Read a blog post from Christopher Clausen on the controversy
surrounding Virginia's Confederate History Month. As the Civil
War Sesquicentennial approaches cruising speed, North and South
look a great deal more alike than they did on the eve of the
war’s last great anniversary just 50 years ago. That much-
heralded celebration coincided with the rise of the civil rights
movement with a precision that was almost too good to be true. A
century after Gettysburg, President John F. Kennedy had just
proposed the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act of
1964. When the centennial of Appomattox rolled around, Congress
was about to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and few people
were paying much attention to ceremonies on old battlefields.
The fact that the White House is now occupied by a man born
during the Civil War Centennial to a mother from Kansas and a
father from Kenya represents a historical development hardly
imaginable at the time, yet all but the most regressive now
accept it as perfectly natural. The