Imagine my surprise when I read the headline: “South Carolina marks Confederate Memorial Day on Tuesday.” I thought to myself surely this had to be some sort of clickbait situation, and that I was going to get to the end of that article and be embarrassed that I fell for their tricks.
But it wasn’t.
So here we are to talk about Confederate Memorial Day! Like almost everything else we talk about here, we quickly learned that there was more to this day than meets the headline - including a connection to the Ladies Memorial Associations of the Reconstruction South and the Lost Cause narrative that has influenced how the entire nation talks about the Civil War. We also want to take some time to talk about how the perpetuation of holidays like this makes it much more complicated for us, as a nation, to work toward our racial justice goals.
What’s in this episode?
A brief history of regular Memorial Day
The origins of Confederate Memorial Day
How Ladies Memorial Associations gained political influence
The United Daughters of the Confederacy and Lost Cause propaganda
States honor Confederate holidays but won’t recognize Juneteenth
If you’d like to get in touch…
You can leave us a review at: https://ratethispodcast.com/fireside
Or you can drop us a note from our Contact page!
You can find all of our sources in our Show Notes.
And, if you’d like to help us reach our goal of hiring a professional editor, you can check out our Patreon Page! Patrons get priority topic requests, behind the scenes content, and more!
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free