memorials

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• 1/10/2021
  

  Will VMI Move Further Toward Change and Away from Stonewall Jackson?

  by Wallace Hettle

  Removing the statue of Stonewall Jackson from campus is just one step that the Virginia Military Institute must take toward separating itself from the Lost Cause myth and serving all Virginians. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  12/28/2020
  

  The Complicated Racial History of the High School D.C. is Renaming

  Renaming Woodrow Wilson High after Edna Burke Jackson, who taught history as one of two Black faculty members in the years after desegregation, is an obvious choice. 

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• SOURCE: Governor Ralph S. Northam
  12/21/2020
  

  Virginia Removes Confederate Statue from U.S. Capitol

  “Confederate images do not represent who we are in Virginia, that’s why we voted unanimously to remove this statue,” said Senator Louise Lucas.

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• SOURCE: US News and World Report
  12/12/2020
  

  Mississippi Home of Medgar Evers Declared National Monument

  The Mississippi home where civil rights leader Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963 has been declared a national monument.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/29/2020
  

  Let Trump Try To Defend Racist, Traitorous Confederates. Congress Can Still Prevail

  by Ty Seidule

  "This nation should honor those who fought bravely to defend it, not its enemies."

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• 11/22/2020
  

  The Devil and Mary Lease

  by Alan J. Singer

  Populist and feminist agitator Mary Lease advised farmers to "raise less corn and more hell." Her brand of hell-raising, however, included a strong current of antisemitism that needs to be widely known.

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  11/16/2020
  

  Virginia Sen. Louise Lucas Cleared of Charges of Conspiring to Topple Confederate Monument

  Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, who is Black, was cleared of charges related to this summer's protests against public monuments to the Confederacy. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  11/12/2020
  

  A Naked Statue for a Feminist Hero?

  "Ms. Hambling’s sculptural woman — perched above a plunge of mountainous form — seems to embody the epic saga that so many women have endured for their voices to be heard."

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• 11/15/2020
  

  Reckoning with Marcus Whitman and the Memorialization of Conquest

  by Cassandra Tate

  The same period that saw the public affirmation of the Confederate Lost Cause myth saw a proliferation of monuments that portrayed the conquest of the indigenous people of the west as virtuous pioneering. The case of Marcus Whitman shows a national reckoning is in order.

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• SOURCE: WAMU
  11/9/2020
  

  The Smithsonian Will Open A National Native American Veterans Memorial In D.C. Wednesday

  The National Native American Veterans Memorial will open with virtual programming, including a tour and video tribute, on Wednesday, November 11.

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• SOURCE: The Hill
  10/12/2020
  

  Portland Protesters Topple Statues of Lincoln, Roosevelt in 'Day of Rage'

  Droves of protesters in Portland, Ore., took down the statues of Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln on Sunday in demonstrations that had reportedly been billed online as “Indigenous Peoples Day of Rage” by organizers.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/8/2020
  

  Is There a Place for the President of the Confederacy?

  Removing Confederate monuments from public grounds to museums is easier said than done, drawing on scarce resources and pleasing few parties in the conflict over memorializing the CSA. 

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• SOURCE: Perspectives on History
  10/9/2020
  

  #WEWANTMOREHISTORY

  by Greg Downs, Hilary N. Green, Scott Hancock, and Kate Masur

  At historic sites across the United States on September 26, dozens of participating historians presented evidence to disrupt, correct, or fill out the oversimplified and problematic messages too often communicated by the nation’s memorial landscape.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  10/5/2020
  

  Mellon Foundation to Spend $250 Million to Reimagine Monuments

  “The beauty of monuments as a rubric is, it’s really a way of asking, ‘How do we say who we are? How do we teach our history in public places?’” Elizabeth Alexander, the foundation’s president, said.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/30/2020
  

  A Counter to Confederate Monuments, Black Cemeteries Tell a Fuller Story of the South

  “We put up these Confederate monuments in public squares as a homage to a lost cause that was really a lie. But the real builders of the cities and the states and the nation, their narrative is still not told.”

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/28/2020
  

  Amid the Monument Wars, a Rally for ‘More History’

  “Historians have different views on taking down statues,” said Gregory Downs, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and one of the organizers. “But that debate doesn’t really capture what historians do, which is to bring more history.”

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• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  9/20/2020
  

  California finally sweeps away most of its tributes to the Confederacy. What took so long?

  by Kevin Waite

  California was home to a substantial secessionist community in the 1850s, and white migrants to the region in the early 20th century brought the Lost Cause mythology with them. 

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• SOURCE: Washington Post
  

  Four Principles to Guide Us on Whose Statues Should Topple and Whose Should Remain

  Kevin M. Levin, Lalane Schmidt, Kevin Gover and George Derek Musgrove are among the scholars offering perspective on how local community deliberations about problematic memorials should proceed. 

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• 9/20/2020
  

  Breaking Lincoln's Promise

  by Shannon Bontrager

  Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address demanded that Americans keep the memory of both the Union dead and their cause alive and "hot." The cooling of that memory has enabled backlashes against justice through history, and today. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  9/12/2020
  

  My Local Confederate Monument

  by Casey Cep

  The author examines the history and politics of the last remaining Confederate monument on public lands, other than battlefields and cemeteries, in the state of Maryland.