Sunday, October 18, 2015

Supposedly Professional Civil War Museum promotes "Black Confederate" mythology

Kevin M. Levin while visiting the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania came across an exhibit at the museum which showed a picture of Black Confederate soldiers.

http://cwmemory.com/2015/09/27/ex-slaves-attend-confederate-veterans-reunion/

From Levin's blog posting.
While walking through the exhibit I came across an image of African American men in attendance at a U.C.V. reunion in Tampa in 1927. There is nothing unusual about this image, though unfortunately, the museum labeled it, “Reunion of African-American veterans of the Confederate Army, 1927.” I took a quick pic of it and put it out of my mind until Wayne showed me the original image. At first we didn’t see it it but then someone noticed that at least one of the ribbons clearly states “Ex-Slave.” 
What Levin doesn't state is whether the museum corrected the exhibit. Even if they did, it might interesting to see if the correction remains or the photo is re-deployed in another exhibit to create the same impression that Black Confederate soldiers exist.

A larger question, which Levin doesn't raise, is why a supposedly professionally curated museum in 2015 would even make such a claim. The nonsense of the neo-Confederate claims of Black Confederates has been extensively discussed and these claims have been shown to be nonsense. Kevin Levin has done an excellent job of doing this.

The reality is that the Civil War industry panders to Lost Cause believers. Those who know better don't criticize this pandering.


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