www.blackcommentator.com publishes my article on the Museum of the Confederacy. UPDATE: See link for all 4-installments

http://www.blackcommentator.com/ has published the first part of a four part article on the Museum of the Confederacy (MOC) I am writing. You can read online without a subscription at:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/441/441_museum_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

This first installment introduces the series and shows how the MOC has reverted to a Lost Cause shrine to the Confederacy headed up by a CEO who is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Though I show in the article it can be questioned if the MOC every really changed that much, but instead had two very differing faces, one for the public, one private.

Of particular interest to African American scholars would be the speech in which African American scholarship and opinion is held up to ridicule in a speech at the MOC right after the "Before Freedom Came" exhibit. In fact in this speech, the exhibit "Before Freedom Came" is praised an an antidote to the "Carol Moseley-Braun syndrome." This speech was by prominent neo-Confederate Ludwell Johnson III at the MOC upon being made a MOC fellow.

I am very pleased to be published on http://www.blackcommentator.com/ since it will allow me to become known by a new audience of scholars and intellectuals. Much of my work is helping out people with research and they don't know that I can help them if they don't know that I exist and what resources I have.

I have been monitoring the MOC for a very, very long time and have a very exhaustive collection of their materials. I just haven't had time to write up the material. Two other book projects and other writing projects have been delayed while I wrote up what I knew about the MOC.

It also turned out once I started writing up the MOC there really was a lot of material that needed to be brought to public light. So it became a very lengthy manuscript, that needed to be broken into installments. I didn't write up everything about the MOC since the manuscript was already over 26,000 words and I needed to get published and a writing project needs to have a finish. I think the four installments do give the reader a good understanding of what the MOC is and what it is doing.

However, like many writing projects, it has been an interesting intellectual journey. I have been reading about museums and their theoretical analyses, in particular nationalism and the museum.

UPDATES:

All four installments as they are published will be at this blog posting:

http://newtknight.blogspot.com/2011/11/moc.html