Over the last five years, many confederate statues have come down. Professor Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders joins the show to explain why they went up in the first place. Commemoration of the confederacy offers a great insight into the politics of race in the American South and the enduring myth of the Lost Cause. So many statues go up in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era that we could (with tongues-in-cheek) consider re-naming the period the Age of Confederate Memorials. Why? Who advocated for their erection? And what do these statues say about the past and today?

Essential Reading:

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, "Removing Lost Cause Monuments is the First Step in Dismantling White Supremacy," Washington Post, 19 June 2020.

Recommended Reading:

Karen L. Cox, Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture (2019).

David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (2001).

Caroline E. Janney, Remembering the Civil War: Reunion and the Limits of Reconciliation (2016).

Adam H. Donby, The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory (2020).

Thavolia Glymph, "Liberty Dearly Bought: The Making of Civil War Memory in Afro-American Communities in the South" in Payne and Green (eds.), Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, 1850-1950 (2003).

Gary Young, "Why Every Single Statue Should Come Down," Guardian, 1 June 2021.

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