The Confederacy Today:
Organizational Interpretations of Confederate Symbols and Diffusion of Southern Heritage
Introduction
Throughout my research I have found two primary ways to interpret “Confederate space” and associ-
ated symbols. These two different approaches can, in turn, be associated with the nature of the group that
is responsible for memorializing the Confederacy in a particular space or context, and the reasons for
which it was established. It should be noted that the perspectives I assign to confederate-associated
groups might not be their official perspective, but rather my interpretation. While all of the organizations
I will mention have used Confederate symbols, especially the battle flag, it is important to note their dis-
tinctions. I have classified these groups into two broad categories: Confederate heritage groups, and
Confederate-associated supremacy groups. As Dr. George Schedler, a professor of philosophy at the
Southern Illinois University, suggests “devotion to or toleration of Confederate imagery and reminders of
the ‘Old South’ cannot be fully and consistently explained merely as racist”1 But, as John M. Coski, a histo-
rian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, suggests it has taken on a racial overtone
because it was originally
associated with armies whose victories had the effect of preserving a nation which
in turn preserved slavery. Subsequently, the Confederate battle flag was supported
by generations of white southerners who defended Jim Crow segregation. [Which has
made it] a logical symbol to be dragged into racial controversies.
[While white supremacist overtones do exist in reference to some Confederate
symbols] it is neither fair nor accurate to attribute racist motives to those who do not
accept the argument. The nonracist meanings that people attach to the flag are real
and deserve to respect… However, it is naïve and logically indefensible for anyone to
conclude that because he or she does not regard the flag as a racist symbol, others are
wrong to regard it so. The flag’s modern critics and the media’s obsession with the flag’s
racist connotations obscure or fail to appreciate the strong and enduring significance
that the flag holds for many white Southerners as a symbol of their ancestors. But
Southern partisans and the people who revere the flag similarly obscure or fail to ap-
preciate the strong historical experience and continuing associations that make it a
threatening symbol of racism and white political and cultural dominance.2
Confederate Heritage groups
To Confederate heritage groups, symbols of the Confederacy, particularly the battle flag, are repre-
sentative of valor, nobility, and sacrifice of their ancestors, as well as “respect for Southern traditions and
customs without regard to racism.”3 The battle flag is seen as the soldier’s flag because it was the soldier
who fought to defend it during the War. As a result it served both military and emotional functions on the
battlefield. In this group, I have included several organizations, which all frown upon racist attitudes and
the use of Confederate symbols as racist symbols. Instead these groups seek to preserve the historical sig-
nificance of the Confederacy, and the cause for which the Confederate soldier fought. Distinction be-
tween the flag’s original meaning and the racial meaning it has acquired is the core of the Confederate
heritage group operations today.
For this study, while I have not been able to obtain all of the chapter locations for some of the organi-
zations, I have included the following groups:
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is the culmination of “many local memo-
rial, monument and Confederate home associations and auxiliaries to camps of United Confederate
Veterans.”4 One of the many roles of the UDC is to record the role of Southern women during the War and
the Reconstruction era, as well as the hardships they endured. Membership is limited to “blood descen-
dants, lineal or collateral, of men and women who served honorably in the Army, Navy or Civil Service of
the Confederate States of America, or gave Material Aid to the Cause.”5
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is the heir of United Confederate Veterans, which
was an organization for former Confederate veterans themselves. The purpose of the SCV is similar to the
UDC whereby it is focused on recording the role and significance of the soldier to the Confederacy and
the reasons for which he fought. Membership is “open to all male descendants of any veteran who served
honorably in the Confederate armed forces.”6
The Children of the Confederacy (CofC) is a group affiliated with the UDC. It “was designed
to prep youngsters for Confederate citizenship in rather the way that Future Farmers of America readied
teenagers for agricultural life.”7 It teaches children what the confederacy was all about from a heritage
perspective in hopes that as members “age out” at 18, they will move directly into the UDC or SCV. Mem-
bership is open to all “boys and girls who are blood descendants… of men and women who served honor-
ably in the Confederate Army, Navy, Civil Service or gave Material Aid to the cause.”8
The Military Order of the Stars and Bars (MOS&B) is a group much like the SCV, with the
exception of it being slightly more selective for members. All members to MOS&B must be blood descen-
dants of those who served in “the Confederate Officer Corps, were members of Confederate Congress, or
any elected or appointed member of the Executive Branch of the Confederate Government.”9
The Order of the Confederate Rose (OCR) works a supplemental group to some SCV camps
and partakes in many of the same projects in preserving confederate heritage. It is the only one of these
four groups included in the study where members need not be blood descendents of those who served in
the Confederacy. In addition, it is open to both men and women.
As stated earlier, the purpose of these groups is to “protect, preserve, and mark places made historic
by Confederate valor,” as well as the history and legacy of Confederacy and its heroes. 10 11 These groups
focus their interpretation of the war on “political constitutional understandings of rights and way of life,
not slavery.” And view the actions of those who formed the Confederate States of America as similar to
founding fathers of the United States of America.12 They achieve these goals in a variety of ways includ-
ing erecting monuments, preservation work on historic sites, historical reenactments, and scholarly publi-
cations related to the war between the states. They have made it their own, personal duty “to protect the
shared memory and symbols of the Old South from attacks by left-wing political groups [who] seek to re-
interpret [it] as a morally evil empire built on slavery.13
Figure 1.
Counties Named for People Who Served in the Confederate Military or Civil Service
During Reconstruction one
way Southerners fought to main-
tain their own culture and identity
in a Northern occupied land was
through the establishment of Con-
federate space, which served as
“scars,” or remnants of the Old
South in the industrializing New
South. Confederate space was
established and maintained in a
variety of ways, including names of
political units, such as counties and
townships. To the left are counties
named in honor of people who
served in the Confederate Military
or Civil Service. The names include
a variety of ranks and positions,
Named For Confederate
from private in the army to Presi-
dent of the Confederacy. The two
Other Counties most common Confederate county
names are in honor of Robert E. Lee
and Jefferson Davis.
By: Dave Melsness
University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
Confederate Symbols to Hate
Confederate affiliated white supremacist groups represent an entirely different aspect of the Confederacy than
heritage groups promote. These groups often focus on displaying symbols, especially the battle flag “to promote mes-
sages of racial intolerance, bigotry, and white supremacy divorced from the historical record of the Confederacy.”14
For this study I have utilized the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Hate Map” to locate Confederate affiliated
white supremacist groups. Groups that are included here are:
The League of the South (LOS) is a “Southern nationalist organization whose ultimate goal is a free and inde-
pendent Southern republic.”15 The League is a group with a political agenda that has mentioned its will to “de-
legitimize the American Empire” and create “parallel institutions to which people can attach their loyalties.” One ex-
ample is withdrawing students from public schools and encouraging homeschooling or enrolment in private League-
sponsored academies.16
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the group most Americans associate with the Confederate battle flag, was founded
by former Confederate soldiers, but interestingly there is no evidence the original Klan used the Confederate flag in its
rituals and activities. In fact, the battle flag was seldom used until the early 1940s by the Klan, before that time
(especially the Klan of 1915), they used the cross as its primary symbol.17
The Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) is a descendant of the “White Citizens Councils,” which was
initially founded to oppose integration in the 1950s. It has been referred to as the “uptown Klan” and “country club
Klan” because it “embraced racism to defend the southern way of life using economic pressure instead of physical vio-
lence to pursue their goals.”18
Throughout the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s-60s, the battle flag became the symbol of choice for the
South’s violent resistance to federal dismantling of Jim Crow segregation and has since been associated with racist ob-
jectives of the movement’s opposition.19
As a result of battle flags use during the Civil Rights movement, including George Wallace’s use of the flag in his
“segregation forever” campaign, and its use by the white supremacy groups noted above it had officially become a
racial symbol in the eyes of mainstream America, much to the dismay of Confederate heritage groups. Virginus
Dabney, a Southern writer who fought segregation commented on its use during the movement. He wrote “the Confed-
erate flag is being used in Alabama in a manner which represents a gross perversion of things it stood for a century ago...
True Southerners object strenuously to having the flag under which their forefathers faught and died dragged into
today’s interracial controverseys, where it is almost invariably made to seem synonymous with ‘bigotry or racism.”
Dabney’s feelings toward the battle flag’s use by Confederate affiliated white supremacist groups demonstrates how
the symbol is capable of having different meanings attached to it at any single point in time.
Figure 2 White Population by County and Group Chapter Locations (2000)
Percent White
0 - 45%
45 - 60%
60 - 75%
1 Dot = 1
75 - 85%
85 - 95% Confederate Heritage Group Location
95 - 100% Confederate Associated White Supremacist Group Location
Figure 3 Black Population by County and Group Chapter Locations (2000)
Percent Black
0 - 5%
5 - 15%
15 - 25%
1 Dot = 1
25 - 35%
35% - 55% Confederate Heritage Group Location
55% - 100% Confederate Associated White Supremacist Group Location
Spatial Distribution
Figures 2 and 3 demonstrate the spatial distribution of the major Confederate heritage (blue) and Confederate asso-
ciated white supremacist (red) organizations in the United States. By taking a closer look at these maps an interesting spa-
tial pattern appears. While the majority of these groups are unsurprisingly clustered in the Southeast the highest concen-
trations of both groups are clustered in areas where the white population constitutes at least 45-60 percent. Patterns
within the states also yield interesting results. The majority of both organizations are often more inland than close to the
coast. Texas provides an interesting pattern in relation to the spatial distribution of these groups. The majority are clus-
tered in the north eastern half of the state leaving much of the western half vacant. Similarly, in Florida, concentrations of
these organizations are much less dense in the southern third of the state than in the northern two-thirds of the state. An-
other state that sticks out is California, where concentrations of heritage groups seem to inhabit the Central Valley while
the white supremacist groups tend to dominate the coastal areas.
There is certainly spatial patterning of how these two types of Confederate organizations are clustered. While both
types dominate the Southeast, the Heritage groups do not seem to cluster in the Northern states as much as the white su-
premacist groups. Similarly as Figure 3 demonstrates the heritage organizations are much more likely to inhabit the same
areas where there is a majority black population, as opposed to the white supremacist groups, which as Figure 2 demon-
strates tend to cluster in areas of very high white population concentrations, with a few exceptions in the Deep South, and
California.
Confederate Space
Throughout the post-war Reconstruction era, Southerners found themselves locked in a culture war with their
Northern counterparts. To maintain their culture, they found a variety of ways to maintain their Confederate heritage.
As Figure 1 demonstrates, one way in which they did this was to name counties for Confederate heroes. However, perhaps
more significantly, they were able to give Confederate space a more physical presence in the monuments they con-
structed throughout the South.
Many of the Confederate monuments are similar in the fact that they have the same basic elements. As can be seen
in Figures 4 and 5 they usually feature “a solitary soldier standing in a classical ‘conrapposto’ position with a rifle held
like a staff in hand, in front or to the side of the body... [He is] outfitted with [a] canteen, bedroll, and other military arti-
facts, and often wore a wide brimmed hat which is often the only feature that makes them distinguishable from union
statues.”21 Because of these basic commonalities and its repetition throughout a majority of communities across the
South, the monument’s power to evoke deep thought, emotion, and commemoration of a single historical event, aside the
War itself, had be stripped.
Upon closer examination one finds the significance of the statue lies not in its appearance, but in the symbolic role it
plays in occupying space in the public sphere. Among the Union’s total war tactics to destroy the South was to crush its
“heritage, lifestyle, politics, culture, people and cause.”22 Similarly, the goal of reconstruction was to industrialize the
South, and recreate it in the like of the North. The reconstruction of the South was meant to signify the end the war, and
the domination of the Union. However, by constructing monuments, Southerners were able to defy this appearance and
symbolically represented islands of the Confederacy in the Union-dominated South. “They force the viewer to remem-
ber the conflict between the North and South and the fact that it was settled by war and not compromise or
agreement.”23 In addition, the monuments force the viewer to recall the reasons the war was fought, and the political
controversy that animated the Confederate cause.
Monument locations invite viewers to this debate. Monuments located in Confederate cemeteries invite the viewer
to ponder the reason why so many Southerners fought, and died, for the Confederacy. A location in a courthouse lawn, or
on state capitol grounds will invite the viewer to contemplate the politics that played a role in succession and the Con-
federacy. They remind the viewer that North and South were not unified by peace and Southerners still felt passionate
about stifling of state government and the injustices dealt by the federal government.
Perhaps the most significant role of the Confederate monument is that they did not appear through the work of a
single organization. Instead they were erected and dedicated by hundreds of small, individual organizations working at
the local level, which symbolized that it was a unified voice of the dominated South.24
The majority of Confederate monuments are in the form of an anonymous Confederate soldier. They do not represent a
single soldier, but rather the individuality of each individual soldier and his dedication, courage, and honor during the
war.25
Figure 4 Figure 5 Acknowledgements
A special “thank you” to all who helped me conduct my research through
offering advice, information, and your assistance.
University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
-Dr. Ezra Zeitler
United Daughters of the Confederacy
-Hilda Bradberry
Sons of Confederate Veterans
-Ben Sewell -Rodger Ware -James Palmisano
-Scott Gartin -H. Mark Kalkbrenner-Ray James
-Denver Erickson -Michael Lawson Sr. -T. Y. Hiter
-John Priddy -Richard Lee Montgomery -Patrick Gerity
-Michael Bradley -Ray Rooks -Herman Johnson
-Vern Padgett
Military Order of the Stars and Bars
-Gary L. Loudermilk -James Troy Massey -Robert G. Carroon
-Tom DiGiuseppe -Allen Mock -William Fillingim
-Howard Jones -Bobby Morris -Billy Ed Bowden
-Robert A. Brown -Bert Blackmon
Forrest Historical Society
26 27 -Lee Millar
Literature Review
George Schedler, “Southern Minorities, Popular Culture, and the Old South,” in Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South, ed. J. Michael Martinez, William
D. Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000).
George Shedler explored the rise of Confederate symbols in popular culture and their diffusion through college and sporting events. He also examined the
implications for minorities in the popular representation of Confederate symbols and positive reflection on the ideas and culture of the Old South.
John M. Coski, “The Confederate Battle Flag in Historical Perspective,” in Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South, ed. J. Michael Martinez, William D.
Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000).
John M. Coski is a historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. In his essay he examined the different meanings attached to the Con-
federate battle flag and the historical reasoning that these interpretations have been attached, whether it served as the soldiers flag, served as a symbol of racial
bigotry or as an accessory in popular culture.
Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998).
Tony Horwitz took a journalistic approach in his book. Throughout the book he describes people he met while tracing the Civil War to find out how people
reflect on the war in contemporary times. The title is very fitting for the book because he meets an array of colorful characters that even today, are fighting the
unfinished Civil War in their own, nonviolent ways.
J. Michael Martinez and Robert M. Harris, “Graves, Worms, Epitaphs: Confederate Monuments in the Southern Landscape,” Confederate Symbols in the
Contemporary South, ed. J. Michael Martinez, William D. Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000).
Martinez and Harris examined the meanings of Confederate space markers over time. They examined the historical significance as well as modern implica-
tions of confederate monuments and the meanings associated with their placement, from graveyards to public squares.
J. Michael Martinez, “Traditionalist Perspectives on Confederate Symbols,” Confederate Symbols in the Contemporary South, ed. J. Michael Martinez, William D.
Richardson, and Ron McNinch-Su (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000).
In this essay Martinez explored the traditionalist (ie SCV, UDC, MOSB, CofC and OCR) perspective on Confederate symbols. It further concluded that their
interpretations are based in historical fact, but often do not see the racial implications of the symbols. Nonetheless he also concluded these groups are all strictly
against the use of Confederate symbols for non-historical purposes.
Gerald R. Webster and Jonathan I. Leib, “Fighting for the Lost Cause, The Confederate Battle Flag and Neo-Confederacy,” in Neo-Confederacy, ed. Euan Hague,
Heidi Beirich, Edward H. Sebesta (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008).
Webster and Leib focused on the meaning of the Confederate battle flag in the racial context. Further, they looked at how modern hate groups use the
battle flag to support messages of racial intolerance. In a sense, the essay concluded Confederate-associated hate groups often see themselves fighting for the
Lost Cause in a sense where Whites are superior to all other races.
Elizabeth Paul. “The Monuments.” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/INCORP/monuments/monuments2/mons.html (accessed April 20, 2010).
Elizabeth Paul offered an exemplary examination of the meanings attached to Confederate Monuments. In particular, she examined the role of the solitary
soldier monument, and the significance of its anonymity. She concluded the monuments represented more than individual soldiers, yet at the same time repre-
sented all soldiers and the cause they fought, and in many cases died for. She further concluded that monuments were a way for the local Southern communities
to object to Reconstruction and Industrialization by forcing Northerners, and future generations to remember the war was concluded by defeat, and not negotia-
tions.
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