Not. Gonna. Happen.
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There were no Confederate flags, but the high school band still struck up “Dixie” as a fight song at pep rallies before integration finally reached Greenville, South Carolina in 1970. A recent arrival in the “New South,” I was called Yankee now and again. It was strange then. That “heritage” seems even stranger now.
Anna Venarchik, herself an Alabama native, writes about the legacy of The United Daughters of the Confederacy. The UDC over decades very successfully retconned the Civil War as something other than bloody treason by an entire region of the country to prevent the future I saw at a northern Virginia Waffle House. That too was a Lost Cause.
“They all think we’re white supremacists but they don’t want to bother to find out,” said one member on a Zoom Venarchik attended this decade.” Who “they” were went unsaid.
“I am interested in people understanding that the organization is a forward-looking organization,” a youngish septuagenarian from a New York chapter told Venarchik, before reversing herself and declining an interview. The UDC declined Venarchik’s other efforts to secure an interview. She never got to inquire in what way the UDC is forward-looking.
These days, the UDC’s principle focus is on retaining its marble headquarters in Richmond, dedicated in November 1957. Venarchik explains after sketching a brief history of the group:
The Daughters settled in the former Confederate capital after Governor William Tuck, who spent his governorship fighting civil rights laws, offered the land. Virginia’s General Assembly approved the offer in 1950 and tacked on $10,000 toward construction fees. The deed, however, included stipulations: If the UDC doesn’t use the property for five years, it reverts to the Commonwealth. The UDC cannot sell the building, because the state controls the land; the group cannot move it, because it’s marble. If they ever couldn’t pay for upkeep, they would have to abandon the memorial.
The structure was vandalized and firebombed in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Since then, UDC monuments have come down across Richmond.
“Just the nicest ladies” is how the Daughters see themselves. They often used such phrases while discussing their charity projects. Divisions annually report how many hours of volunteer work they complete: in 2021, over 12,000 hours in Florida, over 180,000 in Texas. But their use of the phrase also suggests how they define “racist”: someone who feels animosity toward Black people, who wishes to see communities of color suffer. And “white supremacy” is associated with violence, not societal conditions. By holding to these definitions, the Daughters maintain confusion as to why such terms are applied to them. They don’t feel these things; they’re just nice ladies.
I spoke with a former member of the UDC’s brother group, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (he requested anonymity), who cautioned me against generalizing the organization, which isn’t a monolith. He worked with Daughters in Richmond for years and said some divisions are more genteel, others more “hard-core.” Some Daughters want to save statues—especially in North Carolina—others just like to hang out with friends. And some were formerly members of the Children of the Confederacy, the auxiliary organization where youth learn “true” history. In 2021, the youngest member was added at only 45 minutes old, so I found it ironic—and disturbing—when one Daughter told me she sympathized when descendants of the enslaved are offended by Confederate statues. But she added that it’s important to make sure such people understand the true narrative: “You can tell them that they have been lied to all their life.”
Venarchik’s account of a Myrtle Beach UDC conference reads like a performance of The Last Meeting of the Knights of the White Magnolia.
Being branded a loser is bad. Really bad. Any show of weakness is disqualifying, a mortal sin on the right. Donald Trump is obsessed with projecting strength. Vladimir Putin and Trump’s other crushes are strong, and strongmen. The lengths to which Trump and the MAGA cult will go to avoid losing we witnessed after November 2020 and in courts since. The UDC spent over a century redefining the Lost Cause as the South’s finest hour, thwarted only by Yankee treachery.
Given half a chance, MAGA will do the same with Trump’s 2020 loss (he didn’t lose) and Jan. 6. That’s not a prediction. It’s already happening. Trump won. Who you gonna believe, Trump or your lyin’ eyes? There was no insurrection. Jan. 6 was a War of Liberal Aggression.