I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy.
Here in Georgia, we continue to grapple with our own vestiges of hate. The image carved into Stone Mountain, like Confederate monuments across this state, stand as constant reminders of racism, intolerance, and division.
90,000 Kentuckians fought for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, ... the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones.
My name is Natasha Trethewey, and I was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, in 1966, exactly 100 years to the day that Mississippi celebrated the first Confederate Memorial Day, April 26, 1866.
Over my dead body when I'm governor of Virginia are we ever going to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson or any hero of the Commonwealth of Virginia.
I hate The Confederate cause. I've always felt that they are our Nazis and the rebel flag was our swastika.
It takes some serious mental gymnastics to think of the Confederacy only as a romantic lost cause.
Confederate monuments belong in museums where we can study and reflect on that terrible history, not in places of honor across our state.
Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter.
I'm proud to be next to the Confederate flag. That flag is not - it is not about racism folks. It's not about hatred. It's not about slavery. It's about our heritage.
Like many people who live in the South, I'm drawn to the history of the Civil War.
We know what the Dixie flag represents and its heritage; the Civil War was fought over States rights.
I'm not a historian who thinks Confederate memorials should be boarded up.
Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.
On Monument Avenue in Richmond, Va., there are statues of five Confederate luminaries and then, incongruously in this company, one of Arthur Ashe.
It's the state of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. That is our heritage. It is what makes us Virginia.
It angers me to see armed defenders at the bottom of Lost Cause statues, adding a renewed threat of violence to icons that are themselves part of an ideology of violence and intimidation.
