The American South has a well-earned reputation for things like heritage, pride and storytelling. But many of those points are being revisited as part of a reexamination of what they meant in context to the African slave trade, reconstruction, Jim Crow and how they manifest themselves today.

To help get proper context on these stories, James Howell's guest of today's episode of Maybe I'm Amazed is Vernon Burton. Vernon is a professor of history at Clemson University, as well as a prolific author.

Vernon joins James to talk about many of today's most pressing topics, including what it means to see Confederate statues being removed (and what people like Robert E. Lee would have thought about that today - the answer may surprise you), the Supreme Court's role in legislating a post-slavery society, stories of how Abraham Lincoln himself learned to evolve as a leader despite the weight of the world around him, and how Vernon's hometown of Ninety Six, SC got its name.