Massachusetts’ Confederate memorial is the only one in New England

Massachusetts’ only Confederate memorial—a modest marker on Boston Harbor’s Georges Island that commemorates rebels imprisoned there during the Civil War—is the only one of its kind in New England and one of only eight public symbols of the Confederacy in the United States north of Maryland.

That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has done a count of Confederate memorials and monuments. The vast majority, not surprisingly, are in the old Confederate states—though it’s anyone’s guess how long those will survive in the wake of recent calls to remove them or to at least relegate them to museums.

As for the Massachusetts memorial, it remains boarded up as state authorities decide what to do with it. Its placement in a National Historic Landmark appears to be complicating its removal, though such a removal does seem imminent.

Interestingly, the Georges Island marker missed the boom, so to speak, in Confederate monuments. That came in the early decades of the 20th century, at the height of Jim Crow and as the last Confederate veterans began dying off.

Massachusetts’ marker dates from 1963, a bequest of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

• Confederate monuments about hate, not heritage, say scholars [Curbed]
• Massachusetts’ only Confederate memorial under wraps, awaiting fate [Curbed Boston]