1/ In our June cover story @ClintSmithIII writes about the Confederate lies that live on. Smith's cover story is part of the second chapter of “Inheritance,” a project about American history, Black life, and the resilience of memory. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
2/ “As I traveled, I was moved by the people who have committed their lives to telling the story of slavery in all its fullness and humanity. And I was struck by the many people I met who believe a version of history that rests on well-documented falsehoods,” he writes. 
3/ Buried in Blandford Cemetery, in Petersburg, Virginia, are the bodies of roughly 30,000 Confederate soldiers; it is one of the largest mass graves of Confederate servicemen in the country.
4/ On Memorial Day 2019, Blandford was the site of a Sons of Confederate Veterans event. The organization of about 30,000 says it aims to preserve “the history and legacy of these heroes, so future generations can understand the motives that animated the Southern Cause.”
5/ Central to this, Smith writes, is the myth of the Lost Cause, an “attempt to recast the Confederacy as something predicated on family and heritage … The myth asserts that the Civil War was fought by honorable men protecting their communities, and not about slavery at all.”
6/ Like Blandford, the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana also has a cemetery, of a kind. A small courtyard called the Field of Angels memorializes the 2,200 enslaved children who died in St. John the Baptist Parish from 1823 to 1863.
7/ Yvonne, the site’s director of operations said she is often asked by white visitors if there were any “good slave owners.” Her response:
8/ A 2019 Southern Poverty Law Center report found there were nearly 2,000 Confederate monuments, place names, and other symbols in public spaces across the country.
A follow-up report found that more than 160 of those symbols had been removed or renamed in 2020.
A follow-up report found that more than 160 of those symbols had been removed or renamed in 2020.
9/9 “So much of the story we tell about history is really the story we tell about ourselves … But just because someone tells you a story doesn’t make that story true,” Smith writes. Read the full cover story: theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
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