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This a useful reminder that in 1994, the year of the great GOP ascendancy of Newt Gingrich, several states across the South instituted official Confederate History Month. https://twitter.com/ajc/status/1357509430947020800
Six years later, in 2000, the white citizens of Selma, AL put up money for a publicly displayed bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest. That same year, George W Bush won 75% of the white vote in that state. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1158488198412038144?s=20
So you can f-ck all the way off with this "Confederate memorials are just about history" BS. These memorials are about power and memory, about the solidification of the white-dominated GOP's hold on Southern states that had been competitive for Democrats until the 80s.
This wave of GOP-sponsored, Confederate memorializing in the early 90s is especially glaring considering that the mainstream GOP had a real "scare" in 1991 when Klansman David Duke almost became the GOP governor of LA, winning 55% of the white vote. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1286468752393945089?s=20
Both Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush recorded ads pleading for Republican voters in Louisiana to reject David Duke. Didn't work. Turns out, a lotta white voters were buying what Duke (and in 1992, Pat Buchanan) was selling. https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1991-11-18-1991322072-story.html
Here's an article on the early 1990s phenomenon known as Confederate Heritage Month that swept the South...you know, just because people randomly started being interested in 19th century history. Uh huh. http://www.historymatters.group.shef.ac.uk/confederate-heritage-month-memory-american-civil-war/
