Dear journal,
Tonight, I attended my first City of Carthage committee meeting since resigning from City Council. On the surface, the meeting was unremarkable. A room full of men, mostly middle-aged and older, each connected to history in predictable ways: re-enactors, retired military, teachers, and local history enthusiasts. The kind of gathering that mistakes familiarity for expertise and longevity for authority.
When it came time to elect officers, no one volunteered. The silence that followed was not reflective; it was defensive. I stepped forward and accepted the role of chair, and almost immediately regretted it not because the work will be difficult, but because I recognized what that silence represented. Avoidance had become the group’s default posture. Leadership, in this context, was something to be dodged rather than assumed.
Group theory helps explain what I witnessed. Homogeneous groups tend to prioritize cohesion over inquiry. Irving Janis’s concept of groupthink describes how dissent becomes framed as disruption, how questions are perceived as threats, and how conformity is rewarded with belonging. In such environments, the most destabilizing act is not argument but curiosity.
As the meeting ended and people were milling about, I noticed something small but deeply revealing: a Confederate license plate offered for sale. I asked, plainly, why it was there. I did not accuse. I did not lecture. I simply asked the question.
That was enough.
The temperature shifted. A Confederate re-enactor bristled. The unspoken rules of the room suddenly became visible. By refusing to treat the symbol as neutral, I had violated the group’s tacit agreement not to interrogate certain artifacts. What followed was not dialogue, but defensiveness: a reflexive retreat into the language of “heritage.”
What troubles me is not disagreement but category confusion. The City of Carthage, and by extension its museum and historical boards does not exist to sell generalized Civil War memorabilia. Its responsibility is specific and substantive: to tell the story of the Battle of Carthage, to interpret its causes and consequences, and to situate it honestly within local and national history. That mission is not interchangeable with nostalgia, nor is it expandable to include every symbol loosely associated with the Confederacy.
Historical objects derive their value from context. A Confederate license plate untethered to the Battle of Carthage is not an artifact; it is merchandise. It teaches nothing. It explains nothing. It invites no inquiry into the realities of war, loyalty, division, or human cost. Instead, it abstracts the past into a consumable symbol, stripped of consequence and insulated from critique.
This is how hate becomes normal: not through overt declarations, but through euphemism. “Heritage” becomes a shield that allows institutions to claim historical legitimacy without doing historical work. Violence is laundered through nostalgia. Oppression is reframed as inheritance. When symbols rooted in human suffering are displayed or sold without interpretation, they do not become neutral; they become normalized.
I am not naïve about what this position costs. I know I will remain at odds with the local Confederate re-enactor troop. That tension is structural, not personal. Their understanding of history and identity is fundamentally different from what I believe a city-sponsored historical institution should endorse.
To me, Confederate re-enactment is not a neutral act of historical curiosity. It is a performance of allegiance to a cause that was explicitly anti-American in intent and outcome. The Confederacy was not a parallel tradition within the American story; it was an insurrection against the United States, organized to preserve human bondage. Dressing in its uniforms, flying its symbols, and reanimating its mythology—without sustained critique—does not educate. It aestheticizes rebellion while divorcing it from consequence.
Re-enactment is often defended as education, but education requires framing. Without interpretation, performance becomes endorsement by omission. The danger is not that individuals enjoy history as hobbyists, but that civic institutions lend legitimacy to those performances by treating them as benign heritage rather than contested memory.
Public historical spaces are not obligated to be ideologically neutral, especially when neutrality functions as erasure. They are obligated to be historically honest and civically grounded. A city museum telling the story of the Battle of Carthage operates under the authority of the United States, not the Confederate States of America. That authority carries with it a responsibility to name rebellion as rebellion, treason as treason, and slavery as the cause around which the conflict cohered.
What unsettled me most was the assumption that the Confederate plate required no explanation at all. That assumption reveals how deeply groupthink has settled in. When a group stops interrogating its symbols, it stops interrogating itself. The past becomes a shield rather than a subject.
I do not hate this role because it is difficult. I hate it because it exposes how easily institutions drift from purpose when habit replaces accountability. Yet I also recognize the responsibility embedded in that discomfort. Silence sustains normalization. Questions interrupt it.
Tonight reminded me that leadership is not about authority; it is about friction. It is about holding institutions to their stated missions and refusing to allow nostalgia to substitute for scholarship. Whether I remain in this position or eventually step aside, I am clear about one thing: calling something “heritage” does not grant it historical value. That value must be earned through relevance, context, and honesty.
History does not ask us to re-enact it. It asks us to reckon with it.
Always,
Dave