Unfortunately, I was unable to make the recent Tea Party rally in Richmond, Virginia and it looks like I missed one of the most interesting references to Confederate History Month since the governor’s announcement. Karen Cooper is an African American postal worker who lives in Chesterfield, Virginia. Although the video posted below doesn’t include it, [...]
Slavery
Come to the former capital of the Confederacy this weekend to find out. This weekend Richmond commemorates Emancipation Day with a wide range of events sponsored by the city’s history museums and other institutions. What follows is an email that I received from the Online and Social Media Organizer at the University of Richmond. I [...]
There is an interesting article over at Psychology Today, if only because it takes a different perspective on the controversy surrounding Confederate History Month. Molly Costelloe Fong suggests that Governor McDonnell’s proclamation may have certain psychological effects within the black community owing to the long-term legacy of slavery: When one group deliberately inflicts suffering on [...]
Many of you know that I am a huge fan of David Blight’s scholarship. Race and Reunion was the book that set me off on my own research projects as well as in shaping the overall theme of this site. Since reading it I’ve come to question parts of Blight’s thesis as a result of [...]
Civil War memory is indeed a very strange landscape. Up until today I would have said that the once widely held view that slavery was benign and that the slaves themselves remained loyal throughout the war reflects its most absurd side. However, the folks over at Richard Williams’s site have somehow managed to trump even [...]
This post originally ran in April 2007. I thought it might be worth re-posting given the recent debate here in Virginia and throughout the country over Confederate History Month. I am wondering whether we are witnessing a decisive shift in our collective memory of the war? Is the governor’s apology an indication that it is [...]
Most of us think of the significance of this day in 1865 as revolving around the soldiers who met for the final time at Appomattox Court House. The images and stories of Lee and Grant in the McLean House and the famous salute between Gordon and Chamberlain, which may or may not have occurred according [...]
Governor McDonnell would have us believe that his primary goal in re-instituting Confederate History Month was to promote tourism in Virginia on the eve of the Civil War Sesquicentennial. On the face of it there is nothing wrong with promoting such an agenda. Unfortunately, even a cursory glance at the content of his proclamation raises [...]
