Description
Plantations in America's South are physical testaments to the great wealth accrued through slave labor. Yet plantation museums often gloss over that economic history in favor of more romanticized depictions of plantation life. There's little historical evidence that African Americans supported the Confederate cause by becoming soldiers. Yet this myth of the "black Confederate" remains in circulation. Reich studies the way collective memories of the Civil War are shaped and offers ways school curricula could address these problematic narratives. Jesse James was a thief and a cold-blooded killer who gunned down unarmed civilians. So why did newspapers at that time portray him as a folk hero? We take a look at the myth and the reality of one of America's most notorious outlaws. Mom's home cooking, wives' infidelities, and slaves dining with white families-White says you can write a whole history of the Civil War through the dreams of people who lived through it.
