clair055

I met up with a teacher the other day that has the privilege of introducing the Civil War to her fourth graders each year.  The word “introducing” is a little misleading, however.  I live in Georgia where natives, no matter the ethnicity, are born with “The War” ingrained in our souls.   We can’t escape it, we can’t deny it – it’s always there.   Some of our earliest collective memories are filled with the statues around the town square, old family photographs; we hear the stories and see the preserved battlefields that dot our landscape. I haven’t met a fourth grade student yet who doesn’t know something about the Civil War, but the fourth school year is designated by the Georgia Social Studies curriculum to formally learn about the war in an academic setting.   My own personal experience indicates students are eager to begin the process.   A formal study helps them connect to family stories still lingering around the Sunday dinner tabl...

Lanett and Opelika in Alabama….Amity in Arkansas…..Hogansville, Canton, and Douglasville in Georgia….Concord and Carrboro in North Carolina and Cherokee Falls, Piedmont and Whitmire in South Carolina…..All of these places including many other cities and towns across the South were all major mill towns birthed during the New South era. The New South Era has as many definitions as other historical periods such as the Gilded Age or the Progressive Era, but for my purposes here I’m going with Edward L. Ayers.    In his book The Promise of the New South:   Life after Reconstruction he states the New South era began in the 1880s after the biracial and reformist experiment of Reconstruction had ended and the conservative white Democrats had taken power throughout the southern states. A fellow Georgian, Henry W. Grady, is credited with the term “New South” which represents an ideology that emphasized a new reliance upon railroads and industrialization to modernize the South. ...

I’m not happy with Congress these days…..I don’t know many of my fellow Americans that are. My title says it all. They play using my tax dollars as their kick balls and monkey bars. However, before I go off on a rant that would cause my blood pressure to rise I want to go in a different direction with children….in particular “little boys.” The other day I posted a drawing as one of my mystery images for Wordless Wednesday .   I’ve reposted it below: The setting for the drawing is the United States Senate Chambers and the event being portrayed is the impeachment proceedings for President Andrew Johnson. The drawing was included in a book titled The Story of a Great Nation (1886) by   John Gilmary Shea a writer, historian, and editor. You can read my background article here regarding President Johnson’s impeachment over at American Presidents Blog . I included this drawing on my Facebook profile and the page I have there for History Is Elementary . One of my visitors there…..my...