civil war
December 11, 2018 -
After spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on security to protect the Silent Sam Confederate monument that anti-racist activists toppled in August, the school's Board of Governors is considering a controversial multimillion-dollar plan to once again house the statue on campus.
September 26, 2018 -
After former Confederate states drafted progressive constitutions that allowed black men to hold office for the first time, there was violent resistance to black power at the local level. During the Jim Crow era, legislatures rewrote those constitutions to give themselves broad power to override local governments.
September 13, 2018 -
In 1868, Southern states held constitutional conventions in which recently freed black men helped eliminate vestiges of the Confederacy and draft progressive blueprints for state government. While some of the provisions survived Jim Crow, conservative politicians today are chipping away at Reconstruction's radical legacy.
August 22, 2018 -
Responding to protesters' toppling of the "Silent Sam" Confederate monument on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus this week, the student government's undergraduate executive branch issued this powerful statement praising the action and calling for further steps to ensure that every student feels welcomed.
January 26, 2018 -
A proposed constitutional amendment would give the state legislature control over choosing judges — a power it has not had since the Civil War.
August 25, 2017 -
Reared by amateur historians, the author spent childhood vacations traveling to historic sites and coming to grips with his family's role in the Civil War. The experience taught him that monuments alone are not history, but they can shed light on the dark history surrounding their erection.
August 16, 2017 -
Following far-right violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, sparked by efforts to remove a statue of Confederate General Lee, there have been renewed efforts to take down monuments to the Confederacy. In Durham, North Carolina, activists toppled one at the county courthouse, while construction workers took down another in Gainesville, Florida. But hundreds remain — and some states have laws that aim to keep them standing.
