Troubled Commemoration: The American Civil War Centennial, 1961-1965

Making the Modern South

by Robert J. Cook

In 1957, Congress voted to set up the United States Civil War Centennial Commission. A federally funded agency within the Department of the Interior, the commission's charge was to oversee preparations to commemorate the onehundredth anniversary of the central event in the Republic's history. Politicians hoped that a formal program of activities to mark the centennial of the Civil War would both bolster American patriotism at the height of the cold war and increase tourism in the South. Almost overnight, however, the patriotic pageant that organizers envisioned was transformed into a struggle over the Civil War's historical memory and the injustices of Jim Crow. In Troubled Commemoration, Robert J. Cook recounts the planning, organization, and ultimate failure of this controversial event and reveals how the broadbased public history extravaganza was derailed by its appearance during the decisive phase of the civil rights movement. Cook shows how the centennial provoked widespread alarm among many African Americans, white liberals, and cold warriors because the national commission failed to prevent southern whites from commemorating the Civil War in a racially exclusive fashion. The public outcry followed embarrassing attempts to mark secession, the attack on Fort Sumter, and the South's victory at First Manassas, and prompted backlash against the celebration, causing the emotional scars left by the war to resurface. Cook convincingly demonstrates that both segregationists and their opponents used the controversy that surrounded the commemoration to their own advantage. Southern whites initially embraced the centennial as a weapon in their fight to save racial segregation, while African Americans and liberal whites tried to transform the event into a celebration of black emancipation. Forced to quickly reorganize the commission, the Kennedy administration replaced the conservative leadership team with historians, including Allan Nevins and a young James I. Robertson, Jr., who labored to rescue the centennial by promoting a more soberly considered view of the nation’s past. Though the commemoration survived, Cook illustrates that white southerners quickly lost interest in the event as it began to coincide with the years of Confederate defeat, and the original vision of celebrating America's triumph over division and strife was lost. The first comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Civil War Centennial, Troubled Commemoration masterfully depicts the episode as an essential window into the political, social, and cultural conflicts of America in the 1960s and confirms that it has much to tell us about the development of the modern South. AUTHOR Robert J. Cook is the author of several books, including Sweet Land of Liberty? The AfricanAmerican Struggle for Civil Rights in the Twentieth Century and Civil War Making of a Nation, 1848–1877. He is Professor of American History at the University of Sheffield in England.

Genres: Civil War, History

300 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007

Reviews

[Donna Agnelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars - the first half to 2/3 of the book provided some interesting and unknown, to me, material. I thought that the last third of the book continued to drum the same points/information over and over again. I have heard the question asked - why isn't there more going on for the sesquicentennial years of the Civil War. Well, read this book and see what the centennial of the war faced in terms of activities and backing. Much the same exists today. I was certainly not aware of many of the things discussed in this book so it was a good eye-opener for me as well as a way of explaining the lack of commemorative functions for the sesquicentennial at both the national and state levels.

[Thomas Mackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This effort at public history is a sad commentary on how slow we were to see the race problem in America and our attempt to separate historial narrative from our present events. It is no wonder that many Americans saw history as meaningless. I now have even more fear for those who promote "heritage" in museums and historic sites.

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 A bit dry at times but that comes with the territory of what it wants to cover - the nitty gritty of committees and bureaucracy. That being said, this book provides a fantastic illustration of the influence of historical memory on society and politics, demonostrating why we should care about how our history is remembered.

[Mark Cheathem]

Of necessity, this book is a bit dry in spots due to its look at the bureaucracy of the Civil War centennial commission. Still, an interesting read. I especially liked the chapter on popular culture and the centennial.