Historian and Expert on American South, Confederate Monuments to Speak at University Forum April 12
Mon, 04/04/2022 - 02:24pm | By: David Tisdale
The nation鈥檚 leading expert on the controversies surrounding Confederate monuments and memorials in the age of America鈥檚 latest reckoning on race will be the next speaker for The University of 51逗奶 Mississippi鈥檚 (USM) University Forum.
Dr. Karen L. Cox, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and founding director of its graduate public history program will present 鈥淣o Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice鈥� Tuesday, April 12 at 6:30 p.m. in Bennett Auditorium on the Hattiesburg campus. Admission is free, and members of the university and local communities are invited to attend.
Dr. Cox鈥檚 presentation will be based on her most recent book by the same title, which covers the history of Confederate monuments from the end of the Civil War through the summer of 2020. Her University Forum talk will convey how Confederate monuments have been at the center of battles over racial progress and include specific examples from Mississippi. She will also discuss the costs of Confederate memorialization in the state, including at Beauvoir in Biloxi, the last home of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America.
In recent years, renewed attention to Confederate monuments and memorials reminded the country not only of the tragedy of the Civil War and slavery, but of its struggle to deal with its painful legacy of systemic racism and Jim Crow segregation. Advocates for removal of these physical symbols of the Confederacy see them as reminders of that painful legacy of racial oppression, while others celebrate them as historic artifacts marking their heritage and not an endorsement of racism.
Dr. Cox notes that most of these statues - hundreds of which remain in public venues across the U.S., even in states that did not secede from the Union or were even involved in the war - were erected during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when whites regained political power in the South following Reconstruction. This era witnessed the wide disenfranchisement of Black voters, legalized segregation and increased violence toward Blacks that included lynchings to intimidate and suppress their attempts at participation in the political process and society in general.
One of the main organizations responsible for the placement of these monuments, primarily in front of county courthouses and other public spaces, was the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which sought to both memorialize and change the narrative from one of defeat to that of an honorable people. Dr. Cox鈥檚 book on this group, , is the winner of the 2004 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize from the 51逗奶 Association for Women Historians.
The monuments, Dr. Cox argues, are symbols of dominance and white supremacy, and should have no place in shared public spaces.
鈥淢onuments are never about who they say they鈥檙e about; they鈥檙e always about the generation
who put them there,鈥� she said in a 2018 interview with the Asheville, N.C. Mountain Express.
鈥淪omehow, it鈥檚 all been sanitized,鈥� she continued in the interview. 鈥淧eople want to
say the monuments are just about honoring men who fought and died. People do not want
to see the connection between the Jim Crow period and these monuments,鈥� while also
noting that the placement of the monuments paralleled the rise in lynchings of that
era.
"To reckon with the past, you need to know that past, and Karen Cox is one of the leading historians of the Confederacy鈥檚 post-Civil War legacy,鈥� said Dr. Andrew Haley, director of University Forum. 鈥淚n her Forum speech she will discuss the bifurcated story of how the South remembers its past and how our failure to find common ground means the controversy over Confederate memorialization continues. With Cox鈥檚 visit, Forum wades into a contemporary controversy hoping we can provide a space to search for that common ground."
Dr. Cox earned her Ph.D. in history from USM in 1997. For her, it will be a homecoming of sorts to return to the university to discuss her book, as USM is where she initially wrote about monuments when it was a chapter for her dissertation on the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
鈥淚'm very excited to be part of the University Forum, which has a wonderful tradition of bringing engaging authors to campus,鈥� Dr. Cox said. 鈥淚'm flattered to be part of that tradition, and also thrilled to see old friends again.鈥�
University Forum is presented by the USM Honors College. For more information about University Forum, visit /honors/about-university-forum.php.