ECW News: Civil War Memory Turns 20

Historian Kevin Levin’s blog Civil War Memory celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend.

Kevin’s blog started on WordPress back in 2005, inspired by blogs written by Dimitri Rotov and ECW alum Eric Wittenberg. In March 2022, he moved to Substack, where he has continued to thrive.

As Kevin wrote in his inaugural post on November 8, 2005, “I am interested primarily in Civil War memory or the evolution of our perceptions surrounding fundamental themes of the war, including slavery and emancipation. Such issues continue to challenge our assumptions of what the war was about….”

And, indeed, such issues continue to challenge our assumptions, and for two decades, Kevin has remained at the forefront of the voices who have issued those challenges. Among his most notable work, he chronicled the progress of the Civil War Sesquicentennial; the aftermath of Dylan Roof’s mass shooting in Charleston, S.C. in 2015; the fallout following the White Nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017; and the unfolding drama the resulting from the “George Floyd Summer” of 2020. Through it all, he has discussed controversial topics like the placement of Confederate flags, the myth of “Black Confederates,” the fate of Civil War monuments, and more.

Among some circles, Kevin has become as controversial as some of the topics he has tackled. In others, he’s seen as a thought-leader connecting lessons from the past with current events.

I took the opportunity this week to interview Kevin about his work at Civil War Memory. That interview appears on his Substack platform, where I stepped in as guest host so Kevin could sit in the chair of the interviewee. You can watch the interview here.