Why Confederate Lies Live On
On visits to [[Blandford Cemetery]] and other sites, the author confronts how aesthetic memorials—stained glass by [[Tiffany]], archways, and ceremonies—sanitize a history rooted in slavery. At Blandford, tours foreground beauty while downplaying that the buried fought to uphold bondage; a nearby [[People's Memorial Cemetery]] for Petersburg’s free Black community is quiet and overlooked. The author attends a [[Sons of Confederate Veterans]] Memorial Day event and describes speeches, flags, and the persistence of the Lost Cause myth, which rewrites the Civil War’s causes and appropriates Black figures like Richard Poplar. Contrasting Blandford with the [[Whitney Plantation]], which centers enslaved people and their suffering, the piece argues that monuments, museums, and local traditions sustain false narratives that normalize Confederate memory and obscure the centrality of slavery.