Symbols of Oppression: The Role of Confederate Monuments in the Great Migration

• Authors: Francesco Ferlenga.
• BSE Working Paper: 1520 | October 25

Dominant groups have long used public monuments to project their power and narrative. How do divisive monuments affect where dissenting groups choose to live? I show that the construction of Confederate monuments in the U.S. South—supported by whites and opposed by Black Americans—reduced Black population shares via out-migration. To isolate the causal effect of monuments from local ideology, I employ an instrumental variable strategy based on connection to a key monument producer. An online experiment corroborates the historical analysis, showing that Black respondents today are less likely to accept job offers in hypothetical cities visually associated with Confederate monuments.