Seeing the Bridge: The Lynching of James T. Scott and the Spectral Agency of Place

In the wake of the Charleston church shooting of 2015, several municipalities, most notably New Orleans, voted to remove Confederate memorials from their public spaces. One of these planned removals—of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia—triggered the Unite the Right rally of August 2017 and the tragic events that followed. In the aftermath, dozens of Confederate memorials across the United States have been removed or slated for removal. Collectively, these efforts represent a nationwide movement whose aim is to show the public how these sites glorify and assert white supremacy not just in the Jim Crow era when most were erected, but in the present day.