Confederate memorials, racism and America’s South topic of talk on Nov. 1 at CSUSB

As the debate nationwide continues over statues and other monuments to Confederate soldiers, a lecture at Cal State San Bernardino seeks to shed a little more light on the issue.

“Confederate Memorials and the Lingering Legacy of Racism in America’s South,” by Ryan Keating, CSUSB associate professor of history, will be presented on Wednesday, Nov. 1, from noon-1:30 p.m. at the John M. Pfau Library, PL-5005R.

The debate whether to keep Confederate monuments or remove them has become a hot-button issue over the link between symbols of the short-lived Confederate States and displays of racism in society today.

It seemed to reach a peak after the Aug. 12 violence in Charlottesville, Va., where city officials decided to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a park. News reports say 34 people were injured, and one woman was killed when a Nazi sympathizer drove his car into a crowd of counter-protestors.

Keating, whose courses include the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, will trace the long history of these symbols and their link to the institution of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, the implementation of Jim Crow, the  overt resistance to the Civil Rights movement, and the ways in which they continue to reflect underlying racial divides that exist in the United States today.

The program is free and open to the public. Parking at CSUSB is $6.

For more information, contact Robie Madrigal, Pfau Library, at (909) 537-5104 or rmadriga@csusb.edu.