I just spent about a half hour on the website for United Daughters of the Confederacy
https://www.hqudc.org/ and could not find anything remotely racist or promoting ****. They seem like a fairly innocuous group of nice ladies who have genteel get-togethers and raise money for monuments remembering their ancestors who fought and died in the Lost Cause.
I also searched online using the term “daughters of the confederacy controversy” and I can’t seem to find any actual evidence of racism, covert or otherwise.
I’m calling bulls*** on these allegations.
Preface: I have great respect for the ladies on CWT who are members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. As I have said in a previous post in this thread, I know they would
never be affiliated with a UDC chapter that wasn’t about doing good works. I also believe we need organizations like those UDC chapters that want to honor and respect our ancestors and to promote a love of history.
Now...
A lot of people picture a group of mainly older women dressed in widow’s weeds who meet to honor their Confederate ancestors when they think of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That is a mistake. These ladies aren’t just laying wreaths of boxwood and holly and singing mournful renditions of Dixie. As memorials have toppled and Confederate place names have begun to vanish, the UDC has fought back with lawsuits aimed at stopping the removal of Confederate monuments from public spaces.
Founded in 1894, the UDC emerged from women’s “
hospital associations, sewing societies and knitting circles” across the South that worked to aid Confederate soldiers. The group’s articles of incorporation list five key objectives: “Historical, Benevolent, Educational, Memorial and Patriotic.” UDC membership is open to descendants of those who served honorably in the Confederate military or “
who gave material aid to the cause.” Applicants cannot use an ancestor who took the oath of allegiance to the United States before April 9, 1865, when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. After the war, the UDC generously offered assistance to Confederate widows and orphans.
Around 450 monuments, markers, buildings and other commemoratives are attributed to the efforts of the UDC. The memorials range from modest statues to the 351 foot concrete obelisk marking the Kentucky birthplace of Jefferson Davis. The UDC’s influence extends beyond the regional boundaries of the Confederacy. The vast majority of these monuments were erected during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when states were enacting Jim Crow laws and amid the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.
In an interview earlier this year, historian Karen L. Cox, author of “
Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture,” said, ”
The UDC is most proud of the ‘living monuments’ it helped to create.” She was referencing the group’s youth auxiliary, the Children of the Confederacy, organized in 1896. Boys and girls go on field trips to historic sites and clean up cemeteries. They also memorize passages from the UDC’s Confederate Catechism, a summary of its principles.
The war, reads a text from 1904, was caused by the “
disregard, on the part of the States of the North, for the rights of the southern or slave-holding states.” And slaves “
were faithful and devoted and were always ready and willing to serve them.” According to Cox, the language has been tweaked over the years. In the version currently on the UDC website, that statement now reads:
“Slaves, for the most part, were faithful and devoted. Most slaves were usually ready and willing to serve their masters.”
It should be noted that the state chapters of the UDC have their own distinct personalities. For example, amid calls to remove a Confederate statue from the old courthouse in Tampa, Florida, the president of the UDC’s state division came out in support of moving such monuments from public property. Ginger Lathem-Rudiger told a Tampa television station:
“Because of the issue of slavery ... why not relocate these to places where they can be given the respect they deserve for veteran service?”
The UDC President General, Patricia M Bryson, has said:
“
… the Daughters, like our statues, have stayed quietly in the background, never engaging in public controversy.”
Sources:
The UDC website -
https://www.hqudc.org
“
Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture” by Karen L. Cox.
“The Lost Cause: The Women’s Group Fighting for Confederate Monuments” by Allen G Breed. The Associated Press in Chapel Hill, NC, August 10, 2018.