The vast majority of black Confederate accounts on the Internet follow a well-worn narrative. First, we are somehow to believe that servants/slaves volunteered to accompany their owners to war and in doing so solidified a bond of friendship and a commitment to the achievement of Confederate independence. Many of these postwar accounts offer rich descriptions [...]
Civil Rights History
If I were heading back into the classroom to teach my course on the Civil War and historical memory I would begin by showing this video from the Virginia Historical Society’s exhibit, An American Turning Point: The Civil War in Virginia. If you haven’t seen it you are missing one of the more innovative exhibits [...]
Update: 50 Cent learns more about the history of slavery and South Carolina during Reconstruction. Rapper 50 Cent and MTV recently revealed a clip from his upcoming Rock Doc titled “50 Cent: The Origin of Me,” which features 50 Cent traveling to Edgefield, South Carolina, in search of his roots. In one clip, the rapper [...]
I am beginning to think about what I am going to say next Saturday at North Carolina State University for their symposium on the Civil War and public history. My talk will focus not only on the challenges surrounding the discussion of slavery and race at our Civil War battlefields, but specifically the difficulty of [...]
General Robert E. Lee never marched through your state.
The Washington Post’s popular A House Divided blog has welcomed Brag Bowling as its newest member. It will be interesting to see whether Bowling can move beyond advocacy and actually formulate an argument. As I was perusing the site I noticed an announcement for the upcoming annual meeting of the Stephen D. Lee Institute, which [...]
John Hennessy has an incredibly thought provoking post up over at Frederickburg Remembered, which addresses the challenges of “portraying violence” in public history. No one is better positioned to speak on such a subject: Having worked on or with battle sites for much of my career (which seems impossibly long these days), there is no [...]
With all of this talk about black Confederates it is easy to lose sight of the fact that African American soldiers did indeed exist. Next weekend Harrisburg, Pennsylvania will commemorate the Grand Review of United States Colored Troops that took place in November 1865. Information for the event can be found here. An event focused [...]
