The links to the South’s Confederate past are beginning to come down – some by law, some by force. But this part of the country is still strewn with memorials to the Lost Cause – from monuments in town squares to the names of parks and streets and schools.
Karen Cox has spent her career studying why and how those memorials came to be. She’s a professor of history at UNC Charlotte and the author of several books, including “Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture.” She talks about how the Old South found its way into everything from our neighborhoods to our textbooks.
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Show notes:
- Cox's faculty page at UNC Charlotte
- Her 2017 essay in the New York Times on why Confederate monuments must come down
- She's quoted in this New Yorker story on the (formerly Dixie) Chicks
- And in this Vox video on how Southern socialites rewrote Civil War history
- And in this Washington Post story on places named "Plantation"
Other music in this episode:
- Minus Pilots, "South Late Winter Dream"
- Jason Shaw, "Plantation"
New episodes of SouthBound come out every other Wednesday. Subscribe:
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SouthBound is a production of WFAE. Our host is Tommy Tomlinson. Our audience engagement manager is Joni Deutsch, and our main theme comes from Josh Turner.
