When the Confederacy Came to Seattle

Decades after the Civil War, southern sympathizers sought to rewrite history. Knute Berger explains how those efforts were received in the Northwest.

When Gone With the Wind premiered in Seattle in 1940, it was an event. Moviegoers who ventured Downtown to attend a showing of the Civil War drama were met with fanfare. The street outside The 5th Avenue Theatre, where the film was playing, was decorated as if for a Fourth of July parade, with one notable exception: the presence of Confederate flags. 

These flags could be seen in brief footage of Downtown that was featured in an earlier episode of the Mossback's Northwest video series about the Seattle Freeze. And while the production team didn't notice, viewers did. 

In a recent episode of Mossback’s Northwest, Knute Berger and producer Stephen Hegg discuss the feedback and the historical investigation that followed. But there is still more to the story.

For this episode of the Mossback podcast, both Berger and Hegg discuss changing attitudes toward the Confederacy and toward race in Seattle as our city’s Southern sympathizers attempted to rewrite the narrative of the Civil War.

Before listening, we suggest you watch the Mossback's Northwest episode about the Confederacy in the Northwest here.

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Credits

Hosts: Stephen Hegg, Knute Berger

Producer: Seth Halleran

Executive producer: Mark Baumgarten