Update: Check out Andy Hall’s thoughtful analysis of the DeWitt-Weeks book over at Dead Confederates. I am a high school history teacher, who spends a great deal of time reviewing classroom materials for their historical merit. For what it’s worth my judgments are based on a solid education and years of reading the best in [...]
Civil War Culture
Here is another selection from Ann DeWitt’s and Kevin Week’s Entangled in Freedom, which tells the story of a black Confederate soldier by the name of Isaac. In this scene Isaac and his master, Abraham Green, have just arrived at the camp of the 42nd Regiment Georgia Volunteers. The soldiers in camp are surprised to [...]
Next month I will be taking part in another Teaching American History Grant workshop in Virginia Beach with Fitzhugh Brundage of the University of North Carolina. The subject is the Civil War and historical memory. I am putting together a couple of lesson plan outlines for the teachers and in doing so I came across [...]
From Governor Robert McDonnell’s recent announcement: This proclamation will encapsulate all of our history. It will remember all Virginians-free and enslaved; Union and Confederate. It will be written for all Virginians. While we cannot fully put to paper the definitive collective memory of this period, we are going to at least ensure that all voices [...]
It didn’t take long for Brag Bowling, the commander of the Virginia division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, to respond to Gov. Robert McDonnell’s announcement that he would discontinue the practice of designating April as Confederate History Month. Instead, the governor has decided to create a new designation that he calls, Civil War in Virginia Month. [...]
One of the nice things about Mr. Weeks’s decision to lodge a complaint about me with my school is that I ended up with an advanced copy of Entangled in Freedom. I am trying to make my way through it, but it has been incredibly difficult. It is much worse than I originally thought. In [...]
Unfortunately, I was not able to attend this year’s Virginia Sesquicentennial conference on Race and Slavery at Norfolk State University owing to a school visit by former First Lady, Laura Bush. For those of you looking for some excellent commentary on today’s proceedings I urge you to head over to Jimmy Price’s blog, The Sable [...]
Imagine my surprise yesterday when the headmaster of my school handed me an advanced copy of Kevin Weeks’s and Ann Dewitt’s new book, Entangled in Freedom. Apparently, Mr. Weeks decided to send a copy to my school along with a letter claiming that I had “slandered my literary work without conducting a formal book review.” [...]
