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For years, cities and states have faced mounting pressure to remove statues and other symbols celebrating the Confederacy. The current racial justice movement is forcing Americans to reconsider these emblems – and in some places, they’re coming down.

• In Arkansas, Confederate monuments were removed in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, and there have been efforts in recent years to acknowledge the state’s history of racial violence. Last year, a memorial was built in Helena-West Helena to honor hundreds of Black people killed during the Elaine Massacre, a 1919 attack in response to sharecroppers’ attempts to organize for better pay. During the incident, hundreds of Black people were also arrested. A dozen, called the Elaine 12, were wrongfully convicted of murder and received death sentences.
• In 1961, a Confederate memorial was built near Dallas City Hall, with statues for Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gens. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston. Last year, the Dallas City Council voted to remove it, but that effort was stalled by a lawsuit filed by a pro-Confederate statuary group called Return to Lee Park. Earlier this month, an appeals court ruled in favor of the city, and the monument was taken down yesterday.
• In Charleston, South Carolina, the city council voted unanimously to remove a statue of John C. Calhoun, a former vice president, senator and slavery advocate. In an editorial supporting the move, the Charleston City Paper wrote: “For too long, the statue has been a vivid reminder of a white elite that built Charleston’s antebellum wealth on the backs of enslaved Africans.”
• Some background: These monuments were less about preserving history than the racist values that set the foundation for the Confederacy. Most were built decades after the Civil War ended, and their existence coincided with Jim Crow laws in the early 1900s and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s. Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that 780 Confederate monuments are in public spaces in the United States.
• The California State Parks system may rename a Folsom recreation area called Negro Bar, which was the subject of a petition two years ago. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names bans just two words, both racial slurs, and “negro” isn’t on the list.

Covid cases rise around the country

• Yesterday, state health departments reported the highest number yet of new infections in a single day, and according to a Washington Post analysis, seven states are breaking their records for coronavirus hospitalizations.
• Texas is one of the states with increased numbers of hospitalizations, pushing some intensive care units beyond their capacity. In the Houston and Austin areas, local officials may use convention centers and stadiums to treat an overflow of patients if the need arises. In an email to staff, Houston Methodist hospital system CEO Dr. Marc Boom warned, “Should the number of new cases grow too rapidly, it will eventually challenge our ability to treat both COVID-19 and non-COVID 19 patients.”
• In some states, health departments have rolled back the amount of covid data they make public. Mississippi went days without reporting its covid numbers, just as they were reaching new highs. And after Tennessee stopped releasing information on outbreaks at nursing homes, Tennessean reporter Brett Kelman started his own database.
• In Washington’s Yakima County, agricultural workers are hard-hit. At least 1,000 food processing and agricultural workers have tested positive for the coronavirus in the last month.
• With public health top of mind, some doctors and nurses are running for public office.

New on our podcast

• We spoke with Morgan State University associate professor Jason Johnson about the news industry’s failure to recruit and empower Black journalists.
• Dylan Goforth, editor in chief of the Tulsa-based investigative news site The Frontier, gave us some context on what President Donald Trump’s rally last weekend meant to Tulsans and how the city and state responded to the event.

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Send me feedback, questions and tips: bryant@bigiftrue.org and 405-990-0988.

– Mollie Bryant