Correcting History: Confederate Monuments, Rituals and the Lost Cause – w/ Karen Cox
Teaching Hard History
Learning for Justice
4.2 • 588 Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2021
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Lost Cause narrative would have us believe that Confederate monuments have always been celebrated, but people have protested them since they started going up. Historian Karen Cox unpacks how the United Daughters of the Confederacy used propaganda to dominate generations of teachings about the Civil War through textbooks, legislation, and popular culture—and how, after the war, the South and the North prized white reconciliation over justice for all.
And be sure to visit the enhanced episode transcript for even more resources for teaching about the role of the Lost Cause narrative in the Jim Crow era.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I grew up watching TV. |
| 0:09.0 | A lot of TV. |
| 0:13.0 | My parents let me because it kept me out of the streets. |
| 0:17.0 | And the streets of Brooklyn in the late 70s and 80s were no place for a black kid to be hanging out after school. |
| 0:22.6 | And certainly no place for him to be hanging out after the street lights flickered on. |
| 0:27.6 | Now, I seriously doubt that many TV critics would consider that moment in time the golden age of the small screen. |
| 0:39.5 | But I defy anyone to say it wasn't the golden age of the TV theme song, |
| 0:49.1 | especially for shows that black people watched. |
| 0:53.1 | There was the toll-tapping, uplifting theme song to the Jeffesance. |
| 0:58.0 | To a deluxe apartment in the sky. |
| 1:03.0 | We're moving on up. |
| 1:05.0 | From Television City in Hollywood. |
| 1:08.0 | The soul stirring intro to good times. Good time. |
| 1:13.6 | Good time. |
| 1:16.6 | Good time you're out of a month. |
| 1:18.6 | Not getting hassled, not getting hustle, keeping your head above water, making a wave when you can. Temoff and a little bit later came the theme song to a different world |
| 1:35.3 | the aretha franklin version of course and i knew my parents loved me. |
| 1:45.4 | Stand me high and come. |
| 1:47.8 | And I knew the lyrics to every one of these songs. |
| 1:52.0 | Fish don't fry in the kitchen. |
| 1:54.6 | Bees don't burn on the grill. |
| 1:57.4 | Took a whole lot of trying Just to get up that hill |
... |
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