Since the Civil War whites and blacks have struggled over the
meanings and uses of the Southern past. Indeed, today's
controversies over flying the Confederate flag, renaming schools
and streets, and commemorating the Civil War and the civil rights
movement are only the latest examples of this ongoing divisive
contest over issues of regional identity and heritage. "The
Southern Past" argues that these battles are ultimately about who
has the power to determine what we remember of the past, and
whether that remembrance will honor all Southerners or only select
groups.
For more than a century after the Civil War, elite white
Southerners systematically refined a version of the past that
sanctioned their racial privilege and power. In the process, they
filled public spaces with museums and monuments that made their
version of the past sacrosanct. Yet, even as segregation and racial
discrimination worsened, blacks contested the white version of
Southern history and demanded inclusion. Streets became sites for
elaborate commemorations of emancipation and schools became centers
for the study of black history. This counter-memory surged forth,
and became a potent inspiration for the civil rights movement and
the black struggle to share a common Southern past rather than a
divided one.
W. Fitzhugh Brundage's searing exploration of how those who
have the political power to represent the past simultaneously shape
the present and determine the future is a valuable lesson as we
confront our national past to meet the challenge of current
realities.
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