Michael Thurmond, from the introduction of his 2003 book "Freedom": "In many ways Georgia's past became America's prologue. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was not an isolated historical event, but the continuation of a protracted struggle that spanned more than twelve generations."
Professor William A. Link, from "Atlanta: Cradle of the New South — race and remembering in the Civil War's aftermath: "In particular, blacks and whites drew different meanings from the Civil War, and both populations used these meanings to assert their own understanding of the South."
Comments from “What Shall We Remember?,” a panel discussion by historians at the Atlanta Cyclorama and Civil War Museum:
Historian Michael Shaffer, Kennesaw State University: "Time quells passions and affords some semblance of healing." "A ravaged South stood in need of Northern goods and business leaders certainly understood this." "Economics served to ease remnants of animosity between these former combatants." African-Americans tossed aside by North-South rapprochement were left "in a veritable no-man's land … with little hope for the future."
Christy Coleman, co-CEO of The American Civil War Center in Richmond, Va.: "We have to remember that, in 1859, the majority of the world … operated on a system that was class-based." "Culturally, slavery was clearly built on the notion of white supremacy and that was not solely a Southern phenomenon."
“The rest of the world didn’t think we’d last” through the war. The rest of the world thought “that little experiment over there was going to fail.”
Coleman noted that current scholars now estimate the war’s death toll at nearly 750,000. “Think about the magnitude of that loss to both the North and South.”
“What should we remember? We should remember all of it.” “We need to remember the women who had to take up the care of their homes in the absence of their men.” “We need to remember that, as a result of this war, we really began to think about public education in a different way — that it was not just for the wealthy. These are the lessons that really allowed us to build the American character.”
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