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Following the social unrest over Confederate flags, statues and symbols in 2015, a lot of southerners and their supporters around the country were rather unhappy with the results. (Regular readers already know you can count me among their ranks.) One of the most high-profile battles in that struggle took place at the capitol in South Carolina. There, the Confederate Battle Flag was finally lowered for the last time on July 10th of that year. Now, three years later, the flag is flying again… at least for a few hours. Some sons (and daughters) of the South are raising a temporary...

The removal of offensive monuments took a unique turn in Seattle. Mayor Ed Murray asked a cemetery to remove a Confederate monument erected in 1926 but also requested the removal of a large statue of Vladimir Lenin. From the Seattle Times: The monument, erected in 1926 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the Lenin statue are both on private property. Still, Murray said, he believes they should be removed. “Not only do these kinds of symbols represent historic injustices, their existence causes pain among those who themselves or whose family members have been impacted by these atrocities,” Murray...

Just weeks before last year's "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va., Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney announced a new commission to recommend "how to best tell the real story" of the Confederate-era and other statues on Monument Avenue, a tree-lined street known as one of the city's tourist destinations. Then the white nationalists gathered in Charlottesville, some 70 miles away. They rallied around a statue of Robert E. Lee that had been slated for removal during an August weekend that turned violent. The next week, Stoney added to the Richmond group's charge: The commission would examine the possible removal or...

Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite is a concert that was headlined by Elvis Presley, and was broadcast live via satellite on January 14, 1973. The concert took place at the Honolulu International Center (HIC) in Honolulu (now known as the Neal S. Blaisdell Center) and aired in over 40 countries across Asia and Europe (who received the telecast the next day, also in primetime). Despite the satellite innovation, NBC did not broadcast an edited version of the concert in the United States until April 4, 1973 because the concert took place the same day as Super Bowl VII. The decision...

Union and Confederate soldiers return to Gettysburg on 50th anniversary of Civil War battle that began 155 years ago tomorrow:    

Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart said that he doesn’t believe that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery, arguing that it was mostly about states’ rights. In a Monday interview with Hill.TV’s “Rising,” Stewart, who recently won the GOP nomination in the Virginia Senate race, said that not all parts of Virginia’s history are “pretty.” But he said he doesn’t associate slavery with the war. “I don’t at all. If you look at the history, that’s not what it meant at all, and I don’t believe that the Civil War was ultimately fought over the issue of...

That was according to my 8th grade history teacher-retired military. The only one who came close was MacArthur. That brings up the politics of the left. If it is true that Lee was a great General isn't it at least worth acknowledging? This tearing down of statues should stop. Educated persons should acknowledge the truth. It's the left that's the intelligent ones as they would have us believe. I see no conservatives standing up for this truth. The Senate GOP candidate in Virginia should start an 'intellectual' conversation on Lee and let the left react. Don't wait for a baiting...

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports the Richmond School Board voted 6-1 Monday to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary School to Barack Obama Elementary School.

A Richmond, Virginia, elementary school will switch its name from that of a Confederate general to that of the nation's first black President. On Monday, the Richmond school board voted to rename J.E.B. Stuart Elementary as Barack Obama Elementary School. Members of the school's community submitted ideas for a new name and students at the Richmond school, which is 95% African-American, voted among seven choices. The top three finalists were: Barack Obama, Northside and Wishtree. Last year, a school board in Mississippi dropped the name Jefferson Davis, for the president of the Confederacy, in favor of naming an elementary school...

Following General Grant's instructions, General George Meade orders three Corps of his Army of the Potomac to attack the lines of General Lee's Army of Northern Virginia near a crossroads named Cold Harbor. The attack is a failure, about 7000 Union soldiers are killed, wounded or captured within a short time. For the three days of combat around Cold Harbor, the Army of the Potomac has lost between 13 - 14 thousand men as casualties. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia has lost between 4500-5000 men.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams called for the removal of the giant carving that depicts three Confederate war leaders on the face of state-owned Stone Mountain, saying it "remains a blight on our state and should be removed." "We must never celebrate those who defended slavery and tried to destroy the union," Abrams said in a series of tweets posted early Tuesday, a response to the deadly violence sparked by white supremacist groups in Charlottesville, Va.

Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson, (aka Stonewall) is wounded twice in the shoulder and once in the hand when fired on by pickets of the 18th NC Infantry. General Jackson would die eight days later from pneumonia.

<p>A 118-year-old statue of the "Oh! Susanna" songwriter was removed from a Pittsburgh park Thursday after criticism that the work is demeaning because it includes a slave sitting at his feet, plucking a banjo.</p> <p>In October, the Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to take the Stephen Foster sculpture out of Schenley Plaza and find it a new home. For now, it will remain in a storage lot, out of the public view.</p>

Updated 23 minutes ago Pittsburgh's monument to native son Stephen Collins Foster has returned to its old stomping ground. A Department of Public Works crew removed the controversial statue of the Antebellum songwriter known as the father of American music early Thursday from Forbes Avenue in Oakland and hauled it by flatbed truck to a facility in Highland Park. The city will store it until officials find it a permanent home. The 1,000-pound, 10-foot-high bronze statue stood at the entrance to Oakland's Schenley Park for 74 years after the city moved it from its original location near the entrance to...

PITTSBURGH - The statue of composer Stephen Foster that stood in Schenley Plaza in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood since 1940 was removed Thursday morning. Controversial for its portrayal of Foster, a Lawrenceville native, with an African American man seated below him, the bronze statue has been scrutinized as racist for years. Future of Pittsburgh's Stephen Foster statue in question Pittsburgh’s Art Commission decided with a unanimous vote on Oct. 25 that the 10x4 foot statue, which sits on a granite base, would come down within six months. Under city code, the Art Commission is responsible for overseeing the alteration, relocation or...

Over the decades, this quiet coastal hamlet has earned a reputation as one of the most liberal places in the nation. Arcata was the first U.S. city to ban the sale of genetically modified foods, the first to elect a majority Green Party city council and one of the first to tacitly allow marijuana farming before pot was legal. Now it's on the verge of another first. No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds. But Arcata is poised to do just that. The target is an 8½-foot bronze likeness of William McKinley, who...

Over the decades, this quiet coastal hamlet has earned a reputation as one of the most liberal places in the nation. Arcata was the first U.S. city to ban the sale of genetically modified foods, the first to elect a majority Green Party city council and one of the first to tacitly allow marijuana farming before pot was legal. Now it's on the verge of another first. No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds. But Arcata is poised to do just that. The target is an 8½-foot bronze likeness of William McKinley, who...

Strangers I meet are always surprised when they discover they’ve met a third-generation Northern Virginian. “Wow, a native!” they exclaim, “you don’t meet many of those!” This surprise is often accompanied by a strong opinion about NoVA, as it’s often called—they suggest that the area just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. has little regional identity or unique culture, or little worthy of praise. It’s quite a bracing commentary to hear about one’s home. Yet I contend that whatever deficit in cultural identity NoVA may have has been accrued by the technocratic elite that has come to dominate the...

A space at a Baltimore park that had long honored two Confederate generals has been rededicated to abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The Baltimore Sun reports that hundreds of people gathered Saturday for the ceremony at Wyman Park Dell. The ceremony took place just feet from the now-empty pedestal where a large statue of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson once stood. The statue was removed in August after a violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia reignited the national debate over what to do with symbols of the Confederacy. Saturday was the 105th anniversary of Tubman's death. The space...

The city put up the sheeting in the days after a deadly far-right rally last August which left a counter-protester and two police officers dead. The city had argued the "shrouds" were meant to honour those killed and injured, but the judge found they interfered with park tourism. The judge also allowed a lawsuit to preserve the statues to move forward. Judge Richard Moore ruled on Tuesday that the black plastic sheeting over the monuments to Robert E Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson must be removed in the next 15 days.