GLC@Lunch: "A Confederate Monument in Northeast Florida: The Long Lost Cause, 1865-2020"

GLC@Lunch with Michael Butler

Hybrid event:

In person | Yale University Rosenkranz Hall, Room 241, 115 Prospect Street, New Haven 06511
*Note: In-person seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

Online | Zoom
*Use registration link above.

Michael Butler (GLC Visiting Professor; Kenan Distinguished Professor of History at Flagler College)

From its Reconstruction-era origin through its 2020 contextualization and relocation, the St. Augustine (FL) Confederate Monument tells a story of national importance concerning the consequences of historical mythmaking. This topic demonstrates that the Lost Cause – the white South’s memory of the Civil War – began earlier than most scholars have proposed, dominating popular memory about the American Civil War into the twenty-first century. This ideology became a key component in the contemporary white supremacist and fundamentally undemocratic movements in the United States that culminated in the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capital. The St. Augustine Monument, then, illuminates how the legacies of slavery and the deliberate attempts to rewrite its centrality in our history still influence national identity, right-wing political extremism, and contemporary policy at the state and federal levels.