Confederate Memorial Day Draws Mixed Reactions

By Kim Chandler/The Associated Press

MONTGOMERY — One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War’s end, several Southern states will mark Confederate Memorial Day as an official state holiday.

In ceremonies scattered across the states of the Old Confederacy, cannons will sound, mournful bagpipes skirl and wreaths made from magnolia leaves placed at monuments and graves. State offices in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia will be closed today in a holiday that some call a day to honor the dead and others call an anachronistic tradition with no place in the modern South.

Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia name the last Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day to mark the surrender of Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston and his army on April 26, 1865. South Carolina holds a Confederate Memorial Day in May to mark the day Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died.

Purdue University professor Caroline E. Janney, the author of “Burying the Dead but Not the Past: Ladies’ Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause” said the roots of Confederate Memorial Day began with ceremonies immediately after the war. Various ladies’ memorial associations across the South in 1865 and 1866 worked to move the bodies of dead soldiers from mass battlefield graves to proper burials in cemeteries.

The ceremonies became a celebration of the Confederacy with veterans parading in full uniforms, songs, flowers and a “benediction or eulogy about the so-called Lost Cause.” The events, she said, were carefully advertised as “mourning” during Reconstruction because people knew the activities were bordering on treason.

“It is a way to sustain an identification as a Confederate. It’s a way to sustain your Southern identity and to continue to resist the federal government. Even though there is no longer a Confederate army, even though there is no longer a Confederate government. These are very much places where what I call a Confederate identity, is perpetuated,” Janney said.

On Sunday, the Ladies Memorial Association of Montgomery for the 149th consecutive year will hold a ceremony at Montgomery’s Oakwood Cemetery Wreaths will be placed in honor of the Confederate dead and a peace lily placed at a monument to the Union dead, Association President Leslie Kirk said.

The event, Kirk said is about remembering the dead, both Confederate and Union, and the massive pain inflicted by “brother fighting brother.”

“It was about the burial of the men, north or south. They were someone’s child when they died,” Kirk said. She said the group shies away from the political. The ceremony will include the Pledge of Allegiance and “Star-Spangled Banner.”

“A lot of people want the Confederate monuments taken down. They want the holiday to be done away with. I don’t think you rewrite history. I don’t think you need to. What better place to show how far we’ve come then to see the history of Montgomery?” Kirk said.

People wearing Confederate uniforms will gather at a separate event Monday on the grounds of the Alabama Capitol.

“We’re celebrating the lives of our ancestors,” said Gary Carlyle, Alabama Commander of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Carlyle, who prefers to call it the War for Southern Independence, said the war was started by an invasion.

Alabama State University, a historically black university in Montgomery, will host a symposium on Confederate Memorial Day.

Dr. Derryn Moten, acting chair of the Department of History and Political Science, said many people likely find the idea of a day dedicated to Confederate dead quaint or strange.

“I think more people question the ethicacy of giving it or having it as an official state holiday,” Moten said.

Moten said he wants the conference to debunk some of the myths, including that the Confederacy was not interested in the perpetuation of slavery.

The Constitution of the Confederate states discussed slavery multiple times, including that there would be no law impairing the right to own in “negro slaves.”

Moten said he always liked how Martin Luther King closed his speech ending the Selma-to-Montgomery march with several stanzas of the Union anthem, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic.’

“I think Dr. King invoked an image that the South would lose the war of segregation, Jim Crow and nullification just like it lost the Civil War,” Moten said.

There have been recent efforts to rename Confederate celebration holidays.

A bill in Texas was suggested by Jacob Hale, a 13-year-old student from Austin. Hale’s idea is to change the Texas state holiday named Confederate Heroes Day to Civil War Remembrance Day, a name that he said would reflect a broader range of viewpoints and Texans’ diverse heritage in relation to the Civil War. Hale said Texans fought on both sides of the Civil War, and there were also more than 100,000 slaves in Texas.

“I think it’s a common sense, logical thing,” Hale said. “We’re trying to commemorate all the lives that were lost during that War.”