Even my community college American history class in 2002 (just an hour south of Atlanta) was chock full of Lost Cause nonsense.

I didn't even recognize it at the time since it was the same stuff my dad taught me. He was a really smart guy who read a lot of history and was particularly interested in the Civil War, so I didn't have a lot of reason to question things until later when I learned what the Lost Cause actually was.

It was always tied up in so many family stories too, and the idea of those 'damn yankees and carpet baggers", it was a part of my identity and history. It was just all around me, like the air, and so it was weird and kinda hard to unlearn that stuff, but not unwelcome.

I think maybe folks raised outside the south don't see all that stuff, how that culture permeates everything. Or maybe they think it's just a bunch of stupid rednecks who've never picked up a book, I'm never quite sure 😅

At least the more modern textbooks I've seen do a much better job at telling the proper story!

I grew up in Tar Heel North Carolina, they showed us...not Roots but imagine other movies you'd put in a playlist with Roots. I remember one where they cut a slave's finger off for learning to read. In NASCAR Tobacco Cotton Cackalacky. They tried to tedious it up with locations and dates of battles but they made no bones about how awful the institution of chattel slavery was in the American South.

I mean I was in school in the 90s, and that wasn’t being taught so yeah I guess it just depends. Or maybe I just went to a decent school (unlikely).