Not forgotten: Study begins for Civil War museum in Arkansas

It didn’t draw a lot of attention, but the 2017 legislature approved Rep. Jana Della Rosa’s legislation directing the Arkansas Heritage Department to conduct a feasibility study of establishing a Civil War museum in Arkansas. (Her bill got 59 votes of 100 in the House; 34 of 35 in the Senate.)

Given recent events and the scarcity of state money, I might suggest more profitable things on which to spend time and money.

But Della Rosa, you may remember, said this is no time for political correctness. She said that, in fact, as she mounted fierce opposition to end an official state holiday to memorialize Robert E. Lee.

You may be heard on this effort by responding to an on-line survey.

If a museum IS established, perhaps it could display at the entrance some of the documents that make clear that defense of slavery drove Arkansas’s secession.

A museum on slavery, reconstruction and Jim Crow also could be interesting, now that I think about it. These subjects tend to get less attention than the Confederacy and its defenders in existing historical efforts and venues. Only in the South have the losers been able to write the histories.