‘We Proudly Wore Confederate Symbols’
Readers respond to our June 2021 cover story and reflect on their own experiences reckoning with history and memory.
This article was published online on August 10, 2021.
The War on Nostalgia
The myth of the Lost Cause is passed down like an heirloom, Clint Smith wrote in June. What would it take for the truth to break through?
I am a southern white male. I was born in 1953, so I am old enough to remember my paternal great-grandmother, born in 1877 in Langley, South Carolina; my paternal grandfather, born in 1900 in Augusta, Georgia; my paternal grandmother, born in 1898 in Blakely, Georgia; and many other southern kinfolk from a bygone era. My parents taught us that hate was a sin and that Jim Crow was wrong. So I grew up thinking I was not bigoted or racist in any way.
Your article was something of a slap in the face, a wake-up call to
