Hello, Daily Kos community! We are back at It again with another episode of “How Did We Get Here?”
This week we are tackling, or should I say toppling, Confederate monuments.
The topic of the Confederacy is near and dear to my heart as someone who was raised primarily in the American South. I’ve lived in Louisiana and Georgia, as well as different cities in North, Central, and South Florida. I have a great love for the South and find that a lot of the micro-aggressions hurled at Southerners are not only unfounded but also mostly elitist. I’ve written about some of this in the past here at Daily Kos.
There is a lot about southern culture that deserves to be embraced and celebrated - but none of that has anything to do with the Confederacy.
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I have to give major shout outs to my colleague Mark Sumner who wrote this incredible article that served as the base of the text of this video.
“Confederate memorials are spread over 31 states plus the District of Columbia. Which is way more than the 11 Confederate states of the Civil War? But tell me again about how this is about “Southern History” and not greed and white supremacy.
Not to mention, the majority of these monuments were not erected immediately after the Civil War but instead were built between the 1890s and 1950s, exactly within the era of Jim Crow segregation.
The biggest spike of Confederate monuments being erected was between 1900 and the 1920s. For context, the Confederacy lost the civil war in 1865 and only existed for four years.”
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Let me know in the comments: What southern figure would you like to see replace some of these Confederate monuments? I’d love to read your suggestions below.