First of all, I don’t claim to be a white southerner. My ancestors fought for the Union from Chattanooga to Gettysburg. I was born in Massachusetts. It doesn’t get more Yankee than Massachusetts.

I don’t think Jim Crow and The Lost Cause are extricable. I don’t think I said so.

A good way to understand the Lost Cause, is to read I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, a collection of essays published in 1930, at the height of Jim Crow.

To me the Lost Cause was the belief that the south heroically fought for individual, agrarian, Jeffersonian Democracy against mass, Hamiltonian industrialization, and money capitalism for the soul of the country. Thus it was a noble cause. Never really defeated in battle, it was simply overwhelmed by the north’s avalanche of men and material. It was doomed. Only the tiniest part of this is true, but it was very attractive to a defeated people.

I have said from the beginning that I think change has to be local to be effective. I stand by that. For outside groups to force their ideas and make demands on local people is just another invasion and will be met with resentment and, possibly, force.

Nothing lasting will be achieved.