“In school (in Venezuela) we learned about the United States’ Civil War and slavery. I learned to have a negative view of the flag — I basically associated the image of the flag with slavery, racism and the KKK…. In 1983, I was a college student in Texas and saw a group of KKK clansmen [...]
Southern History
Tomorrow I head back into the classroom to teach the Civil War to my AP classes. We are a little bit behind, but that is not going to stop me from giving my students a thorough overview of secession and the events that led to the clash at Fort Sumter and the subsequent decision on [...]
Here is another story for those of you who doubt that we are witnessing a radical shift in our popular perceptions of the Civil War and the history of slavery. Gary Black, the newly elected agriculture commissioner in Georgia, has ordered that a series of murals depicting slavery be removed from the building. The murals [...]
In a recent post, Ta-Nehisis Coates is critical of the NAACP for its continued boycott of South Carolina as well as its struggle to remove the Confederate flag from state house grounds. I couldn’t agree more with Coates: There is something that really strikes me as wrong about urging people to not visit South Carolina [...]
First of all, apologies to South Carolina for the ridiculous national coverage of tonight’s Secession Gala in Charleston. The coverage reinforces a number of assumptions about regional identification and race that are likely a thing of the past. Tonight’s episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews is a perfect example of this coverage, which somehow managed [...]
This is a wonderful overview of Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia. It’s one of my favorite places to bring my students to discuss the intersection between historical memory, race, and politics, and the monuments themselves allow for a wide range of interpretation. I also highly recommend Sarah S. Driggs’s book, Richmond’s Monument Avenue (University of [...]
Yesterday, I linked to two videos that feature Civil War historians discussing various issues related to the Civil War and historical memory. In the second video, the panel was asked to share what they take to be one of the most popular misconceptions of the war. While Emory Thomas and James I. Robertson highlight the [...]
