Confederate California: The Lost Cause in the Golden State

Thursday, March 12, 6:30 pm
The Brick
518 N. Western Avenue
Free

Why is an exhibition about Confederate monuments on view in LA? In the same decades when Confederate monuments were being raised in the eastern United States, Los Angeles was marketing itself as the new Southland, full of Dixie-themed businesses and real estate developments. Join us for a conversation with authors Marne L. Campbell, Kevin Waite, and Laura Brodie, as we explore LA's historic ties to the Old South, and the lasting impact of the Confederacy on Southern California's heritage and race relations. Moderated by Bill Deverell.

Laura Brodie’s nonfiction and novels have been featured in media outlets ranging from CNN and NPR, to The Los Angeles Times and The Nation. Her first book, Breaking Out: VMI and the Coming of Women, chronicled the transition to coeducation at the Virginia Military Institute. Her first novel, The Widow’s Season, was published in five languages and sold over 200,000 copies worldwide. Brodie’s short fiction has been anthologized in The Bedford Introduction to Literature, and her articles on Southern history and culture have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including TIME, Slate, The American Scholar and The Washington Post. Brodie earned her BA from Harvard and PhD from the University of Virginia. She teaches at Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where she raised three daughters.

Marne L. Campbell is an Associate Professor at Loyola Marymount University and the Chair of the Department of African American Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History at UCLA in 2006 and holds a Master’s Degree in African American Studies. She is the author of “Making Black Los Angeles,” which explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in early Los Angeles, and was published by the University of North Carolina Press. Her study emphasizes issues of labor, politics, and culture through the intersection of this diverse community with other communities of color. She has completed an extensive database of almost every African American family in Los Angeles (1850 – 1910). Her research and teaching interests focus on the middle 19th and early 20th century urban U.S. and has taught a range of specialized courses on U.S. Religious History, History of the West, Gender History, and History of Los Angeles, as well as surveys of American and African American History.

Kevin Waite is the the Anne Stark Watson and Chester Watson Distinguished Associate Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas. His first book, West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire, won the 2022 Wiley-Silver Prize from the Center for Civil War Research, and was a finalist for three other awards, including the Lincoln Prize. The Civil War Monitor named West of Slavery one of the "Five Best Books" ever written on the Civil War in the Far West. Kevin's next book, The Boundless Biddy Mason: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom Across the American West, will be published by the University of California Press in October 2026. Kevin also moonlights in the TV and film industry. Most recently, he wrote and produced a six-episode docuseries on the American Revolution, which airs this summer on National Geographic and Disney+. He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a masters from the University of Cambridge, and a BA from Williams College.

This program is presented in conjunction with MONUMENTS, an exhibition co-organized and co-presented by The Brick and The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles (MOCA).