CofC Professor Examines the Lost Cause, White Supremacy
English professor Joe Kelly has published an article for The Conversation that examines the issue of white supremacy and history.
President Joe Biden at Mother Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina on Jan. 8, 2024. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
English professor Joe Kelly has published an article, “Biden is campaigning against the Lost Cause and the ‘poison’ of white supremacy in South Carolina,” for The Conversation that examines the issue of white supremacy and history.
Kelly details the history of Southern-style white nationalism and how the United States is seeing a resurgence of it in today’s politics. He cites a recent speech by President Joe Biden at Charleston’s Mother Emanuel AME Church, where the president says that a poison of white supremacy has haunted the United States for too long.
Kelly says Biden’s speech needs to be remembered.
“As a historian who studies democracy in the American South, I am doing research for a book on free speech, lying and fascism in America during the 1920s and 1930s,” says Kelly. “What I have learned is that Biden’s Mother Emanuel speech should rank with some of the most important speeches in our history.”
