"This Old South, in short, was a society beset by the specters of defeat, of shame, of guilt - a society driven by the need to bolster its morale, to nerve its arm against waxing odds, to justify itself in its own eyes and in those of the world."

My favorite explanation of things Southern comes from a 1940 volume called "The Mind of the South" by a Carolina newspaperman named W.J. Cash who wrote the above lines. If you want to get decent insights into what has moved minds in this part of the country - this enormously troubling and compelling history of the South - Cash's work is for you.

As with the history of any region, though, there is revisionism. Sometimes it's good, and sometimes it is bad. This month's cover story, by Fredericksburg writer Bob Burke, outlines plans for a national slavery museum. It is the dream of L. Douglas Wilder, an African-American who defied many odds and became the first elected black governor in the Old Dominion and the U.S. for that matter.

At least at its inception, the museum is a tremendously worthy idea, since it would shine a spotlight on part of Virginia's and America's past that badly needs telling. The museum's exhibits could help demystify some of the delusions that tend to be prevalent in this history-mad state. To get a idea of what the white Virginia mindset was during the 1920s and '30s, for instance, stop and read any of those gray metal highway markers that dot the state's country roads. They tend to be more whim than fact and in some cases are downright racist.

Since then, there's been lots of progress towards historical accuracy. Yet, as Cash points out, you simply can't escape the fact that much of the South's history is based on the brutal treatment of blacks by whites. A good part of it also involves white Southerners trying to mask guilt and create myths. Take Jim Crow laws. White Southerners tried to justify them in the late 1800s by saying that they reflected the long-standing dynamics between blacks and whites, when, in fact, they were more recent creations to hasten back white control after Reconstruction. Not that many decades ago, when blacks weren't being lynched, they were being patronized as Hattie McDaniel-style mammies.

Debunking the myth that blacks were well treated as slaves, Cash writes: "The South's perpetual need for justifying its career, and the will to shut away more effectively the vision of its mounting hate and brutality toward the black man, entered into the equation also and bore these people yet further into the cult of the Great Southern Heart. The Old South must be made not only the happy country, but the happy country especially for the negro. The lash? A lie, sir; it had never existed."

A national slave museum could do much to bring needed perspective to the history of Virginia and the South. As Bob's story points out, the museum could be cheapened by McDonald's and Wal-Mart popping up nearby. And, with such an emotionally loaded issue as slavery, it will be interesting to see whose version of history prevails. Hopefully, these issues will be resolved dispassionately. Virginia would benefit immensely from the museum.

Peter Galuszka Executive Editor