But the fallout following the horrific 2015 murders of nine churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina’s Emanuel A.M.E. Church proved to be a critical turning point in my thinking. After photographs of the shooter, Dylann Roof, posing with Confederate battle flags were published, calls rang out to remove both the banners and rebel monuments from public spaces. For me, the lowering of the Confederate battle flag in Columbia and elsewhere needed little justification, as it’d been embraced as a symbol of “massive resistance” during the civil-rights movement. But I still held firm to my view of the monuments.

That summer, I traveled for the first time to Prague, in the former Soviet-bloc country of Czechoslovakia. I noticed almost immediately the concrete foundations and empty pedestals where monuments to communist leaders once stood. Some statues had been relocated to museums, while others were destroyed; skate boarders and sunbathers had since claimed their spot.

The experience forced me to reconsider my position on the markers back home. I imagined stepping back in time to convince the residents of Prague that the monuments helped them face their past, or gave teachers an important tool with which to engage their students. This proved to be a futile exercise. Regardless of their destination, the monuments were exactly where they needed to be as determined by the community members themselves.

After all, the people of Prague were not trying to erase their history or turn away from the lessons it might offer. They had lived this past and it would remain with them. The removal of monuments to Stalin and Lenin lifted the weight of the memory of oppression, allowing the Czech people to begin to imagine a new direction for their nation. They understood “that history can’t be a sword to justify injustice or a shield against progress,” as Barack Obama explained in his eulogy for the Charleston victims.

In the time since that visit, I have listened much more closely to the concerns of those who live in the shadows of Confederate statues, who see their removal as the next step in achieving a more equitable society. Nowhere have these voices been more passionate and forceful than in New Orleans, where workers this spring took down four Confederate and Reconstruction monuments. Local activists Terri Coleman and Malcolm Suber argued convincingly that they don’t need reminders of the history of racial injustice, because it is present all around them. The city’s mayor, Mitch Landrieu, has spoken about the need to acknowledge the damage these figures continue to do. In a May speech, he asked his constituents to look at the monuments through the eyes of a black child:

Can you look into that young girl’s eyes and convince her that Robert E. Lee is there to encourage her? Do you think she will feel inspired and hopeful by that story? Do these monuments help her see a future with limitless potential? Have you ever thought that if her potential is limited, yours and mine are, too?

I cannot. The removal of Confederate monuments across the country will not prevent me from doing my job as a history educator and public historian. Even empty pedestals offer important lessons that demand to be told—in fact, the statues’ removal from positions of alleged moral authority is arguably the most important chapter in their long and controversial history.