Post by the Scribe on Aug 17, 2020 0:35:08 GMT
Aug 15, 2020
Monumental lies
www.revealnews.org/episodes/monumental-lies-update-2/
LISTEN radiopublic.com/Reveal/s1!86f2a
Co-produced with PRX Logo
The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, but the Confederacy didn’t completely die with it. Monuments, shrines and museums are found throughout the South. We teamed up with Type Investigations to visit dozens of them and found that for devoted followers, they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won’t believe who’s funding these sites to keep them running.
www.typeinvestigations.org/
Plus, the story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy. In 1998, the state was set to celebrate its cuarto centenario: the 400th anniversary of the state’s colonization by the Spanish. But a dramatic act of vandalism would turn the making of a monument in Albuquerque into a fight over history the city didn’t expect.
This show has been updated with new reporting, based on a show that originally was broadcast Dec. 8, 2018.
DIG DEEPER
Read: The Costs of the Confederacy, which was also featured in Smithsonian Magazine
www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2018/11/27/the-costs-of-the-confederacy/
www.smithsonianmag.com/
Monumental lies
www.revealnews.org/episodes/monumental-lies-update-2/
LISTEN radiopublic.com/Reveal/s1!86f2a
Co-produced with PRX Logo
The Civil War ended more than 150 years ago, but the Confederacy didn’t completely die with it. Monuments, shrines and museums are found throughout the South. We teamed up with Type Investigations to visit dozens of them and found that for devoted followers, they inspire a disturbing – and distorted – view of history: Confederate generals as heroes. Slaves who were happy to work for them. That twisted history is also shared with schoolchildren on class trips. And you won’t believe who’s funding these sites to keep them running.
www.typeinvestigations.org/
Plus, the story of New Mexico’s great monument controversy. In 1998, the state was set to celebrate its cuarto centenario: the 400th anniversary of the state’s colonization by the Spanish. But a dramatic act of vandalism would turn the making of a monument in Albuquerque into a fight over history the city didn’t expect.
This show has been updated with new reporting, based on a show that originally was broadcast Dec. 8, 2018.
DIG DEEPER
Read: The Costs of the Confederacy, which was also featured in Smithsonian Magazine
www.typeinvestigations.org/investigation/2018/11/27/the-costs-of-the-confederacy/
www.smithsonianmag.com/
So here's a term we need to understand, lost cause. Confederates who lost the war, devise this idea of the lost cause. It's a whole false interpretation of history designed to justify their defeat, to absolve themselves of any guilt for starting the war and to vindicate their pre-war way of life. And this story is still being told at Beauvoir.
The larger goal of these once powerful men was to end the process that was reordering Southern society, reconstruction. They wanted to redeem their status, their power and their control over black lives and life.
These fantasies persist because people have to believe they have to believe that they fought for something greater than the continued subjugation of another human being.
The larger goal of these once powerful men was to end the process that was reordering Southern society, reconstruction. They wanted to redeem their status, their power and their control over black lives and life.
These fantasies persist because people have to believe they have to believe that they fought for something greater than the continued subjugation of another human being.
From the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, this is Reveal I'm Al Letson. Before the break we visited Beauvoir, the former home of Confederate leader, Jefferson Davis, the property now houses a museum of misinformation about slavery and the civil war. Reporters, Seth Freed Wessler and Brian Palmer of Type Investigations visited Beauvoir and more than 50 Confederate sites back in 2018. They uncovered how public money is keeping them open. Brian starts us off by running through the numbers.
Beauvoir gets $100,000 every year from the Mississippi state legislature to take care of the historic buildings. Lawmakers approved the same amount this year in the same period that they also voted to remove the Confederate emblem from the state flag. The biggest windfall came after hurricane Katrina in 2005. FEMA and the National Park Service sent more than $17 million to Beauvoir, but that money didn't just go to restoring buildings. Almost half of that money went to creating a new museum and library from scratch. And that's where you hear this lost cause version of history of benevolent slave owners and heroic Confederates.
We found that over the last decade, at least $40 million have flowed to Confederate sites and organizations. We visited dozens of these places and we would often hear some version of this myth that slavery wasn't so bad. In Georgia, for example, I heard this on the tour of A.H. Stephens State Park. Stephens was the vice president of the Confederacy.
Georgia has spent over a million dollars on this park in the last decade. And then there's this and Mississippi. I've recorded it on a tour of a historic site, dedicated to Stephen D. Lee, a Confederate Lieutenant. They got $30,000 from the state.
When it was started, a lot of widows were being taken advantage of and thrown off and different things. Their idea was they were going to be like a militia to protect people.
She's talking about the Ku Klux Klan. And she told me that the KKK had been misunderstood, that the group was formed to protect widows after the war. She left out that 19 people were lynched in the very same County where we were standing.
We found that a big chunk of public money goes directly to Confederate heritage organizations, the United daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Some of that money goes to maintain specific sites like a Confederate cemetery, I visited here in Virginia. I'm answering the Confederate section of Oakwood cemetery here in Richmond, Virginia.
Beauvoir gets $100,000 every year from the Mississippi state legislature to take care of the historic buildings. Lawmakers approved the same amount this year in the same period that they also voted to remove the Confederate emblem from the state flag. The biggest windfall came after hurricane Katrina in 2005. FEMA and the National Park Service sent more than $17 million to Beauvoir, but that money didn't just go to restoring buildings. Almost half of that money went to creating a new museum and library from scratch. And that's where you hear this lost cause version of history of benevolent slave owners and heroic Confederates.
We found that over the last decade, at least $40 million have flowed to Confederate sites and organizations. We visited dozens of these places and we would often hear some version of this myth that slavery wasn't so bad. In Georgia, for example, I heard this on the tour of A.H. Stephens State Park. Stephens was the vice president of the Confederacy.
Georgia has spent over a million dollars on this park in the last decade. And then there's this and Mississippi. I've recorded it on a tour of a historic site, dedicated to Stephen D. Lee, a Confederate Lieutenant. They got $30,000 from the state.
When it was started, a lot of widows were being taken advantage of and thrown off and different things. Their idea was they were going to be like a militia to protect people.
She's talking about the Ku Klux Klan. And she told me that the KKK had been misunderstood, that the group was formed to protect widows after the war. She left out that 19 people were lynched in the very same County where we were standing.
We found that a big chunk of public money goes directly to Confederate heritage organizations, the United daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans. Some of that money goes to maintain specific sites like a Confederate cemetery, I visited here in Virginia. I'm answering the Confederate section of Oakwood cemetery here in Richmond, Virginia.