Why I’m glad to see Lee go, and why I hope you will be too

Why I’m glad to see Lee go, and why I hope you will be too

A person would be hard pressed not to recognize how historic the last week and a half have been in the United States. This is a moment historians will look back on for many important reasons. Here in Virginia, news broke last Wednesday in the midst of massive Black Lives Matter protests that the Confederate statues on Monument Ave in Richmond would come down. While these announcements came from the mouths of the governor of Virginia and mayor of Richmond (Lee is owned by the state and the other monuments by the city), there is no mistaking that citizens’ collective action made this happen.

Read More

The Transformation of Gettysburg as a Commemorative Space, 1863-2020

The Transformation of Gettysburg as a Commemorative Space, 1863-2020

Gettysburg is a field of monuments. Visitors to the battlefield today see hundreds of monuments marking the field, dedicated to units, individuals, and states. The creation of this commemorative landscape was a process over time, with the first monument placed in 1867 and the most recent in 2013. The first timelapse shows all of the Gettysburg monuments from 1863 to 2020. There are also timelapses for specifically Union and Confederate monuments.

Read More