White Southerners Still Reckoning With Their Heritage

Southerners of a certain age were taught civil war history with reverence for the myths of the “lost cause”; Reconstruction as a betrayal of democracy; and that Confederate General Robert E. Lee was a great man. 

My 98-year-old mother-in-law at dinner recently recalled the song, “I’m A Good Ole Rebel,” she learned from her father. He was born in 1880 i…