Contested: The Battle for the Collective Memory of the Civil War

By Anonymous

    This week involved major changes to our display due to the introduction of personal files. The main constructive criticism we were given during our practice presentations before break was that there was not enough focus on American politics due to the international nature of the wars we were covering in our display, and that we needed some more evidence/artifacts showing how exactly Kenyon has commemorated the wars its students and staff have been involved in. So, after seeing the personal files and much deliberation, we decided to narrow our scope to only the Civil War. As of right now we plan to specifically look into Rutherford B. Hayes, Edwin Stanton, Lorin Andrews, and David Davis. 

    This week in class, we focused on chapters 2 and 3 of Hajar Yazdiha’s The Struggle for the People’s King. Our class discussions on these chapters revolved around the idea of spin and confirmation bias: the idea that multiple groups can attach themselves to one individual’s legacy and contort it to fit their needs in the present. Yazdiha highlights this concept in relation to Martin Luther King Jr. through her examination of the gay rights movement and the opposing family values movement. She discusses how these political movements use relationality, temporalities and perceptions to facilitate the strategic use of memory.


    As we were looking through the archives this week at all of the Civil War materials, I couldn’t help but think of all of the political tension there has been in the last few years regarding the memory of the civil war and the way in which it has been commemorated, especially in the South. While of course the Civil War was a series of events, and King was a person, the way in which their legacies are still contested and warped by politics are oddly similar. While gay rights activists claimed that King’s Christian values made him a proponent of loving everyone, the family values movement argued that his Christian values proved that he must have only believed in relationships between a man and a woman. Confederate heritage groups in the South argue that it is essential to preserve Confederate war monuments in order to honor Confederate soldiers, while other political groups argue that it is essential to remove or destroy such monuments in order to honor the grave injustice done to millions of Black Americans. In both cases, opposing groups battle to control the greater collective memory in order to further their own agendas, whether it is the removal of monuments or the passing of legislation. As our group continues to dive deeper into the Civil War, its connections to Kenyon, and how Kenyon has commemorated the conflict, I am interested to see what examples of strategic and contested memory lie within our own history and who won the battle for Kenyon's collective memory of the Civil War.

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