Titled The Chasm Is Not Closed, a new exhibit at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum uses a pair of tributes to the Confederacy to dig deeply into a disturbing chapter in the Island's not too distant past.

The fiercest, bloodiest wars are those fought not over territory or a throne, but over a way of life.

At a public forum Tuesday night, Oak Bluffs selectmen unanimously agreed adopt the Martha’s Vineyard NAACP’s recommendation.

In a sometimes tense, sometimes emotional debate, Oak Bluffs selectmen heard arguments for and against a request to remove plaques from a Civil War monument.

A Civil War memorial in Oak Bluffs is drawing concerted opposition from the Martha’s Vineyard chapter of the NAACP

Martha’s Vineyard can look with pride on its Civil War statue, built to express an aspiration as urgent today as it was in 1891: to heal a nation’s deep divisions.