more than others. For example, while a white person might not feel personally impacted by a Confederate statue, they might recognize that it signals the exclusion of others. Thus, we asked if they perceived the courthouse to be a place that serves the interests of all of those in the community, or just select groups or interests. Using this question as our outcome variable, we estimated a binary logit model for each of the three groups (Table 6). Interestingly, across all racial groups, those in the treatment condition were significantly less likely to say the courthouse served the interests of all. To visualize these differences across groups, in Figure 4, we illustrate the proportion of respondents saying the courthouse serves all by experimental condition for each of the three racial groups. Consistent with prior scholarship, baseline responses (in the control condition) indicate that Black participants were less likely to say the courthouse served all than White or Latino participants. However, when a Confederate monument is present, the portion of respondents who say the courthouse serves all declines among all groups, but the magnitude of this difference is largest among Black respondents.
Table 6. Effect of Confederate Monument in Front of Courthouse by Race
Note: Logit estimates include covariates.
*p < 0.1; **p < 0.05; ***p < 0.01.
Figure 4. Proportion who say “Courthouse serves all” by treatment condition and race.
Discussion
Throughout the Southern United States, a number of lawsuits have been filed against local governments challenging the legality of Confederate monuments in public spaces, particularly on courthouse grounds. Activists argue that Confederate monuments serve as tools of white supremacist intimidation and should not be placed on the grounds of public, justice-serving institutions. Specifically, they argue that these monuments send signals that actually hinder Black people’s access to an open and fair court system. By using an original survey experiment to determine the causal effect of Confederate monuments on courthouse grounds among Southerners of different racial identities, our findings provide some initial empirical evidence for these claims. Our findings suggest that Black people, and to a lesser degree, Latinos, report feeling less welcome, comfortable, and safe going into a courthouse when they are made aware that a Confederate monument is on its grounds.
At the aggregate level, whites’ attitudes toward the courthouse appear unchanged by the presence of a Confederate monument. But this masks a polarizing divide driven by racial attitudes: racially resentful white Southerners reacted more positively to the courthouse when a Confederate monument was present, whereas those with less resentment responded more negatively. When it comes to more racially resentful white Southerners, their positive reaction to the Confederate monument could be driven by a number of things: by a desire to reinforce the white supremacist ideals that are implicit in Confederate symbols, a consideration of the courthouse with Confederate monument in front of it in race-neutral terms, or even a backlash against what they perceive as the “woke” rhetoric of those seeking to remove Confederate monuments. This provides additional evidence that efforts during Jim Crow, which sought to re-frame the Confederacy as a states’ rights issue or Southern heritage (and have the white public embrace Confederate symbols), were successful in their messaging—at least to those whites with higher levels of racial resentment. When it comes to less racially resentful white Southerners, on the other hand, these respondents reacted to the presence of the monument in ways similar to Black Southerners, reporting that they found the courthouse less personally welcoming and safe. This response may reflect a heightened perception of how Confederate symbols function as racialized markers of exclusion, consistent with prior research that shows whites with low levels of resentment see Confederate symbols as signifying racial hatred (Britt et al., Reference Britt, Wager and Steelman2020). If they see the Confederacy as emblematic of racial injustice, they may feel that the courthouse is signaling support for values that they do not share, making them feel uncomfortable or out of place. Conversely, the low-racial resentment white respondents could be responding to social desirability bias, reflecting what they believe the progressive response to Confederate symbols is, when they report lower trust and belonging in the courthouse when a Confederate monument is there. Further research is needed to determine the (potentially various) causal mechanisms at play behind the divergent responses of racially resentful whites and less racially resentful whites. In total, the polarization of whites by racial attitudes supports our overarching theory that the effects of Confederate symbols are driven by perceptions of meaning. The finding that more racially progressive whites respond similarly to Black respondents underscores the idea that Confederate symbols carry racialized messages that influence perceptions of public institutions. Thus, the consequences of these symbols are not simply about racial group membership, but about how individuals perceive the racial meaning of these monuments.
In addition, as hypothesized, we find evidence that the presence of a Confederate monument negatively affects Black Southerners’ views of the court system more broadly. Particularly, we found it weakens their perception of procedural justice—the view that for people like them, courts are fair, just, and respectful. In contrast, Latinos’ and whites’ views of procedural justice were unchanged by the monument. Thus, the presence of a Confederate monument on courthouse grounds further delegitimizes the justice system in the eyes of many Black American(s), who have historically been and continue to be disproportionately harmed by the American criminal justice system (Alexander, Reference Alexander2012). Notably, the treatment appeared to have much stronger effects on attitudes toward the courthouse specifically (open courts) versus the courts more broadly (procedural justice). This may have been because of the nature of the treatment: respondents may not have been sufficiently cued to think about the whole court system based on reading about one specific monument. Future research should explore procedural justice in different ways, perhaps using treatments that more closely link this particular courthouse with the courts in general or exposing Southerners to knowledge about how widespread Confederate monuments on courthouse lawns are. In addition, when asked if the courthouse appeared to serve all of the community or only specific groups, it is notable that all racial groups saw that the monuments undermine the ability of the courts to appear to serve everyone equally, including white Southerners.
We did not preregister expectations for Latinos, as this study is among the first to empirically investigate the dynamics of Latino public opinion toward Confederate symbols. We found that Latino Southerners were less likely to see the courts as open to them personally, but the size of this effect is smaller than the effect found among Black respondents. This finding is congruent with recent research (Talbert and Patterson, Reference Talbert and Patterson2020; Talbert, Reference Talbert2022) that suggests Latinos are situated in an in-between space between Blacks and whites, where they are less supportive of Confederate commemorations than white Southerners but more supportive than Black Southerners. These results position Latinos as significant yet ambiguous actors in the symbolic racial politics of the South. Future research could examine more deeply possible heterogeneity among Latino American(s), including how treatment effects may be moderated by generation or length of time in the South. Furthermore, more research is necessary to examine the attitudes of other racial and ethnic groups, such as those who are Asian, Middle Eastern, and/or Indigenous, in the memorial landscape and racial politics of the South.
There are important limitations to our study and a number of directions for future research. First, the treatment in our experiment was light, exposing respondents only to a picture of a courthouse with a monument in front of it and a caption mentioning that the monument is a Confederate monument erected 100 years ago. Alternative treatments, such as a video that embedded the monument more deeply in a detailed context of a local landscape, or even field-based exposure, could elicit stronger effects. Moreover, treatments that include more information on the origins and intentions behind monument erection may also elicit stronger reactions. Future research could also explore the proportion of people who recognize that Confederate symbols are associated with the Confederacy. Different people may engage differently with Confederate monuments in their real environments. While we contend that these monuments were intentionally placed in prominent, public spaces, it is possible that some people notice them more than others. As Charles Mills puts it: “the fish does not see the water, and whites do not see the racial nature of a white polity because it is natural to them, the element in which they move” (Mills, Reference Mills1997) (p. 76). This underscores the possibility that white individuals may overlook the significance (and racial implications) of these monuments, while Black individuals, who are directly impacted by the history they represent, may be more acutely aware of their presence and significance. More research is needed. Furthermore, local context can be significant and variable: local history around the acquisition of, age of, and debates around the monument, inscriptions on the monument (O’Connell, Reference O’Connell2020), and the placement of the monument all might matter for how someone responds to the treatment in our experiment. The benefit of our experimental design is that randomization should solve for the possibility that such variables impacted the results of our experiment, but deeper, qualitative, and more community-specific research designs should nonetheless pursue these topics. Our study was able to address the research question in an abstract, generalized way, but such an approach can be complemented by research designs that can address the nuances of these varied contexts.
In addition to the outcomes we used in this study, which measure abstract views of courts and courthouses, future work could also examine whether monuments are correlated with actual judicial outcomes. For example, do courts with Confederate monuments have higher rates of racial discrimination in sentencing? Recent research indicates that the presence of Confederate monuments is associated with anti-Blackness in surrounding areas (Rahnama, Reference Rahnama2025), so it is possible these monuments may also be associated with judicial outcomes for those who walk past them through courthouse doors. Moreover, recall that courthouses are not just for court proceedings. The courthouse has historically functioned not only as a local center of law and government but also as a meeting place, cultural hub, and social gathering space. As one of the centers of civic life, future work may explore how Confederate symbols on the courthouse ground shape a variety of forms of public civic engagement.
The Confederacy and its supporters, generations after the Civil War, left their mark on the American landscape in both overt and subtle ways—from Confederate flags flying atop state capitols to streets named after lesser-known Confederate soldiers. While we argue courthouse monuments are immediately visible and explicitly tied to state power, other forms of Confederate symbols could operate more subtly. It is possible that street and school names could incite similar feelings of exclusion. For example, in a qualitative study of educators across the South, Black educators at schools named for Confederate leaders perceived the names as symbolic forms of violence, reinforcing historical power structures (Ferguson, Reference Ferguson2019). Future research could explore whether these subtler forms of Confederate memorialization produce similar effects on attitudes toward public spaces and institutions, and for whom.
This study focuses on Confederate monuments in the South, as it arose from a widespread campaign, largely shaped by the efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (Cox, Reference Cox2019), to reinforce racial hierarchy, and their role in public spaces in the South remains deeply contested. But certainly other symbols of exclusion and marginalization exist in other regions of the U.S. In Northern and Midwestern states, for example, statues of historical figures with ties to slavery or colonialism, schools named after figures associated with exclusionary policies, or remnants of former sundown towns (Loewen, Reference Loewen2005) may also be symbols that shape perceptions of spaces. Although the historical context differs, the broader theoretical mechanism—that public symbols communicate messages about inclusion and exclusion—certainly extends beyond the South and beyond Confederate symbols.
Finally, beyond the United States, there is a reason to think that certain kinds of local memorialization, especially when focused on humanizing victims, can have other kinds of impacts. For example, in Berlin, the presence of Stolpersteine (small memorials in front of the last homes where victims of the Nazis lived before they were killed) decreased the far-right AfD party’s vote share (Turkoglu et al., Reference Turkoglu, Ditlmann and Firestone2023). In Norway, writing messages on spontaneous memorials to victims of a terrorist attack allowed everyday people to influence political society through vernacular memorialization (Døving, Reference Døving2018). In Rwanda, genocide survivors working to preserve artifacts and serving as tour guides to genocide memorials report feeling that they were helping to shape political life through remembrance (Ibreck, Reference Ibreck2010). As further public attention in the South is being devoted to creating memorials that more accurately reflect American history, future scholarship might explore the potential positive implications for memorials that seek to bring about reconciliation and healing.
This study makes two major contributions by advancing research on Confederate monuments by focusing on the effects of these monuments and incorporating Latino Southerners into the study of Confederate symbols, which has primarily focused on white and Black individuals. Our findings have significant real-world implications, as hundreds of Confederate monuments currently remain on courthouse lawns throughout the South. Although these monuments are visual symbols rather than physical barriers to equal access to the law, we find that they can alter Black Southerners’ attitudes toward public institutions and spaces such as courthouses, indirectly conflicting with people’s legal rights and undermining equality in such spaces. Our findings also have important implications for efforts to remove monuments. Despite the removal of many monuments in the South, a large number remain standing, with monument protection laws preventing their removal in many Southern states.
In the context of a legal and criminal system marked by racial disparities, Confederate monuments on court grounds represent a form of symbolic racism that signals racial hierarchies not only to those who walk through its doors but also to the surrounding community. These monuments negatively impact Black and Latino Southerners while positively reinforcing symbolic politics for the most racially resentful whites, thus perpetuating values of white supremacy long after they were erected by white supremacists over a century ago.
Supplementary material
The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1017/rep.2025.10015.
Data availability statement
Replication data and code are available at the Harvard Dataverse at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/FXCLFU.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Asha Jones, Andreas Jozwiak, Ryan Williams, Leah Christiani, and Eroll Kuhn for their feedback on this project.
Funding statement
This research did not receive any specific financial support.
Competing interests
The authors declare none.
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