Week 12

 We are coming up on the last month of this internship, along with my last month of my bachelor's degree. As we have been working these past few months, we have been making slow progress on the various tasks I have talked about in past posts. However, I believe it's better at taking our time rather than rushing. We are nearing the end now and wrapping up the work we have been doing. There is not much new to report on that front since we are simply continuing and finishing what we have been doing. We have pushed our web design workshop back to next week. I am still looking forward to learning more about web design. It also marks the end of our work on this project. I am looking forward to taking these skills onward into the next stage of my life and further into grad school. Overall, I am grateful for this experience.

On the Olustee front, I have submitted one of the group's works to Doctor Gannon for review, including the new context we added. So I spent some time over the past week reading on the recent history of Confederate monuments outside of Olustee. I read a Time article that went over much of the controversy over the past years. In this article, they briefly discuss when many Confederate monuments went up, "Most Confederate statues were erected between 1890 and 1929, about 30 years after the end of the Civil War. During this time Jim Crow laws were being enacted, and the first generation of African Americans born outside of slavery were deemed a threat to white people and their way of life." (Aguilera, Jasmine) They put many of these monuments up years after the war. I don't like Confederate monuments but this information about them being put up as a reminder of the power the white south had at the time reinforces that these monuments are a symbol of slavery. Another article by NPR also discusses why these monuments were put up, "A look at this chart shows huge spikes in construction twice during the 20th century: in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and 60s. Both were times of extreme civil rights tension." (Parks, Miles.) The chart mentioned is shown in the article and is a good visual for many of these monuments. 

There are still people who don't see these monuments in this way, they are monuments of their family history. However, based on the chart and timing of when these monuments were put up, not all of them were put up for that reason. I am sure there are many other sources that I have personally not read but based on much of what I have read over this internship, most people do not want these monuments around and openly celeband many cities are now voting to remove them or move them elsewhere like cemeteries. The history of why a monument is put up is important to consider when observing such memorials. 

Aguilera, Jasmine. "Confederate Statues Removed Amid Protests: What to Know." Time. June 24, 2020. Accessed April 02, 2021. https://time.com/5849184/confederate-statues-removed/.

Parks, Miles. "Confederate Statues Were Built To Further A 'White Supremacist Future'." NPR. August 20, 2017. Accessed April 03, 2021. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544266880/confederate-statues-were-built-to-further-a-white-supremacist-future.