Thread: Civil War museum to change name?

What the heck is this? I'm a Yankee and I find this offensive........running away from OR re-writing our history is an afront to Americans from coast to coast.

Civil War museum to change name?

Center may drop the word 'Confederacy' after move; perception problem cited

BY JANET CAGGIANO
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Feb 20, 2007


The Museum of the Confederacy will likely drop the word "Confederacy" from its name when it moves its collection to a new home.

"One of our challenges is a gap between the public's perception of who we are and the role we play, and the reality of who we are and the role we play," Waite Rawls, the museum's president and CEO, said yesterday.

"The repositioning we have done over the past 30 years is to be more of a modern education institution and less of a memorial . . . to the Confederacy."

The museum dates to Feb. 22, 1896, when The Confederate Museum opened in the former home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The new name, Rawls said, would depend on the location of the museum. Lexington took a step closer to becoming that place last week when its City Council voted unanimously to enter into nonbinding talks with the Richmond institution.
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"It would be a boom to tourism and in increasing the vitality of downtown," Lexington Mayor John Knapp Sr. said yesterday. "But we've really just begun the process."

In January, Rawls and three members of the museum's board toured a possible site in Lexington, the historic Rockbridge County courthouse complex on Main Street. The complex also includes the old jail, which dates to 1841, the First American Bank building and the "lawyer's row" building. All are vacant and would require renovation.

"To me, the Confederate flag symbolizes slavery, oppression and denying people their rights," Lexington Councilwoman Mimi Elrod said yesterday in a phone interview. "I have a problem with a museum that celebrates that being in our city. If you have a museum that looks at all aspects of the Civil War, that's very different to me."

After discussing a possible name change with Rawls, Elrod said she welcomes more talks. Lexington City Council has appointed a committee to look into the best uses for its courthouse complex.

"This may all work out very nicely," Elrod said.

Not everyone agrees.

"Moving the museum would be a bad administrative move," said Darryl Starnes, the Sons of Confederate Veterans commander of the Edmund Ruffin Camp in Mechanicsville. "Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. That's the place the Museum of the Confederacy should be."

He's even more concerned about a name change.

"I think it would dilute the integrity of the museum," he said.

A group of about 10 historians, grant writers and preservationists don't think so. The committee studied the museum's health last year and released its findings in October. The report states that the word "Confederacy" carries "enormous, intransigent and negative intellectual baggage with many. For them, the Confederacy, and by association the Museum of the Confederacy, now symbolize racism."

The museum is seeking a new home for its Civil War collection, the world's largest, to escape the sprawling medical campus of Virginia Commonwealth University. About 140 miles west of downtown Richmond in Rockbridge County, Lexington could be a good fit for the museum's collection of artifacts, manuscripts and photographs. Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson are buried there, and the city is home to Washington and Lee University as well as Virginia Military Institute.

In October, Rawls announced that the museum at 12th and East Clay streets would relocate its collection but that the adjacent White House of the Confederacy would stay put.

Although museum officials may be interested in Lexington, Rawls said other sites will be considered as well. He hopes the relocation is complete by 2011, the beginning of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War.

Contact staff writer Janet Caggiano at jcaggiano@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6157.
http://link.toolbot.com/timesdispatch.com/65890

I am sick of these people trying to wipe out anything that has to do with the South. The civil war happened, it is part of our history. GOT OVER IT!

Rewriting history...very Orwellian.

It's heart-breaking. Little by little the culture of the South is disappearing and/or being maligned. The descendants of the brave soldiers who fought for Southern rights are now seen as descendants of "evil".

If you look at American history, you can see that from the time of the War Between the States until now the Federal governmet has grown ever larger and dominate.

For example: The Ten Commandments in the courthouse in Alabama. How can the Federal goverment tell a state they cannot put that up in their courthouse? If the peolple of a state want it there, so be it.

The Ware Between the States freed the slaves, which was an evil insititution that hurt the South, but it lead to a Federal government that is ever incroaching into our lives and freedoms.

What the heck is this? I'm a Yankee and I find this offensive........running away from OR re-writing our history is an afront to Americans from coast to coast.

I am or have been called a very specific kind of Yankee, having been born in Ohio but lived in the southern states for many years. So many of us, Americans, died and still are fighting and dying, to make this country what she is. During a visit to Japan at the top of Tokyo Tower, a gentleman asked if I was American, I said yes, not northern - southern, AMERICAN. Please don't rewrite or change the "facts", good or bad, we live and learn by history written, the more accurately the better.

This is a disgrace and the ultimate in PC. What are we going to do pretend that during the time period 1861-65 we have no record of it? Completely remove people like Robert E Lee & Jeb Stuart from history books? I mean really. Take all this to it's natural conclusion and where else could it go?

Originally Posted by AlturaCt

This is a disgrace and the ultimate in PC. What are we going to do pretend that during the time period 1861-65 we have no record of it? Completely remove people like Robert E Lee & Jeb Stuart from history books? I mean really. Take all this to it's natural conclusion and where else could it go?

ALTURA
this is exactly the reason for my posting this piece.
It's a SYMPTOM of all we are fighting.

It's an afront to ALL Americans.

While, I might add, we have FALSE mexican history now being taught in our public schools.

While, I might add, we have FALSE mexican history now being taught in our public schools.

great point sis!

"To me, the Confederate flag symbolizes slavery, oppression and denying people their rights,"

Well, to me, the Confderate flag represents the last people who had he guts to take the Declaration of Independence at its word:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..."

Seems clear enough, but according to the tyrant Lincoln, the right to greedily cling to the tax revenues of a group of states was sufficient to make a liar of Jefferson and every other patriot who risked his life to sign this bold declaration. As offensive as some people find the Confederate flag, I find TWICE as offensive the deification of that bearded bastard who turned this nation's founding documents on their ears and behaved not as an elected representative but as a spurned monarch. The godlike representation of the arch-tyrant at the Lincoln monument is (or should be) an enduring kick in the crotch to true patriots everywhere. The Civil War was not fought over slavery. It was fought over revenues and control that the power elite were not willing to relinquish. It was a victory for the iron fist of consolidated federalism over the principle of limited and decentralized government that was the dream of our nation's founders.

Not only do I honor the Confederacy AND its flag, I live for the day when a group of Americans again has the guts to say "ENOUGH!" and to cast off the yoke of bondage imposed by Washington D.C.

APPLAUSE!!!!!