No Common Ground, Second Edition: Confederate Monuments and the Fight for Racial Justice

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 today’s 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 sentiment--suppressed during the Jim Crow era--reemerged 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 2020--from George Floyd’s murder to the removals, legal battles, and federal actions that followed--revealing a nation still divided, with no common ground in sight.

Karen L. Cox is professor emerita of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.