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Reviews413 his study, Rosenburg might have provided readers with a better understanding of how white southerners viewed the generation of the 1860s, for widows' homes were also an important link to Confederate heritage. Unfortunately, the author treats the involvement of women supporters of soldiers' homes in much the same way as did contemporary male administrators. For example, in describing the activities of ladies' committees as "something of a nuisance" because "their evangelism grew too enthusiastic," Rosenburg provides no evidence to support his statement . In fact, he appears to accept without question the grievances of male administrators regarding the "interference" of women. Women were crucial to planning and raising funds for soldiers' homes, a fact that Rosenburg acknowledges but neglects to mention until the last chapter of his book. His descriptions of women's activities, moreover, center on the supposed disruptive influence of women rather than their role as southerners who shared with men a sincere interest in the care of the region's heroes. Thus, readers learn that Mary H. Southwood Kimbrough of Greenwood, Mississippi, incensed the board of her state's home, Beauvoir, with accusations of fiscal mismanagement. We are never told whether Kimbrough's charges were valid, only that she "infuriated" board members by her interference. What Rosenburg neglected to mention is that Kimbrough, in fact, had more than a passing interest in the home's management. A close friend of the Davis family, she was instrumental in persuading Vanna Davis to sell Beauvoir to the Sons of Confederate Veterans for the purpose of establishing a soldiers' home. Seen in this context, Kimbrough's "interference" is better understood. Living Monuments is valuable as an institutional history that also introduces readers to a unique facet of the cult of the Lost Cause. Soldiers' homes were cultural symbols—a "tangible link to Confederate heritage." Moreover, the homes not only served to honor Johnny Reb, they were places where these men could live their last days not as paupers but as southern heroes. And while soldiers did not always live up to the ideal image held by founders, administrators, and supporters, the aging veterans still symbolized virtues white southerners held dear—honor, patriotism, and regional loyalty. At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia, and Its People. By Marie Tyler-McGraw. University of North Carolina Press, 1994. 361 pp. Cloth, $39.95; paper, $19.95. Reviewed by Christopher Silver, professor of urban studies and planning at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is currently serving as an urban development advisor to the government of Indonesia. His most recent book is The Separate City: Black Communities in the Urban South, 1940-1968 (with John V. Moeser). In the mid-1980s, the Valentine Museum, whose self-appointed role is to chronicle Richmond , Virginia's rich history, embarked upon an ambitious and controversial enterprise. Through a variety of experimental activities, the Valentine sought to create new museum exhibitions that incorporated recent urban historical scholarship and, at the same time, to use the exhibition-development process itself to reexamine local history. For the Valentine staff, the most controversial aspect of this task was to represent all of Richmond's complex historical drama rather than selected portions. This approach to exhibition development pays greater attention to the previously neglected contributions of African Americans to 414Southern Cultures Richmond's history, an approach appropriate in a city whose population in the 1980s was more than one-half African American and where the role of blacks in city building had been a fundamental factor since the 1600s. Moreover, in a city whose origin and traditional economic base rest firmly upon commerce and manufacturing, the lives of the working people—both blacks and whites as well as women and men—represented an essentially unexplored piece of Richmond's past. In At the Falls: Richmond, Virginia and Its People, Marie Tyler-McGraw, staff historian to the museum from 1987 to 1992, offers an eloquent and imaginative script for the Valentine 's interpretive process. Tyler-McGraw includes in her narrative the new stories of Richmond 's development— stories that emerged from a combination of challenging new exhibitions as well as through a careful synthesis of the most persuasive new scholarship on America 's urban development. The result...

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