The New Lost Cause

By: Lisa Foster

This summer, the Mississippi Legislature made history and voted to change the Mississippi state flag. While their reasons for supporting the change were varied, some Legislators finally acknowledged the false history of the Lost Cause that the flag was grounded in.

Our new flag has only been flying for a couple weeks but the pride, optimism, and good publicity it has already brought our state is staggering. We must continue onward. Now is not the time to crawfish backwards into the bad habits and bad faith narratives that have held the state of Mississippi back for over 150 years.

In November, Governor Tate Reeves announced his $3 million dollar proposal for a “Patriotic Education Fund” to combat so called “revisionist history” that is “poisoning a generation.” Reeves contends that children are the victims of “indoctrination in far-left socialist teachings.” Then, just last week, State Senator Angela Burks Hill introduced SB 2538, the Saving American History in Mississippi Schools Act that threatens to strip funding from schools that teach the New York Times’s 1619 Project.

Also last week, Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission released its report barely a month after the Commission members were announced. Former Mississippi Governor and Sons of Confederate Veterans member, Phil Bryant was appointed to the Commission by Trump, though it is impossible to tell if he, or anyone else on the Commission, helped write the report. Written without the advisement of a single professional historian and without sources, the Report uses half-truths, myths, opinions, and quotes taken out of context to explain how American children are being indoctrinated by far-left teaching to hate their own country. It also downplays the role of slavery in the founding of the country, specifically calling the 1619 Project a “distorted history.” The American Historical Association, along with 42 other historical organizations, and countless individual historians have publicly condemned the report as nothing more than politicized revisionist history.

Make no mistake, both Reeves and Hill are doing nothing more than parroting Trump and pandering to his base. All three projects go hand in hand. Historical education should not be politicized. It is obvious that few historians or educators, if any at all, were consulted for any of these projects. One wonders where are the students that “hate America?” The Patriotic Education Fund, the Saving American History in Mississippi Schools Act (S.B. 2538), and the 1776 Commission Report serve no good purpose since they are based in myths and historical revisionism, just as the Lost Cause. We have been fighting the Lost Cause for nearly 160 years now in order to build a better Mississippi. Admittedly, we have made some progress in eradicating its lies from society, but we are still fighting it and will probably be far into the future. Myths and propaganda hold fast and are not easily removed. Let us not get bogged down in more lies that must be overcome in order to move forward by allowing the 1776 myth, as propagated by Donald Trump and the 1776 Commission, to continue and become their own lost cause.

Lisa Foster is a resident of Petal, MS and serves on the Board of Directors for Mississippi Rising Coalition. She is a recent graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi, receiving her Masters in War & Society (History) and a minor in Race & Ethnicity. Prior to graduate school, she spent ten years in the museum field and a total of fifteen years in non-profits. She was awarded the 2017 Mississippi Historical Society’s prize for best Mississippi History Now website article as co-author of the feature story “Jefferson Davis Soldier Home — Beauvoir.” She has also worked as a research consultant for an episode of the genealogy television show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” Her work and research interests include the Mississippi Homefront during the Civil War, the Confederate veteran, social welfare for Mississippi Confederates and their dependents (wartime aid and post-war pensions), and the Beauvoir Soldiers Home. Email Lisa