[3] The memorial was erected in 1915, during the peak of Confederate monument-building, part of widespread campaigns to promote and justify Jim Crow laws in the South.

On December 27, 2023, the large statue in the monument and the smaller one on top were removed by order of Donna Deegan, the mayor of Jacksonville.

Such early-20th-century Confederate memorials were "part and parcel of the initiation of legally mandated segregation and widespread disenfranchisement across the South", the American Historical Association (AHA) wrote in 2017.

They "were intended, in part, to obscure the terrorism required to overthrow Reconstruction, and to intimidate African Americans politically and isolate them from the mainstream of public life.

[13] Ultimately, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors donated $187,000 to 904WARD, a nonprofit organization, so that the statues on the monument could be removed.