As the national discussion over the removal of divisive Confederate monuments continues, Professor Micki McElya’s work on the Arlington Cemetery and its untold history features prominently. On July 5th, Ian Shapira published an article, titled “At Arlington Cemetery, a Confederate monument to the South and slavery still stands,” in the Washington Post. The article cites McElya’s support for the removal of Confederate monuments, particularly the Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery and her suggestion that “panels that chronicle Section 16′s origins and explain the monument’s celebration of white supremacy” be constructed in its place.

The article draws from both of McElya’s books – the 2017 Pulitzer Prize finalist The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery and Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America. 

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