Tomorrow I hope to finish up an essay that I was asked to write for one of the Civil War journals over a year ago about the the influence of digital technologies on how we write and research history and how that has fueled the myth of the black Confederate soldier. At the end of [...]
National Park Service
H/T to Peter Winfrey I highly recommend taking the time to watch this video in its entirety. It follows a group of black seniors to Yellowstone National Park. Along the way there is a discussion of why black Americans have apparently lost touch with the history of our national parks, nature and the joys of [...]
Yes, I find the decision by the Gettysburg National Military Park to invite country music singer Trace Adkins to sing our National Anthem as part of the 150th anniversary commemoration of the battle to be just a little troubling. My concern has nothing to do with the recent story about his Confederate earring and I [...]
Last night the Civil War Institute posted a video of National Park Service historian David Larsen discussing issues related to interpretation at historic sites. Larsen worked as a training manager for interpretation at Mather Training Center. Unfortunately, he recently passed away. I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of him before last [...]
The above image was posted on the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields National Military Park’s Facebook Page. The accompanying caption reads: We ended at a point where no Union soldier 150 yrs ago today ever reached. What a poignant end to a marvelous, powerful day. Thanks to all who came out today and followed along [...]
I so wish I could be in Fredericksburg, Virginia this weekend to take part in events commemorating the 150th anniversary of the famous battle and the war in 1862. I’ve been following events through my preferred social networks, but this video captures what remembering the war should be all about. John Hennessy is the chief [...]
Thanks to Bryan Cheeseboro, who left the following comment in response to yesterday’s post on the battlefield preservation panel from 2002. I found out from an episode of Civil War Talk Radio that the NPS was dealing with incorporating cause and civilians and the home front into the battlefield parks (I think it was in [...]
Much of my research and commentary on the evolution of battlefield interpretation within the National Park Service has referenced the 2000 Rally on the High Ground Conference as a watershed moment. Without being too overly simplistic the working assumption has been that the most significant changes to NPS interpretation has been in reaction to Congressman [...]
The question of how far we’ve come in expanding and correcting certain elements of our collective memory of the Civil War has come up on a number of occasions on this blog and elsewhere. I have stressed the extent to which we have moved beyond a strictly Lost Cause narrative of the war to one [...]