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Posted On: 08/17/2017 1:14:54 AM
Post# of 65629

The statues in Charlottesville and Durham were both installed in the midst of a Confederate monument-building campaign that lasted for decades and took place long after the war it commemorated. In fact, both were unveiled in the very same month: May 1924.
That’s more than coincidental. The Civil War was still not so distant: Any black Southerner over 60 had probably been born a slave. The last veterans were in their 80s and 90s, and their passing loosed a gush of “greatest generation”-style nostalgia in both North and South. Photographs of statue dedications on Confederate Memorial Day (still an official holiday in six Southern states) show white-mustachioed men in fading uniforms, holding ceremonial trowels.
That’s more than coincidental. The Civil War was still not so distant: Any black Southerner over 60 had probably been born a slave. The last veterans were in their 80s and 90s, and their passing loosed a gush of “greatest generation”-style nostalgia in both North and South. Photographs of statue dedications on Confederate Memorial Day (still an official holiday in six Southern states) show white-mustachioed men in fading uniforms, holding ceremonial trowels.

