The Historical Ideology of Mildred Lewis Rutherford: A Confederate Historian's New South Creed

Case, Sarah

doi:10.2307/3070160

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…This selective public memory was reified through strategies including school textbooks and the erection of Confederate monuments across the South. These actions were often steered by the work of "Ladies' organizations" like the United Daughters of the Confederacy, or the UDC (see Case, 2002;Chamberlaine and Yanus, 2020;Cox, 2003;Janney, 2008;Sheriff, 2012). The current crisis, then, is exacerbated by fault lines built into collective memory through a long history of institutionalizing specific narratives about the past at the expense of others.…”

Section: Us Memory In Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

“History is Illuminating”: Public memory crises and collectives in Richmond, Virginia

Logan

2021

Memory Studies

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Amid the Black Lives Matter protests and calls to remove Confederate statuary in Richmond, Virginia, during the summer of 2020, the History Is Illuminating project constructed public signs that replicated the traditional historical markers used throughout the Commonwealth of Virginia. The signs were placed along Richmond’s historic Monument Avenue in conversation with the still-standing Confederate monuments. They challenged the monuments’ representation of public memory by re-introducing narratives about prominent Black Richmonders and informing readers of the Jim Crow legislation that enabled the monuments to be constructed and venerated. This edited and condensed interview with organizers from the project describes the multiple crises of collective memory that public historians confront in the American South, as well as the strategies the History Is Illuminating project used to counter dominant narratives about public memory. Finally, the interview highlights the importance of community action and a multiplicity of public memory projects in order to ensure a democratic approach to collective memory.

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Section: Us Memory In Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

“History is Illuminating”: Public memory crises and collectives in Richmond, Virginia

Logan

2021

Memory Studies

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“A company of gentlemen”: confederate veterans and southern universities

Silkenat

2020

American Nineteenth Century History

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Between 1911 and 1914, four major Southern universities -those of North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama -conferred honorary degrees upon former students who had abandoned their studies to join the Confederate military. Some 400 Confederate veterans received this tribute a half century after their enlistment, during a critical moment in the development of Lost Cause commemoration, of Southern Progressivism, and of Southern higher education. This essay explores how the decision to honor former Confederates at these four state universities not only reflected the desire to recognize the patriotic sacrifices of aged Confederate veterans, but also helped to solidify a political order based on white supremacy and progressive social reform. It argues that these graduation ceremonies brought together three generations of Lost Cause advocates: the veterans themselves, who both created and personified the ideology, Progressive educators, politicians, and heritage activists, who saw value in honoring them, and the students, who would carry the creed into the Civil Rights era. The University of North Carolina initiated this form of Lost Cause commemoration, conferring degrees on its septuagenarian former students in 1911. The University of Virginia followed suit in 1912, with the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama following in 1914. Two factors distinguished these four schools among Southern universities and colleges. First, they had, on the eve of the Civil War, among the largest enrollments in the country -only Harvard and Yale boasted more students than UNC or Virginia. In 1860, the University of North Carolina had 450 students, while Virginia had approximately 400. Georgia and Alabama had considerably fewer students, with 123 and 120 enrolled in 1860 respectively, but these figures still put them in the upper echelon of universities in the nascent Confederacy. Second, (and possibly more significantly), each of these four schools remained open for some part or all of the war. Most Southern men's colleges and universities shut their doors in 1861, as students left en 3 masse to join the Confederate ranks. This included large state universities like the University of South Carolina and the University of Mississippi, both of which shuttered for the duration of the conflict. These four universities that remained open did so facing declining enrollment, as students abandoned their books for the rifle, and outside pressure. The University of Georgia suspended operation in September 1863, its few remaining students called up for militia duty, and Alabama remained open until the war's final month, when Union forces took Tuscaloosa and set campus buildings aflame. Virginia and North Carolina remained open throughout the war (though North Carolina did close between 1871 and 1875). 2 The idea of granting degrees to Confederate student-soldiers appears to have originated with J.G. de Roulhac Hamilton. A North Carolina native, Hamilton had studied under William Archibald Dunning at Columbia University before t...

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Recent Scholarship

2002

Journal of American History

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The Historical Ideology of Mildred Lewis Rutherford: A Confederate Historian's New South Creed

Cited by 4 publications

References 2 publications

“History is Illuminating”: Public memory crises and collectives in Richmond, Virginia

“History is Illuminating”: Public memory crises and collectives in Richmond, Virginia

“A company of gentlemen”: confederate veterans and southern universities

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