More on Charlottesville -- Matt Eich, The Bitter Southerner, the NY Times

Charlottesville-based photographer Matt Eich (See image above, also images below) photographed the late unpleasantness in Charlottesville for the New York Times. 

Thanks to Joel Brouwer for pointing Eich's work out to me!

You can find more of Eich's work in the NY Times, go here.

Speaking of Charlottesville, The Bitter Southerner has continued its coverage of Charlottesville, go here. 

Especially, check out Alex Johnson's article Separating Hate from Heritage in the Lies They  Told Us, go here. 

Johnson considers the situation many of us who are white Southerners find ourselves in after Charlottesville, descendants of slaveowners or of men who fought in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

He thinks about all the stories we heard growing up, that the Civil War (or, perhaps the War of Northern Aggression) was not about slavery but states' rights, that Reconstruction was really bad, that Jim Crow laws and Southern apartheid were best for everyone.

He concludes:

"We’re all victims of those narratives, but the hypothesis was false. 

"As Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said three weeks before firing on Fort Sumter, “African slavery” was the “cornerstone” of the new country. 

"Slavery was real, and the power of that evil institution lingers in the lies we’ve been told for too long. 

" First, it was the slave owners. Now, it’s the skinheads. Don’t fall prey to their perversions of reality."

The Bitter Southerner's coverage of Charlottesville has itself received some appropriate laudatory attention, by Daniel Funke, go here. 

My friend Catherine Bishir brings us this essay on the history behind the monuments, go here.

All worth viewing and reading, and pondering deeply in our hearts, in the days and weeks and years ahead.