Southern Belle | Video Companion: Erasing Slavery from Secession | ITVS

http://www.itvs.org/films/southern-belle

In this companion piece to the film, we hear how the Lost Cause movement erased slavery as a dominant cause of the Civil War and replaced it with state's rights.

Experts and scholars interviewed include:

R. Blakeslee Gilpin
Assistant Professor of History, University of South Carolina

Carroll Van West
Director, Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area

Tara McPherson
Professor of Critical Studies
University of Southern California  School of Cinematic Arts,

Stan Deaton 
Director, Georgia Historical Society

The Civil War may be long over, but the spirit of rebellion is hard to extinguish even in something as innocent as a girls' summer camp.Southern Belle is an insider's look at the 1861 Athenaeum Girls' School in Columbia, Tennessee, where the antebellum South rises again. Every summer, young women from around the world eagerly sign up to become that iconic and romantic image of southern identity: the southern belle, replete with hoop skirt, hat and gloves, singing the region's anthem, "Dixie."
However, the camp can only achieve this version of Southern femininity by whitewashing the past. The teachers, all of whom work for no compensation, hope to instill genteel manners and build pride in southern heritage. To accomplish this, they have carefully selected the time period so they can share the "truth" with the next generation about why the South seceded from the Union. For them, the Civil War had little to do with slavery and everything to do with states' rights and unfair taxation.

The film reveals why the stakes in teaching this romantic, segregated history are high. By promulgating a southern identity that erases emancipation as a cause of the Civil War and glorifies a disempowered female image detached from the brutality of the lifestyle that supported her, the camp ultimately reinforces divisions between race, gender, and geography in the present.

To understand the Athenaeum Girls' School's icon of the Old South is to better understand the issues that continue to define and divide America today.

Find out more about Southern Belle:
http://www.itvs.org/films/southern-belle

Visit the filmmaker's website:
http://southernbellefilm.com/

Learn more about ITVS:
http://www.itvs.org/

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Athenaeum Girls' School
• antebellum South
• Civil War
• the South
• Dixie
• Kathy Conkwright
• Mary Makley
• ITVS
• PBS
• public television

[LongHairedLoser]

I'm unsure on why you've left 4 comments here. This video debunks many parts of the lost cause myth. Rather than addressing the points made in the video you go off on a weird tangent by attacking the USA.

The USA was not perfect before, during and after the civil war but no argument you make dispels the obvious truth that the CSA was a nation create to preserve slavery and white supremacy.

[Fluidiklife]

The north and South are two very different and distinct people, and cultures. I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Yanks hate us and that's fine. We have no great love for y'all either. But it begs the question, if y'all hate us so much, why not just let us go and leave us alone? Oh, I guess it's because of the tax revenue that we generate so y'all can have your "internal improvements" without spending your own money, and the weather for you're vacations.

[Fluidiklife]

When each State VOLUNTARILY joined the union, it was well understood that anyone of them could leave at any point, in the manner of which they joined, for any reason, right, wrong, or otherwise, that they so desired. No other State has the right to force another into a union that it does not wish to be apart of. This is a part of freedom. To associate with those that you wish to, and to not associate with those that you have no desire to.

[Fluidiklife]

#3. Unification. How can there be unification when one section seeks to impose its will through coercion? Never mind that We never were a nation, nor will we ever be one.

When the colonies fought for their independence from Britain, they each won their Sovereignty. Each colony was listed by name, individually in the Treaty of Paris. In the first political union that was established under the Articles of Confederation, each states guards jealously it's Sovereignty.

[Fluidiklife]

Typical Yankees. "Lost Cause", "slavery", "unification."

#1. Self-determination is never a "Lost Cause."

#2. If the War really, truly was about the utter preservation of slavery, why then is it that Lincoln himself said that he had no inclination to abolish the institution where it already exited. Why didn't the Southern States ratify the Corwin Amendment forever preserving the institution? I bet they think the Boston Tea Party was all about tea too