In 2017, protests against the Greenville monument followed violence associated with a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that had ostensibly been organized to protest the removal of a Confederate statue from a Charlottesville park. Greenville Mayor Knox White proposed adding a plaque to the Greenville monument in order to provide historical context; but his suggestion never came to a vote before city council because of the difficulty in composing the text of the plaque.