The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans is gearing up for the sesquicentennial with a series of commercials that will air on the History Channel in December. These videos will fit perfectly in between Ice Road Truckers, American Pickers, Pawn Stars and various documentaries about UFOs and Hitler’s Bunker. The first video offers an outline [...]
Civil War Culture
[Thanks to Ta-Nehisi Coates for the link.] The ongoing debate about Republican candidate for Congress, Rich Iott’s hobby of portraying a Waffen SS soldier, raises a number of interesting questions about what we expect from people who choose to embrace the past through reenacting. In the case of Iott, there seems to be little patience [...]
The Tea Party movement has given us a number of colorful candidates this election cycle. Now we can add to the list one Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District. It turns out that Mr. Iott enjoys wearing Waffen SS uniforms as a one-time member of a Nazi reenactment group. Of [...]
A great way to introduce students to the subject of historical memory is to discuss the recent controversy surrounding Confederate History Month here in Virginia. Ideally, such a lesson would come at the conclusion of a unit on the Civil War, which would allow students to reference previous class discussions as well as any documents [...]
A match made in heaven?
I find it interesting that the designer chose not to use the more visible and controversial Confederate battle flag and the soldier depicted here is not from Virginia. [See story here]
If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to read Andy Hall’s analysis of the DeWitt-Weeks saga. I tend to agree with Hall that there is no reason to believe that Ms. DeWitt’s goal is to intentionally mislead her young readers or distort the history covered in her book. However, as we now know [...]