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Flags, Soldier Statues And Civil War Memory

A conversation with author and historian Thomas Brown

The Confederate flag has been around for more than a century, yet the controversial symbol has been in the headlines almost every week this year. South Carolina removed the flag from their state grounds this summer after the shooting of churchgoers in Charleston, but the debate over Confederate symbols has continued across the nation.

Historian Thomas Brown has studied landmarks of Confederate memory around the country and examines what they can teach us about Americans’ changing political, social, and economic positions.

He authored the book “Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina” (UNC Press/2015) and is currently a fellow at the National Humanities Center studying post-Civil War soldier monuments.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Thomas J. Brown, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, about his interest in civil war memory in advance of his lecture at the National Humanities Center tonight at 6 p.m.

Silent Sam on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus is a controversial Confederate symbol.
Don McCullough / Flickr Creative Commons
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Flickr Creative Commons
Silent Sam on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus is a controversial Confederate symbol.

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio

Anita Rao is the host and creator of "Embodied," a live, weekly radio show and seasonal podcast about sex, relationships & health. She's also the managing editor of WUNC's on-demand content. She has traveled the country recording interviews for the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps production department, founded and launched a podcast about millennial feminism in the South, and served as the managing editor and regular host of "The State of Things," North Carolina Public Radio's flagship daily, live talk show. Anita was born in a small coal-mining town in Northeast England but spent most of her life growing up in Iowa and has a fond affection for the Midwest.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.