Saturday May 19, 2018 from 2:00 to 3:30
Karen L. Cox
Program Title: “Confederate Monuments in the Jim Crow South”
Author of Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture
Pack Memorial Library, Lord Auditorium, lower level
Sponsored by the Friends of the North Carolina Room
With support from Mountain Xpress
Refreshments will be served
Photo: Logan Cyrus
After our February 3, 2018 program with Professor Fitzhugh Brundage from UNC Chapel Hill, we wanted to keep the conversation about Asheville’s Confederate Monuments alive. And we want to continue to do what we can, to keep Asheville residents informed about the history behind the Confederate monuments.
“Confederate Monuments in the Jim Crow South” will provide an overview of the peak period of monument building between 1890 and 1920, including a discussion of the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s role, but goes further by examining these symbols in the context of their time–the Jim Crow South. At the end of the talk will be an opportunity to discuss what we should do with the monuments.
Professor Cox points out that the “children were critical to the preservation of Confederate culture,” as seen in this Asheville Citizen-Times photograph from 1962.
Ceremony marking the unveiling of a new monument to Joseph Black, Confederate Soldier, in Mountain View Baptist Church Cemetery, placed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Asheville Chapter. Asheville Citizen-Times, November 5, 1962.
Booklet from the NC Room “United Daughters of the Confederacy Collection,” MS043.001J
Karen L. Cox is an award-winning historian and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She is the author of three books and numerous essays and articles on the subject of southern history and culture. Her books include Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture, which won the 2004 Julia Cherry Spruill Prize from the Southern Association for Women Historians for the Best Book in Southern Women’s History, Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture, and, most recently, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South.
A successful public intellectual, she has written op-eds for the New York Times: “Why Confederate Monuments Must Fall“, the Washington Post: The Whole Point of Confederate Monuments is to Celebrate White Supremacy, CNN, TIME, Publishers Weekly, and the Huffington Post. Her expertise on southern history and culture has led to numerous interviews with newspapers from around the world and radio appearances on the BBC, Canadian Public Radio, NPR, Detroit Today, and Charlotte Talks. She’s also appeared on C-SPAN, Israeli Television, and NC Bookwatch.
In the wake of events in Charlottesville, University Press of Florida author and University of North Carolina at Charlotte history professor Karen Cox was called upon as an expert to comment on the meaning behind Confederate monuments and whether they should be removed. We welcome her to Asheville.
