(theme music playing) HORSLEY: Hello, everyone.

Welcome to another "P&P Live".

My name is Bashan.

I'm part of the event staff of Politics and Prose.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is "No Common Ground".

Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statue's legal battles to remove them and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands.

These conflicts have raged for well over a century, but they've never been as intense as they are today.

Dr. Karen L. Cox is professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the founding director of the Graduate Public History Program.

She offers a variety of courses in southern history and culture and graduate electives in public history.

And she has written numerous essays and articles on the subject of southern history and culture.

Dr. Cox will be joined in conversation by Professor Anne Sarah Rubin.

Professor Rubin is a professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where she is the author of several books herself on the American Civil War, including "Through the Heart of Dixie: Sherman's March in American Memory" and "The Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy".

Without further ado, Dr. Cox and Professor Rubin.

RUBIN: Thank you so much.

Karen and I have known each other for a very long time.

So rather than see this as a formal interview, I think it's best to think of this as a conversation between old friends whose scholarly interests have long overlapped.

And it's really a pleasure to be sharing a screen with Karen today.

I wanted to to ask you, Karen, about what I think is the newest part of this book, there's been Confederate monuments and Confederate memory has a long history.

Historians at least, have been very aware of a lot of these issues.

But I think one of the freshest parts of your book is the way that you show African-Americans pushing a counter story.

So could you talk to us a little bit about that, how African-Americans tried to challenge Confederate monuments throughout the 20th century?

COX: Sure, and it's great to be with you as well, and thank you for doing this with me.

In regard to the ways in which African-Americans have contested Confederate monuments, it's been going on, I would say, since the 19th century.

Frederick Douglass called the monuments a folly, the Richmond editor John Mitchell, junior editor of "The Richmond Planet", critiqued strongly the unveiling of the Lee monument in Richmond on Monument Avenue.

And you see, throughout the 20th century, African-Americans are, are expressing their you know discomfort and, and, and are critiquing these monuments that are that they that are in their public square.

And so we saw it, let's say, in the Confederate excuse me, the "Chicago Defender", when, when they're asked about it, they're very vocal about it and are very clear that they believe that these are monuments to traitors that they're monuments that are honoring men who fought to perpetuate human slavery.

You fast forward, there are civil rights activities and gatherings around these monuments and in some cases protests and even vandalism during the Civil Rights era, post, you know post voting rights.

The African-American leaders in their communities are speaking out against these monuments, these Confederate iconography on, on, on the grounds of government, and it just continues and continues.

So it would be a misunderstanding of what's going on today to think, well, this only started when Black Lives Matter organized and it's only been happening since the Charleston massacre in 2015.

There's a really long history.

RUBIN: So if there's this long history and, and I found that really fascinating, if there's this long history.

And yet these monuments seemed, at least to me, literally immovable, right, it seemed like they would be there forever because of these, these earlier you know circa 2000 and these earlier movements to try to get them back.

What has changed that, what has given us this moment where they can they now it seems like they're coming down?

COX: Well, I think what I think what's happened, especially since 2015 in the Charleston massacre, is that is that what had been, been a regional debate has now become a national discussion and debate over what these symbols mean and, and, and, and the divisiveness that they've caused.

I mean, we know it is almost as if no one was paying attention to what African-Americans were saying about these statues, definitely not regionally.

But following the Charleston massacre, this which was in 2015, it came up during you know it was the year before the 2016 election.

And there were all these Republican candidates for president and they were put on the spot about what to do about the battle flag.

But then you know the attention to the battle flag came attention to Confederate monuments.

And then there was Charlottesville.

And then last summer there was the George Floyd murder.

But it really what it is, is that since 2015, it's become part of a national discussion, not just a regional one.

RUBIN: So I'm fascinated too, right see how the iconography of the Confederate flag leads to the destruction of destruction is actually not the word I wanted to use, leads to calls for these monuments to be taken down because they're not representative of the communities in which they are.

But I'm not totally solid on that, even though I watched it happen on the George Floyd connection.

And I will encourage everyone I don't know if you can see it, but, but Karen's cover, her book cover, which I also want you to talk about, is, in fact a projection of George Floyd onto the Lee Monument in Richmond.

So if you could talk a little bit more about that.

I know we're historians.

We're used to talking about the distant past, but about the recent past.

COX: Right.

So when that happened last summer in Minneapolis, it was probably confusing to a lot of people.

Why are you know, southerners black and white are they turning their attack on these Confederate monuments in their communities and, and you know during these protests?

And the reason is, is that they see and have long seen in Confederate monuments that are in their communities issues of systemic racism and white supremacy and the police brutality that is an outgrowth of those two social ills.

So it's, it's, it's that, you know, it's like, you know, obviously African-Americans long said and pointed to the fact these are about white supremacy, these, these, these statues.

But it was that moment and it, it just unleashed, obviously, a protest around the world and protest against monuments in other parts of the world.

But it was it was in the south.

It's just this understanding.

It's like, you know, people prob, I'm sure walk by these monuments every day.

Right.

But there's always a sense that it's not a welcoming space around that monument.

And so in the other part of this is that states have passed these laws that prevented them from being removed.

There's no legal recourse to move a monument.

What, what is a person to do his frustrated and wants to see these things gone?

And what ends up happening is, is you know vandalism, people trying to rip down you know the monument off of the pedestal and these sorts of things.

RUBIN: So I'm I have a million questions now, so I kind of prioritize them in my head.

Um, one thing I want to talk a little bit about, and I don't know, I don't think your book went into it in super detail, so I'm interested to hear what you think is, of course, there's lots of different kinds of Civil War monuments and Confederate monuments.

Right, there's the, the sort of overarching big general in a, you know the Lee monument, those kinds of monuments.

I put those in one category and then there's the what I consider like the common soldier monuments, the ones where you go to every town, north and south, has have them right where it's often, you know, it's like there's like the 10 models of soldier you could buy and then you've often got the local names and those I put in a slightly at least personally put them in a slightly different category.

And then there's also, of course, the earliest monuments, which are often physically located in cemeteries.

So can you kind of tease these distinctions apart a little bit for our audience?

COX: Sure.

So the you know, the earliest monuments, as you said, were in cemeteries.

They're very unadorned.

You know, they're just very simple monuments.

But it's kind of interesting is that even when Ladies' Memorial Associations were forming these Confederate cemeteries, they purposely left a spot in the middle for a monument.

They knew they were going to do this.

But then once reconstruction ends, Confederate memorialization goes in a completely different direction.

It becomes something where it's moved outside of cemeteries and then becomes a celebration of the Confederacy and a celebration of those heroes.

And I talk about the one in Augusta that like was on a main thoroughfare very early on, I think what's um, and then, of course, those that are on courthouse lawns are of, are their own particular kind of monument.

And, and the thing is, it's the context matters where these things stand and sit really matters.

And, and the other part of this is like if you know, for people who are just like looking at these monuments and I think of not much to it, they have to understand the ways in which these monuments, when they were unveiled were ritualized and they were ritualized on an annual basis.

On Confederate Memorial Day, when these things were unveiled, there was grand you know parades and military style parades, and there would be speeches about how these men after the war defended Anglo-Saxon supremacy or restored Anglo-Saxon supremacy, which is their word for what we are calling white supremacy, right?

So it's, it's the context that matters and the context of course, the ones I talk most about are those on the courthouse lawn, although the Lee monument, one of those you put in a separate category is its own thing.

It's, it's a regional monument.

It was the money for it was raised regionally.

But the focus really, I think of the book is, is about those courthouse monuments or those monuments in on state capitals in the public square.

In the public square that makes people of color, African-Americans in the south, feel unwelcome and feel like second class citizens in their own communities.

And so I think this is whether that's the big Lee monument or the cookie cutter one in a in a small town, they're both serving the same purpose.

RUBIN: Right.

And I do think to one of the things you don't talk about because it's not part of your argument, really, is also all the monuments on battlefields, right, which are in this interesting juxtaposition of monuments to the Confederacy sitting on not state land, but on federal land.

And I think you're right.

I think often what happens is, is when people start to talk about this debate over monuments, right.

They lump everything together and they think, well, if you're tearing down one or you're moving one, everything has to go.

And it's, it's in fact, it's much more nuanced than that.

COX: I think so, too, is one of the reasons I'm not you know, I didn't focus on battlefield monuments because I think of all the places they could be in the place where they could be provided historical context, proper historical context is in a, in a, in a national battlefield park.

That's where trained historians can and can talk about these, these statues.

And so I think there is a little bit there is a difference because the ones at the courthouse have no context.

No one and if anything, they, they can be used for nefarious purposes, like the gathering of the Proud Boys.

RUBIN: Shifting gears a little bit, I want to talk more about this idea of opposition to the monuments being national.

And I'm going to cheat a little bit.

But you say that you wrote a piece for "Publishers Weekly" in the past few weeks, keyed obviously to the, the publication of the book.

And in it you write, "I also believe it's important that I, a southern white woman, write and speak about this topic with blunt honesty.

Monument Defenders cannot dismiss me as a northern liberal who has invaded the region to tell them what to do."

And I will say as a northern liberal who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line since I was 21, I went to grad school, I felt that a little bit.

So I was... you're not wrong.

But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the sense of this, this is something coming out of your identity as a southerner.

COX: Sure.

You know that, you know I've lived here since I was about, I guess, 12, 10, 11 years old.

And I grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

I'm originally from West Virginia.

And that makes people a little itchy you know that I, you know might, what are you really?

There's this like sense you gotta fall on one side or the other on this issue.

But I'm a historian, first of all, you know, when it comes to this, but, but having grown up in the region and, and been you know exposed to these things and, and, and gone to school in Mississippi, grad school in Mississippi, and I felt like you know that, that it gives me some authority you know to speak as a white southerner, you know because, first of all, there might be this, sometimes there's a sense that all southerners think alike and about these issues.

And that's obviously not true.

It also, you know I think when I go to speak to public audiences in the south, it's a way of disarming those folks there who think, oh, you know, she doesn't know what she's talking about.

She's no southerner, you know?

And I've found that that's that that's part of what I think is important to do that.

You know, I study the south because I grew up in the south.

It was like I wanted to know what was you know the place that I lived in.

And, and so I don't know.

I do think it's important that I that I and also that I critique it, that I can critique these, these, these statues.

But as a historian and with, you know with my receipts, the facts of all of this, because you know that also comes into question, you know, if I, if I can't back it up and I, I was very careful with this book that I made sure that I backed up everything I had to say.

Even if people don't like what I have to say.

RUBIN: Well, I, I, yes to all of that, and I will say that that as someone who studies the south as well, but again, not from the south, the fact that I at least got my graduate degree at UVA, I found has, has kind of greased the skids for me a little bit.

You know, at least I've got some sort of claim to legitimacy, although not, not as much.

COX: I call it my southern cred.

You know, it's like, you know, with these with these groups, because I you know, part of my doing this book is to help people understand the issue and particularly to help white southerners understand this issue and, and realize that what, what black southerners say about these monuments, that they were about white supremacy or and they talk about that, you know, that, you know, these men went to war to perpetuate slavery and like that they're not just making that up.

This is you know, kind of like... RUBIN: Do you feel like it works?

Like have you have you gotten the sense that um, uh, that they are more receptive to you because you can sort of say, you know, I am southern born and, you know.. COX: Yeah, yeah, I think... RUBIN: Perplexedly that other people might not be as listened to because they'd be perceived as these kind of outsiders or carpetbaggers.

COX: I mean, they might think of me as a scalawag or something like that.

I think what I the way I think about what I'm doing with this book right now and is that is that there are going to be people are not going to believe a word I say.

You're not going to have they're not going to listen.

They're not you know, and then on the other side, there are people who are already convinced that all monuments should be removed.

There's, there's this, but it's the people in the middle that I'm trying to reach.

It's the people who haven't made a determination, that, you know, their minds are still open.

They, you know, they still want to be informed before making a decision.

And what's been surprising to me is that my audiences now include people with faith.

I'm being asked to speak to churches in the region and, and that and to interracial groups.

I think this is an interesting thing that I had not anticipated happening.

RUBIN: What is the intersection, do you think, between this kind of monument building and white supremacy and southern evangelicalism?

Can you can kind of tease that really, I mean, in the time allotted.

COX: Wow, you mean contemporarily like what... how evangelicals see... RUBIN: I mean how you decide whether you want to do it historically or contemporarily?

COX: Oh, OK.

So I mean, I do think about you know, these ministers of the Lost Cause you know that Charles Wilson wrote about in this in this this idea that this was a sacred cause, not just a just cause, but a sacred cause.

And, and there's so many you know religious elements to the Lost Cause.

You know, the rituals, you know the prayers said at the at the monument, unveiling the, quote unquote, collecting Confederate relics, you know, as, as part of the earliest southern museums were being you know that these were their original artifacts were Confederate, what they called relics and relic is a very religious term.

RUBIN: Isn't it still the relic room in South Carolina.

It definitely was about 10 years ago.

COX: Yeah, yeah, I think it is.

And yeah, there are still places where that's what they refer to it as, so.

RUBIN: And what do you think today, do you think that that there, I'm fascinated that you're being invited to go to church groups and.

COX: Well, it's not that evangelicals are not asking me to come, I'll tell you that right now.

It's the Presbyterians right now, you know.

Um, you know, so although, you know, I just don't know, like some of these, I know more recently, now, I just spoke to the North Carolina Council of Churches just a week or two ago.

And I think some of those are like more Unitarian churches.

They tend to be more progressive in their politics than evangelical churches.

But, you know, if I can, you know get in front of an audience, I think I can make the case to, to these people.

RUBIN: Can you talk to, about the, so, one of the things I teach a southern history, I teach two southern history classes, actually.

One is up until the Civil War and the other one is from the from Reconstruction to the present.

And one of the things that has changed over the years, as I've taught that second half of southern history is that I've started to, to add more readings at the about Latinos in the south, about Asians in the south and, right.

And as, as we think of the modern south today as a more multiracial as opposed to biracial, do you think that affects this debate over monuments or, or the sense of who these monuments belong to, or who they're for, kind of tease that out a little bit?

COX: Yeah, I do think that that that's, that's a kind of a new way of thinking about these monuments you know and whether or not they're truly representative.

I mean, Malinda Maynor Lowery wrote an op-ed about, you know, about Native Americans.

And but she said it's not just native, we have you know Asian-Americans living in the south and the Latina pop you know with the Latino population, you know, you know a variety of, you know people of faith, of all kinds of faith you know living in the south.

So, yeah, I think there's you know I imagine some of the... like new immigrants to the, to the region probably don't even know what they're seeing.

You know, but those who if once they've learned, they, they have to recognize that it doesn't represent them.

And maybe also they may see the link between, you know, white supremacy and who they are as people, maybe people of color.

So it's you know, I haven't I can't say that I've thought about that as much as perhaps I should have.

But there are people like, like I said, Malinda Maynor Lowery, who have thought about it and, and are hel... are helping us thinking, think about those things, I think.

RUBIN: It's all just a sort of more complicated picture than the real binary that we always have.

COX: Yeah, exactly.

Exactly.

And it's true also that, first of all, not all African-Americans are concerned about removing monuments.

And it's also true that not all southern whites want them to remain.

So there is a lot of nuance and it's not, as you said, not a strict binary here.

RUBIN: What about class?

So, I mean, we've talked about race.

We've talked about religion.

I feel like we, we need social class.

I mean, is there a where does social class and again, this is a sort of I'll give you the choice of you can answer historically or contemporarily, but, but where does social class seem to fit in in the, the putting up of these monuments and the, the symbolism of these monuments?

COX: Well, I certainly think the, the monument builders, the UDC, where middle and upper class women you know and tended to you know if they put up monuments to the military leaders, it's usually these people because they kind of see themselves as similar in class, in social class.

They may be may have lost everything in the war, but there's still social elites.

And so, so there's that aspect of it, certainly.

And there's a sense that if we're going to put up something to the common soldier, it's almost like an act of noblesse oblige in a way, in those, in those early with those early monuments, I think more recently, it's interesting because I think, first of all, the UDC is certainly not the most important Confederate heritage organization that exists today.

They've gone actually gone quiet during the last few years.

And I think what you see now we're seeing I would say, I don't know, lower to middle class white men who were in Sons of Confederate Veterans and, and then you have that group, I don't know how active League of the South is now, but the League of the South prided itself on having men they were a little better educated and, and were speaking, at you know, it was kind of as if they were some intellectuals about all of this stuff or intellectualizing white supremacy.

RUBIN: Right.

Which to me is always so reminiscent of the, the kind of myth, right, that that the Ku Klux Klan members were sort of the low class.

Right.

And the elites were above all of this when, of course, they were either members or had the white citizens councils, for example, in Mississippi.

(overtalking).

I wanted to ask you, too, I was trying to think as I as I read the book and then as I finish the book, I thought, "All right, what is the final takeaway that Karen wants us to have?"

And, and partly because I think I'm going to be teaching this book next year in my Civil War class at the end.

And I want you.

Is it the role of the grassroots?

That was what I was really struck by, is that that this is almost as grassroots activism and movement building.

Is that right?

COX: You mean in recent years?

RUBIN: Yeah, in recent years, yeah.

Cox: Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you have to understand and I think there was a black representative on the city council in Memphis who said about the Nathan Bedford Forrest monument, if I had tried to do this back in 1905, I would have been lynched.

Right, you couldn't have done the kinds of things.

And there needed first you had to have a Civil Rights Movement in order to get out of that, because there's still violence against black men and black people in this country.

And, and so but the movement is a grassroots movement, I think.

And then what you've seen, of course, is this backlash from white elites or these GOP dominated legislatures that have taken away local control.

So you can't even you know, a community can't remove them.

And sometimes there's a loophole.

I was talking with someone about Asheville, North Carolina, earlier.

They're not only going to remove the Vance Monument, they're going to destroy it.

Yeah.

So, I mean, but that's like one community and that's really bucking the trend.

You're not going to see that in Mississippi.

You're not going to see that in most of the south.

Definitely not South Carolina.

And definitely, you know, there are these Tennessee, there are all these states in there.

What they're doing is doubling down on their Heritage Protection Acts or Monument Preservation Laws, and really those laws are actually having the opposite effect.

Because people were vandalizing them or they end up in litigation.

RUBIN: Right, because in fact, they're pushing people against it, it's also don't you just die a little bit inside as, as a Civil War historian, right, that, that these are all Republican legislature.

So it's just so a-historical I mean, obviously I know why that is.

COX: Yes.

But some people don't.

And you get these this false narrative out there that, you know, Democrats are the same as they were you know, in the 19th century, as you know... RUBIN: Right.

COX: We don't have to go down that rabbit hole, but, yeah.

RUBIN: No.

I know I saw, I think on Twitter that that you're tired of people asking you to look into your crystal ball.

So I'm not asking that I'm not.

But as someone who teaches outside of Baltimore.

Baltimore, famously in 2017, the mayor, they had been tied up for a long time in this sort of interminable city council discussion and declared that the monuments had to go and they were gone overnight and they're warehoused somewhere.

But the plinths are still there, the bases are still there.

And I'm curious if you have an idea about what should replace them, what should go on the bases?

COX: Well, I think this is something for communities themselves to decide.

And if they want, one of the things that's going to help them is the Mellon Foundation is, is offering grants to communities to reimagine their memorial landscape in monument landscape.

And it could be through art.

It could be any number of things.

And so I think I think that's really I think that communities are who are that are grappling with this need to they need to be creative and bring a diversity of representatives from their community and, and probably seek out these grants.

RUBIN: Anthony Armstrong had a question about who's writing the book led you to rethink the design of future monuments and memorials, so you've just kind of answered that.

I guess I'll just go in order, actually.

So this first one is from Karen Wolf who many of you know, right?

And so she's asking, she says, "Karen and Anne, thank you for this important conversation.

Can I ask you for this early Americanist to reflect a bit on the way we've commemorated other periods of American history?

How far out of the bounds of commemorative politics are Confederate monuments?"

COX: Oh wow, how far out of the bounds?

RUBIN: I mean, are they different from the way we commemorate say, The Revolution?

COX: I mean, this is the thing right, because you get that's the question you get asked.

Well, why aren't you going to get rid of Washington and Jefferson?

Because they owned slaves.

I mean, that's the, the response you get.

And I kind of posed, posed that to my historian friends.

And a lot of people came back with one of the differences between Washington and Jefferson and a Robert E. Lee is that Washington and Jefferson are honored for their contributions to our democracy, not for owning slaves, whereas Lee was is being honored in heat for leading an army that really was going to perpetuate slavery, but also that he had taken he had violated his oath and had taken up arms against the United States.

I think there's those, those are the, the major differences.

I do believe one could say you could have provide some sort of context for a Jefferson for Washington Monument or the Jefferson Memorial, for example.

There could be some sort of reinterpretation to talk about slavery.

So that's my those are my thoughts.

RUBIN: And I would... COX: And you can add to it... RUBIN: I was going to say I just I mean, yes, I agree with everything you said.

And as someone who's my first book was "Confederate Nationalism," so I completely agree with that, take on Lee.

I would also say that you don't really see monuments in this country, to my knowledge, anyway, to loyalists who would be, I think, the analog to the Confederacy, sort of, I guess.

Right.

And of course, famously, the statue of King George was pulled down and melted down, I think I wish Karen could answer live.

So the next question is from Krista Monod.

And she asks, "Can you speak a little bit more about why you view some monuments as acceptable?

What sort of contextual factors do you view as mattering?"

So how, how would you contextualize, say... COX: What's acceptable?

Yeah, I think we talked about those monuments in national parks as perhaps acceptable in that we could you could provide context, that proper historical context about them.

There are those in cemeteries, I mean, in some and actually in some cases, that's what's happened when monuments have been removed.

They in some cases, they've been removed to cemeteries where there the Confederate dead are buried.

That may be something that people would find acceptable.

That's, that's kind of what they decided in Charlotte.

They was like, OK, Charlotte has some Confederate monument, a come, another marker there in the in the cemetery.

But they've decided you know it's OK to leave them.

There's no need to destroy them.

But they are going to provide context in the cemetery because it's a city cemetery.

It's city owned and the city is paying for the upkeep.

So it makes sense that there would be context.

RUBIN: So for you and a lot of it has to do with public land versus private land and sort of appropriate-ness, right, if you're memorializing the dead in a place where the dead are, that sort of thing.

COX: Yeah, I think that's, that's probably seems OK again, who's paying for it.

RUBIN: Right.

COX: Right.

Who's paying for it?

I mean, one of the monuments I talk about in the book is in Shreveport, that was in the on the on the courthouse of the Caddo Parish.

And after years and years of battles over that monument is finally being moved, but is going to be moved to some private land... RUBIN: Which happened actually to there was a bizarrely a Confederate statue in Rockville, Maryland, right near 10 miles from Politics and Prose, an area that was not, in fact, pro-Confederate.

And when that was removed from the courthouse, it was moved to private land elsewhere in Montgomery County, where it still is.

How's your I'm going to going to dive in, which is has your thinking evolved over the past several years about monuments?

I mean, I know mine personally has, which is, is I started out in the leave them up and like all good historians, just complicated by putting up some signage with a lot of words.

Right?

And they've shifted over time away from that.

And I'm curious about your, the evolution of your thinking.

COX: Yeah, I definitely have shifted in doing this book is put me even further away from maybe what I thought about, about them.

I would think about them as historical objects.

Not really had not really thought about the pain that they caused, and I do say I mean, one of the things "Dixie's Daughters" did not do, my first book was talk about the African-American community's response to, to these, these statues.

I tell it I believe now that the let's place contextual panels next to the monument.

That train has left the station.

There is none of that happening right now.

And part of the reason is if you think about and say we're going to put up a 4x6 panel that sits in the ground that people could read and it's standing next to a 35, 40 foot monument.

And there is the optics of the inequality of that.

And so and so I think that, you know, it'll be interesting to see.

I mean, clearly, there's only been about 100 monuments removed.

There's 700 to go.

It's going to be a while.

And, and I think it'll be interesting to see if communities ever get to that point where they're going to do something about it.

RUBIN: That's great.

OK, the next question is from Virginia Horgon.

And she asks, "Since the monuments are connected to the broader purpose of creating legitimacy relative to the south's role in the Civil War.

I'm interested in your view as to how effective the monuments were in achieving this objective.

These are other efforts, such as what is taught in southern history classes about the war, ectera.

COX: Right.

You have to think, as I say, in something I wrote, I know maybe this book because I've written so many things, but it's, it's, it's that is that Confederate monuments are one weapon in the arsenal of white supremacy.

These it's not that they're there, it's not that they're alone.

It's like there's a there is they work in tandem with a program of education, publishing a pro Confederate histories, the laws that that had the legalized, you know, segregation.

So they're all working together.

So what is going on inside the courthouse, which is, you know is being supplanted by what's outside of the courthouse, those monuments, but also the fact, you know, again, that they were ritualize for so many years and sometimes in some places still today, there might be a Confederate Memorial Day in a particular community, they may come and have some sort of ceremony around the statues.

And so, yeah, yeah, it's not just they don't they're not separate from these other, other things that are going on.

RUBIN: I was really struck reading your book again.

That that.

You know, I knew it, but I'd forgotten or you don't think about it until I was reading your book about how much of this is happening simultaneously.

Right.

Which is you have this this shift to these big central town memorials and city memorials at the same time as you have disfranchisement and the rise of Jim Crow segregation laws at the same time that you also have the rise of lynching and the period known as the Nadir where, where it's all sort of happening in the 1880s, 1890s, 1900s that it's all at the same time.

It's like this this boa constrictor of white supremacy wrapping around African-Americans and making it seem inescapable.

COX: Exactly.

When the UDC is formed in 1894, we're in the middle of a decade of intense racial violence and lynching and disfranchise black men rolling back the 15th Amendment.

All of those things are happening at the same time.

And, and it, it continues into the 20th century, legalized segregation.

And, you know, it just it's just on and on.

And it is honestly, I just you when you start to study this stuff as we do, you feel like you can just reading it is suffocating I can't, and having to live it.

I cannot imagine and I know that I have white privilege.

I recognize that.

But I and I see it because I like it's got to be suffocating on a daily basis to have to deal with this.

RUBIN: Yeah, I think students are really struck by it.

When you teach the 1890s and when you teach this whole period.

My students I know were, were really struck by it and really, frankly, depressed and upset by everything that happened and how, again, how inescapable it seemed.

COX: Yes.

RUBIN: So here's a question from Linda Carpenter.

"What do you make of the difference between the US after the Civil War and Germany after World War Two?"

This a great question.

"Germany did not raise, nor did they allow to be raised monuments and memorials to the Nazi movement.

Yet here the Southern Ladies purposely placed monuments, wrote textbooks, ectera memorializing the Lost Cause.

And the government didn't stop or prohibit these actions."

COX: Yeah, there's the complicity of the United States government, there's a complicity among white northerners, I mean, first and during and I think about, you know, the basic the ways in which northerners just basically turned a blind eye to what was happening in the south and allowed that to continue.

People are often are trying to make these comparisons, you know, with Germany and, and the south.

And it's right.

It was like we still have I mean, Germany is not still have Nazi iconography in the public square, I mean, which is what we do.

I mean, there I think before, before, I mean, there were like, you know, I think what was gosh, I can't think of the "Mothers of the Fatherland" or that that book that was out several years ago, there were months that women are certainly part of, of teaching that propaganda in the lead up into the into the war, but not afterwards.

And this is one of the differences is that women took this on immediately after the, the, the Civil War end, and saw that their purpose was to, to train these, you know, southern citizens, to continue to defend Confederate principles, states' rights and white supremacy and the like.

I mean, there you know, they did such a great job of it, too.

I mean, because I have students who show up in my classroom and say, you know, what did you how did you learn about the Civil War?

Oh, our teacher told us it was about states' rights I'm like, whoa, you know, like where's I don't know where the disconnect comes, because I know as historians, we've known this for a long a long time.

We've been writing about it is not making it into the classrooms, secondary schools like I think it needs to be.

RUBIN: As I as a person educated in the north, I knew it was about slavery.

COX: I know you did.

RUBIN: I'm just giving you a hard time, no I think that's it.

I think that that white northerners are tired of the war.

They don't have any particular they're not, not white supremacists.

They're just more subtle about it, perhaps, or not even.

And so they have no problem letting white, but for the most part, letting white southerners kind of, create this mythic story.

COX: And there's that the whole culture of reconciliation, the reunions of veterans, that takes place beginning early 1880s and, and, and then I just feel like an obviously northern firms like Bronze Works and Monument are, are building, are making the monuments.

The Lee monument in New Orleans that was unveiled in 1884 was, was manufactured in New York.

So there's some complicity going on everywhere around the Lost Cause.

RUBIN: Right.

And even northern veterans are ok having segregated reunions.

COX: Yeah.

RUBIN: Unions in segregated cities, if they have them in Louisville or if they have them in Baltimore.

So.

So exactly.

It's not it's never you know, it's never the paradigm that I was taught as a child, which was the south was bad and the north was good.

Right, it's obviously much more complicated than that.

I will I will add, as someone put as a comment that her husband is Italian.

And the first time he saw a southern monument, he said, we don't have any monuments to Mussolini.

So, again, in that same vein.

Judy Ginsburg has two comments or two questions.

One is, is why has the UDC gone quiet and then the other I'll let you choose.

She, she includes a link to a "Philadelphia Inquirer" article where a well-known Civil War historian claimed that that Philadelphia has with Philadelphia has a Confederate monument, apparently.

But these monuments no longer hold the meaning that they once did.

But what could have a Confederate monument have meant to Philadelphia in 1912?

I'll let you handle those.

COX: OK, tell me about the first question again?

RUBIN: Why has the UDC gone quiet and sort of ceded this ground to the Sons?

COX: Well, they had been doing it for a while, You know, I think since probably the 1990s, they had been kind of ceding ground.

I think initially, I think it's partly because they're, they're smaller in number and it's an aging organization, whereas the Sons are a little bit younger in their membership.

But not, not totally.

But I think the UDC was like completely caught off guard.

I don't think they, they didn't know what to do with that.

And I don't think they were ready.

I mean, while the early UDC had a PR machine, you know, pretty much probably the person of Mildred Rutherford.

But, but this is a contemporary UDC, I think they think of them, first of all, since the '50s, the UDC has been portrayed as a patriotic organization.

And so they see themselves as that not necessary, not strictly a Confederate organization, but this is part of the whole Lost Cause is that we're, we're both southerners.

We're loyal to the south and loyal to the United States.

And so and, and I think there's a also that the UDC doesn't really understand its own history.

It just doesn't understand it does is not familiar with its own history, and I don't think they're ready to handle all of that in this matter of fact.

You know, they, they basically sent the message out that, as I learned a few years ago after Charlottesville, they said do not talk to journalists.

Do not speak to journalists, no matter how nice they may seem to you.

I am pretty sure I could never get inside the UDC headquarters ever again.

You know, when I did it when I was doing research, if they ever they know who I am probably by now.

But so there's that element of it there.

There's a sort of you know, they're out there out of their league right now and, and who knows what's going to happen.

I mean, the UDC headquarters got attacked last summer because people know, people know.

They think that they're sitting there and they're benign and you know, nothing.

Now, what was the other question related to the UDC?

RUBIN: Oh, that was about the UDC or the Philadelphia why is there a Confederate monument in Philadelphia and what meaning did it have?

Does it have now?

COX: I think that anywhere southerners were living, they could find a way to put up a monument to the Confederacy.

I mean, there is there is a southern diaspora.

There's a white southerners migrated to northern cities.

And when there was enough of them gathered, they would find ways of commemorating the Confederacy.

It could be anything and it could be based on a myth or something.

I doubt it meant anything to anybody but those who put it up there.

And I don't know this particular monument to, to read a little bit more about it.

You know, it reminds me that there was this one in Boston Harbor, too, and most people didn't know about it, you know, but once they knew about it and knew about Charlottesville, they wanted that gone immediately.

And so if there's something there in Philadelphia, I mean, I think once people know about it, they're going to try to get it removed, is just my, my guess.

RUBIN: Yeah, I think I think you're right that there is an element where they do just sort of become part of the wallpaper almost.

Yeah, well, if you don't know, you don't really think about them... COX: Especially in a northern city, you're not expecting that.

RUBIN: Right.

Right.

But if you do know.

Then then.

Then they are, you know, this kind of open wound or assault that that many people want removed.

We only have a couple of minutes left.

And what I wanted, I guess, to try to think about how to, to close this, actually, this is what I want to do to close it, which is I'm holding up the cover, which, again, is this amazing image.

Can you talk a little bit about this image?

COX: Yeah.

You know, it's just a year ago, right?

Almost a year ago, less than a year ago when that happened.

So when after George Floyd was murdered and then these protests erupted, things tended in things that the Lee Monument in Richmond had been spray painted and in everything, and there have been monuments ripped down and things like that.

Well, what happened is, is that something really interesting happened, which is that there be there was an element of protest art going on in these images, they're being projected not only the image, but also messages are, are projected onto the screen, onto the monument itself, because it's an enormous monument.

So it works well, as a screen for projecting something.

And so that that emerged and that was such a powerful image, I thought, I think it also kind of represent what I'm trying to say in the book that here you are a century before here was this monument to Lee that stood you know unmolested for you know well over a century.

And then in 2020 folks like let's say we're going to reinterpret this for you.

And they did it with first with George Floyd, but then a number of images.

You had other victims of police brutality, including Breonna Taylor.

You had images of, of respected black leaders like Frederick Douglass or W.E.B.

Du Bois.

You had Harriet Tubman.

And when John Lewis passed away, his image was projected on onto that.

There was one of the like a member of the US colored troops.

I think an image was, was projected on there most recently.

And so I think what's important about that is it's like it's the way in which art can reinterpret something like these, these statues that are really divisive.

But it's also I think it's important, I think, for people to remember, too, that once things calm down in the monument had been vandalized, spray painted, whatever, and these images were being projected, it really became a peaceful space.

There was and we're having cookouts and basketball games and they had voter registration tables there.

And, and so it became it was about a reclamation of the space and a reinterpretation of the space.

And I really that image on the cover, I'm really so thrilled with that image and thankful to the photographer.

Let me just say his name really quick because it's in there.

Jordan Vance is the photographer from Richmond who took that image.

And I think it's I think it works.

It works for the book.

RUBIN: Well, Megan Nelson quickly chimed in on the questions, asking if we know if the reclaimed Lee monument will remain with art projection, projection and the overwritten text, which she added is, of course, as we would know, her dearest wish.

COX: Yeah.

So here's the thing.

I do know that this particular monument is in litigation.

I and other historians have signed onto an amicus brief for the state of Virginia and it will remains to be seen.

I've heard from people in Richmond that the governor would like to have the whole thing removed.

It could be that just as the statue and Traveler, Lee and Traveler get removed from the top and then that the plinth stays and then it becomes something, it's hard to know where, it'll be interesting to see what Richmonders decide, but it's definitely in litigation.

RUBIN: Well, it sounds like there will be epilogues for your future editions of this book then, Karen.

COX: Yeah, I'm afraid I'm stuck with this topic.

RUBIN: You've been, you've been doing a great job with it.

I just wanted to thank Karen for writing a really powerful and moving and important book that is also not very long, so very readable.

And I would it's been a real treat to get to talk to you.

And I can't wait till we can talk in person.

COX: Yes, me too.

Thank you so much.

Anne, I really appreciate it.

RUBIN: You're welcome.

HORSLEY: On behalf of Politics and Prose, I want to thank you, Dr. Cox and you, Professor Rubin, for this wonderful conversation.

And of course, I want to thank everyone who has tuned in and for everyone out there, I want to just say stay safe and stay well read.

NARRATOR: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations or online at politics-prose.com (music playing through credits)