>But that is not when or why most were built. Most were build in the 1900-1920 timeframe, when in response to increasing pushes for equality for blacks states w

>But that is not when or why most were built. Most were build in the 1900-1920 timeframe, when in response to increasing pushes for equality for blacks states were enacting Jim Crow laws to try to limit that. Jim Crow laws were mostly enacted during the late 1800s, after the end of Reconstruction. There is very little that I can point to during the 1900s to 1920s as evidence of a substantial pro-civil rights for blacks push in the US. Teddy Roosevelt inviting Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House is pretty insignificant compared to, say, the Wilson (probably the most racist president in US history) administration's end of making federal jobs in DC available to blacks, or there being no blacks in Congress between 1901 and 1929. No, the major reason for those Confederate monuments being built in the 1900s-1920s is because of the increasing number of deaths of Confederate veterans from old age. (Similarly, the US's national WW2 memorial wasn't dedicated until 2004.)