That other 200th birthday...Jefferson Davis

All the hoopla surrounding the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln has led some to ask how should we, as a society, remember the 200th birthday of his Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis (1808-1889). A recent AP story reported on the struggles encountered by the Confederate president's descendents in their attempt to comemorate his legacy. (read the story here) At the heart of this issue is the topic of memory. How do we, as a people, remember the past.? It's not just about remembering, but how people construct the meanings and symbols they apply to history. What average peole say history means is usually much different than how historians explain and assign meanings to the past. Over the past decade or so, professional historians have started to examine historical memory. The most famous example of this scholarship is David W. Blight's Race and Reunion, which examined the historical memory of the Civil War.