Category: Memory of Reconstruction
4th of July: An African American Holiday During Reconstruction
One myth I have heard a lot about was that the City of Vicksburg in Mississippi stopped celebrating the Fourth of July during the Civil…
Students, Faculty, & Alums Ask That Washington and Lee Lose the Lee
The Washington Post reports that there is broad agreement in the Washington and Lee University community that “Lee” needs to be dropped from the school’s…
Historian David Blight on The Lost Cause and Lost Statues
With the removal of Stonewall Jackson’s statue in Richmond, the collapse of the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War is apparently underway. In today’s…
David Blight: Don’t Tear Down the Lincoln Statue in Washington
David Blight has an op ed in the Washington Post contra calls to remove the statue of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator in D.C. Here…
Family of KKK Leader General John B. Gordon Asks that His Statue Be Removed in Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that the family of Ku Klux Klan leader and Confederate general John B. Gordon be removed from the grounds of…
New Virginia Highway History Markers Will Include Reconstruction Sites
Virginia will soon be erecting new roadside history markers for sites involving the state’s African American people. You can read the full list here. Here…
Confederate Monument Dedications in NC Often Were Explicitly Racist
In a 2017 newspaper article, scholar Brian Fennessy wrote that in researching Confederate monument dedication speeches in North Carolina “I searched for dedication speeches that…
NY Times Podcast on the History and Meaning of Juneteenth
The New York Times has an interesting interview with Dr. Daina Ramey Berry, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, on…
“Gone With the Wind” Is a Confederate Monument Says Historian Nina Silber
Historian Nina Silber has an interesting article in today’s Washington Post titled ‘Gone With the Wind’ is also a Confederate monument, but on film instead…
How Did American History Textbooks Remember the Ku Klux Klan?
The recent book Remembering Reconstruction has an essay titled “The Cultural Work of the Ku-Klux Klan in US History Textbooks, 1883–2015” by Elaine Parsons. The…
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