🧵Defenders of the Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery staked their defense on the belief that the memorial represents reconciliation. A number of people posted newspaper clippings to demonstrate this good will between former enemies in 1914. But in doing so... ...they highlighted their inability to critically evaluate primary sources. What they have done is little more than cut and paste without any attempt at interpretation. They fail to evaluate these sources within the rich archive that exists on the subject of reconciliation...

🧵To believe that the Confederate memorial in Arlington National Cemetery represents reconciliation is to believe that the imagery of the "loyal mammy" or "loyal slave" is historically accurate. But, of course, it isn't. In fact, this is the imagery that helped... #CivilWarMemory ...to make reconciliation between white Americans even possible, to the extent that it was experienced at all. It involved erasing from history the hundreds of thousands of Black Americans who risked their lives to help save this Union and end slavery.

One of the things that I was reminded of during my civil rights journey through Alabama this past week is that we need to move beyond a strict distinction between slavery and freedom.

For white Alabamians freedom entailed the right to control others. Freedom entailed... ...the right to defy a federal treat with the Creek Indians and take the land for themselves. Freedom entailed the right to own and sell Black bodies for their own benefit. In 1860-61 freedom involved the right to leave the Union in order to create a new slaveholding republic.

Apparently, fifth graders in Virginia will be able to study westward expansion in the early nineteenth century without once confronting the issue of slavery. These revised standards proposed by the Youngkin administration are a joke. #historyteacher doe.virginia.gov/boe/meetings/2… The section on the Civil War tries to rectify this, but students need to understand slavery's importance from the beginning. In 2022 we should be explicit about what led to secession. Do students really need to be able to identify Stonewall Jackson? #historyteacher