This week the local newspaper in my former home of Charlottesville, Virginia reported that the Lee statue had been vandalized. I hope the perpetrators are caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law. I spent countless hours in that park with my students interpreting the monument and using the park to better understand [...]
Richmond
Here is another story concerning the public display of the Confederate flag, this time in the former capital of the Confederacy of Richmond, Virginia. A small, but dedicated group is protesting the removal of a Confederate flag from the grounds of the Confederate War Memorial Chapel, which sits on ground owned by the Virginia Museum [...]
This video was done by a couple of students at D.S. Freeman High School in Richmond, Virginia as part of a school wide discussion centered on whether they should get rid of their “Rebel” mascot. The video offers a nice overview of the school’s history and includes a number of interviews with students and teachers. [...]
Yesterday Mike Gorman left a comment in response to my post on Monument Avenue, which alluded to a a proposal for a monument to Sally Tompkins by Salvador Dali. I don’t know much about this so I did a little searching and found a sketch of the proposed monument as well as an interesting article. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
By now many of you have read Governor McDonnell’s apology for failing to recognize slavery in his proclamation designating April as Confederate History Month. It directly addresses the concerns expressed by many that by failing to address the crucial issue of slavery the proclamation distorts the very history that it claims to celebrate and promote [...]