Cleveland County Confederate Monument

This statue stands over twenty feet tall, with a bronze Confederate infantryman standing on top with his battle kit and rifle, proudly facing North. it has the inscription "C.S.A." below standing for Confederate States of America, and is located at the center of downtown Shelby, directly in-front of the old Court house. This statue was erected in 1906, over fifty years after the Civil War ended, and the statue was funded by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and is still there today.

This statue has another inscription on the back which says "ERECTED BY: THE UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY NOV. 21 1906". This statue is one of more than four hundred and fifty statues paid for by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which were erected in towns all across the South. This was apart of the UDC's main mission, to educate the youth of the South of the Heroic nature of Confederate soldiers, the glory of the South, and of the greatness the pre-Civil War South had.

The UDC had ties to other, more radical, Southern groups like the Ku Klux Klan, who were known for their violence and intimidation tactics. In recent years this statue has been a matter of controversy in the small town of Shelby where it resides. It has been seen less and less as a remembrance of a forgotten time and more as a " reminder of the Souths darker past when the Ku Klux Klan was active in Cleveland County and African Americans Faced wide spread oppression"^[1] . This has encouraged controversy over wether the Statue should be torn down, moved, or left alone. Despite this, the statue still remains where it has been for more than A hundred years, in-front of the old courthouse, at the center of Shelby, surrounded by other smaller memorials to fallen soldiers from Shelby, in Americas other wars.

1. Sitzes, Rebecca . Conversation about Confederate memorial in Shelby, Shelbystar.com. June 17th 2020. Accessed October 15th 2021. https://www.shelbystar.com/story/special/2020/06/17/conversation-about-confederate-memorial-in-shelby/43180035/.
2. Cleveland County Confederate Monument, Shelby, Doc.South.unc.Edu. Accessed October 15th 2021. https://docsouth.unc.edu/commland/monument/257/.
3. United Daughters of the Confederacy, hqudc.org. Accessed October 15th 2021. https://hqudc.org.
4. Cleveland County Confederate Monument, Shelby, American Legion. June 7th 2017. Accessed November 11th 2021. https://www.legion.org/memorials/237718/cleveland-county-confederate-monument-shelby.