Thanks for the response. Let me be clear that my comment was specifically in reference to the work of the committee and the meeting that I attended early on. Running the show was the historian James "Bud" Robertson, who was tapped to head the centennial committee by Kennedy after things fell apart early on in that commemoration. Robertso…
Thanks for the response. Let me be clear that my comment was specifically in reference to the work of the committee and the meeting that I attended early on. Running the show was the historian James "Bud" Robertson, who was tapped to head the centennial committee by Kennedy after things fell apart early on in that commemoration. Robertson is a pretty traditional and conservative historian but he was laser focused on not making the same mistakes of the 1960s. No celebratory battle reenactments and slavery and the lives of the enslaved had to be front and center. I was mildly shocked by this and I think in the end Virginia did an excellent job of holding to that goal.
Thanks. It does seem to me true that in Virginia and elsewhere, sesquicentennial celebrations and commemorations and civic discussion did much better than had the centennial concerning the Civil War's actual central issue. I was old enough in the early 60s that I remember that the centennial was all--and pretty much only--battles and generals and valor. And in the end, it is not just Virginia that has blundered anyway concerning memory of, and esteem for, the multitudes that I cited. A fundamental problem in the national memory's failure with post-Army Fort Monroe is that it's a national failure. Virginia had the main but not the only control of the process of deciding the disposition of what should be, and still could be, advocated as a World Heritage Site. But that would first require common-sense recognition of the hand of common people alongside the hand of authority in emancipation's evolution. By the way, I had a friend whose Fort Monroe advocacy was largely inspired by his reverence for Civil War memory, which in turn had been inspired by his favorite professor at Virginia Tech: Professor Robertson.
Thanks for the response. Let me be clear that my comment was specifically in reference to the work of the committee and the meeting that I attended early on. Running the show was the historian James "Bud" Robertson, who was tapped to head the centennial committee by Kennedy after things fell apart early on in that commemoration. Robertson is a pretty traditional and conservative historian but he was laser focused on not making the same mistakes of the 1960s. No celebratory battle reenactments and slavery and the lives of the enslaved had to be front and center. I was mildly shocked by this and I think in the end Virginia did an excellent job of holding to that goal.
Thanks. It does seem to me true that in Virginia and elsewhere, sesquicentennial celebrations and commemorations and civic discussion did much better than had the centennial concerning the Civil War's actual central issue. I was old enough in the early 60s that I remember that the centennial was all--and pretty much only--battles and generals and valor. And in the end, it is not just Virginia that has blundered anyway concerning memory of, and esteem for, the multitudes that I cited. A fundamental problem in the national memory's failure with post-Army Fort Monroe is that it's a national failure. Virginia had the main but not the only control of the process of deciding the disposition of what should be, and still could be, advocated as a World Heritage Site. But that would first require common-sense recognition of the hand of common people alongside the hand of authority in emancipation's evolution. By the way, I had a friend whose Fort Monroe advocacy was largely inspired by his reverence for Civil War memory, which in turn had been inspired by his favorite professor at Virginia Tech: Professor Robertson.