Bill Torpy: How a museum was shot down in a Civil War that still rages

Just last week, a history museum that you most likely have never visited was the latest front in the ongoing fight about the Confederacy. The Nash Farm Battlefield museum had some Rebel flags flying inside and outside the facility and ran headlong into a newly elected Henry County commissioner who had different ideas about Civil War observance. That commissioner is black and the county is changing demographically.

The Henry County kerfuffle occurred after a greater battle in New Orleans, where crews are removing statues of Confederates to both cheers and bitter protests.

The South has long been conflicted by the history that was created after the armies of the Confederacy were squished by mightier Yankee forces. Statues and monuments were erected to honor the Lost Cause, a largely mythologized version of what happened. Now, a changed society struggles with what to do with those myths cast in granite.