Update: Leave it to Ta-Nehisi Coates to remind us of just how silly this project actually is. Anti-Neo-Confederate crusader Edward Sebesta is best known for his push to petition President Obama to cease sending a wreath to the Confederate memorial at Arlington as well as his claim that the Museum of the Confederacy is mired [...]
United Daughters of the Confederacy
My editor at the Atlantic asked me to revise a recent post on the DNC and the Confederate flag. You can read it below or at the Atlantic. I have no doubt that it will raise the usual cries of South/Confederate heritage bashing from the usual suspects. What I find funny is that the posts [...]
This story out of Haywood County, North Carolina about the display of the Confederate flag on public ground is perfect for helping us to move beyond the popular narratives of North v. South and black v. white. It’s a fairly straightforward story: For years, David Crook had been making monthly rounds past the Confederate Memorial [...]
Will Moredock has a wonderful editorial in today’s Charleston City Paper that provides some sense of why a Robert Smalls Weekend is so significant. All too often the study of Civil War memory seems like an abstract exercise, but in this case it is grounded in something that all of us can relate to: history [...]
Last night I received an email asking why I continue to post about the activities and antics of the Virginia Flaggers [see here and here]. It should be obvious given the content of this blog, but let me once again state the obvious. The Flaggers and their cause provide a clear window into the changing [...]
Update: Margaret Blough reminded me that the UDC has always maintained a strict code for displaying the Confederate flag. Their concern has always been that liberal use would disconnect it from the Civil War – a lesson the Flaggers and others should take to heart. Looks like the Virginia Flaggers suffered a setback this week [...]
It should come as no surprise that a National Air and Space Museum exhibit centered around the Enola Gay and the dropping of the Atomic Bomb would cause controversy in the mid-1990s. Many of the veterans of WWII were still alive and the issue itself tugged at how Americans saw themselves as moral leaders on [...]
The reason why the members of the first generation of Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy emphasized such a strict code governing the display of the Confederate flag was that they understood the risks of it being appropriated in a way that threatened to disconnect it from its Civil War roots. [...]
