The Museum of the Confederacy as a shrine and creator of Confederate identity

The third installment of my 4-part article on the Museum of the Confederacy has been published.

The URL for the guest copy which is free is:

http://www.blackcommentator.com/461/461_museum_confederacy_3_sebesta_guest_share.html

The 1st installment covered the take over of the MOC by pro-Confederates and how the MOC works with neo-Confederate organizations. The 2nd installment covers how the MOC glorifies Confederate leaders. The 3rd installment covers how the MOC creates Confederate identification amongst its supporters, visitors, and others by being a shrine and reliquary.

The links to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd installments are in this blog posting:

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

In the above blog posting I will have links to all four installments after they all come out. I expect the 4th installment to be published fairly soon. The installment is with the publisher.

The 4th installment discusses the exhibit and book "Before Freedom Came" and shows how the book and show is deeply flawed and how it avoids connecting slavery to the Confederacy. It shows how the MOC represents itself differently to different audiences acting professional before professional audiences and being neo-Confederate acting towards other audiences.

It discusses how the MOC tries to co-opt the history profession and is rather successful in doing so, and ends with a call for previous winners of the MOC awards to repudiate them and for historians in the future to reject them.