Ever since the deadly violence in Charlottesville, Va., calls for removing Confederate memorials in Georgia have grown louder. If someone were to take up that task, they would have their work cut out for them. Georgia has the most Confederate symbols of any state after Virginia.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit advocacy group, compiled a list of Confederate symbols — statues, schools, counties, parks, courthouses and more — in the U.S. in a report titled "Whose Heritage?". While the analysis found Georgia had 173 symbols, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found the report had missed some names. We added them to the list, which puts the number of Confederate symbols in Georgia at 192 — the second-highest in the country.
Atlanta has the most symbols of any city; Savannah is second. Fitzgerald, a south Georgia city with less than 9,000 people, is third with 10 Confederate symbols. It must be noted that Fitzgerald was founded as a town for Civil War veterans — both from the Union and the Confederacy — and it has streets named for generals from both armies.
More than half the symbols are monuments, some situated in courthouses. About one-third are streets, roadways or highways named after Confederate generals and soldiers. The list also includes nine counties that are named after Confederate soldiers or politicians.
Six schools in Georgia are named after Confederate politicians — five them named after Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. Four of these Jeff Davis schools are in Hazlehurst, the county seat of Jeff Davis County.
The fifth one is in Trenton. The city of Atlanta has the sixth school, Joseph E. Brown Middle School, whose student body is 97 percent black.
Use the interactive map below to explore Confederate symbols in Georgia. Hover your mouse or tap over the circles to get more information about that symbol.
You can also take a look at Confederate memorials and symbols in metro Atlanta here.
Pete Corson contributed to this story.
Note: This analysis uses data provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The number of monuments in Georgia was changed from 194 to 192, since two streets in Fitzgerald — Logan Street and Thomas Street — are actually named after Union generals and had been mistakenly categorized as Confederate symbols by the SPLC. This brings the number of Confederate monuments in Fitzgerald to 10. If you know of more monuments or have updates about a symbol in your town, please email saurabh.datar@ajc.com.
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