United Daughters of the Confederacy#Current status

The group was founded on September 10, 1894, by Caroline Meriwether Goodlett and Anna Davenport Raines as the National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy. The first chapter was formed in Nashville.{{sfn|Simpson|2003|pages=75–76}} The name was soon changed to United Daughters of the Confederacy. Their stated intention was to "tell of the glorious fight against the greatest odds a nation ever faced, that their hallowed memory should never die." Their primary activity was to support the construction of Confederate memorials.{{cite web |url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/stone/udc.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970728145658/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG97/stone/udc.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 28, 1997 |title=Shades of Gray: United Daughters of the Confederacy |last1=Muller |first1=Matthew G. |last2=McLellan |first2=Corey W. |last3=Irons |first3=Charles F. |date=1996 |publisher=University of Virginia |location=Charlottesville |access-date=August 22, 2018}} The UDC has said that its members also support U.S. troops and honor veterans of all U.S. wars.{{sfn|Mills|Simpson|2003}}

In 1896, the organization established the Children of the Confederacy to impart similar values to younger generations through a mythical depiction of the Civil War and Confederacy. According to historian Kristina DuRocher, "Like the KKK's children's groups, the UDC utilized the Children of the Confederacy to impart to the rising generations their own white-supremacist vision of the future."{{sfn|DuRocher|2011|pp=88–89}} The UDC denies assertions that it promotes white supremacy.{{cite news|url=https://www.newsweek.com/united-daughters-confederacy-statues-monuments-udc-653103|title=As Confederate Statues Fall, The Group Behind Most of Them Stays Quiet|last1=Kutner|first1=Max|date=August 25, 2017|work=Newsweek|access-date=September 16, 2018}}

The communications studies scholar W. Stuart Towns notes the UDC's role "in demanding textbooks for public schools that told the story of the war and the Confederacy from a definite southern point of view." He adds that their work is one of the "essential elements [of] perpetuating Confederate mythology."{{sfn|Towns|2012|page=xi}}

The UDC was incorporated on July 18, 1919. Its headquarters is in the Memorial Building to the Women of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia, built in the 1950s.{{Cite book |author= |title=UDC Handbook|pages=3–5 |edition=6th |location=Richmond, Virginia |publisher=United Daughters of the Confederacy |date=March 2013}}{{Cite book |author= |title=Minutes of the One Hundred and Twenty-first Annual General Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Incorporated, Held in Richmond, Virginia, November 6–10, 2014|page=12}}

{{See also|Confederate Memorial Day|Jefferson Davis Highway|Southern Cross of Honor|United Confederate Veterans}}

=== Early work ===

File:Confederate soldier.jpg]]

File:CONFEDERATE MONUMENT AT JENKINS FERRY.jpg

Across the Southern United States, associations were founded after the Civil War, chiefly by women, to organize burials of Confederate soldiers, establish and care for permanent cemeteries, organize commemorative ceremonies, and sponsor impressive monuments as a permanent way of remembering the Confederate cause and tradition.{{sfn|Mills|Simpson|2003|p={{page needed|date=June 2020}}}}

File:Dr Stephen Carney 02 - Confederate Memorial Day - Arlington National Cemetery - 2014.jpg, Arlington National Cemetery, on June 8, 2014]] The organization was "strikingly successful at raising money to build monuments, lobbying legislatures and Congress for the reburial of Confederate dead, and working to shape the content of history textbooks."{{sfn|Faust|2008|pp=237–247}} They also raised money to care for the widows and children of the Confederate dead. Most of these memorial associations gradually merged into the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which grew from 17,000 total members in 1900 to nearly 100,000 by World War I.{{sfn|Blight|2001|pp=272–273}}

===Monuments, memorials, and charity===

{{main|List of monuments erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy}}

The UDC was influential primarily in the early twentieth century across the South, where its primary role was to preserve, uphold and romanticize the memory of the Confederate veterans, especially those husbands, sons, fathers and brothers who died in the Civil War. Memory and memorials became the central focus of the organization.{{sfn|Mills|Simpson|2003}}{{cite thesis |last1=Boccardi |first1=Megan B. |title=Remembering in black and white: Missouri women's memorial work 1860–1910 |date=2011 |hdl=10355/14392 |doi=10.32469/10355/14392 |doi-access=free }}

Historian Jacquelyn Dowd Hall notes that the UDC had a particular interest in the position of Southern (Confederate) women, with "a commitment to bolstering vanquished and disheartened veterans and keeping the memory of the dead alive. But it was also committed to immortalizing the heroism of Confederate women, whose valor, its leaders believed, had been every bit as important as men's." The UDC's methods were wide-ranging and ahead of their times:

UDC leaders were determined to assert women's cultural authority over virtually every representation of the region's past. This they did by lobbying for state archives and museums, national historic sites, and historic highways; compiling genealogies; interviewing former soldiers; writing history textbooks; and erecting monuments, which now moved triumphantly from cemeteries into town centers. More than half a century before women's history and public history emerged as fields of inquiry and action, the UDC, with other women's associations, strove to etch women's accomplishments into the historical record and to take history to the people, from the nursery and the fireside to the schoolhouse and the public square.{{cite journal |last1=Hall |first1=Jacquelyn Dowd |author-link=Jacquelyn Dowd Hall |title='You Must Remember This': Autobiography as Social Critique |journal=The Journal of American History |date=September 1998 |volume=85 |issue=2 |pages=439–465 |jstor=2567747 |doi=10.2307/2567747 }}

"The number of women's clubs devoted to filiopietism and history was staggering," says historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage, noting that women were much more likely to be involved in a variety of (historical) organizations than men, who devoted their energies to fraternal societies. Brundage notes that after women's suffrage came in 1920, the historical role of the women's organizations eroded.{{cite book |last1=Brundage |first1=W. Fitzhugh |chapter=White Women and the Politics of Historical Memory in the New South, 1880–1920 |pages=115–139 |chapter-url={{Google books|yFvjsEYP7hAC|page=115|plainurl=yes}} |editor1-last=Dailey |editor1-first=Jane |editor2-last=Gilmore |editor2-first=Glenda Elizabeth |editor3-last=Simon |editor3-first=Bryant |title=Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights |date=2000 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0691001937 }}

After 1900, the UDC became an umbrella organization that coordinated local memorial groups.{{sfn|Janney|2012|p={{page needed|date=June 2020}}}} The UDC women specialized in sponsoring local memorials. After 1945, they were active in placing historical markers along Southern highways.{{sfn|Gulley|1993|p={{page needed|date=June 2020}}}} The UDC has also been active in national causes during wartime. According to the organization, during World War I, it funded 70 hospital beds at the American Military Hospital on the Western front and contributed over US$82,000 for French and Belgian war orphans. The homefront campaign raised $24 million for war bonds and savings stamps. Members also donated $800,000 to the Red Cross. During World War II, they gave financial aid to student nurses.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}}

In 1933 the Tennessee branch of UDC donated $50,000 for the construction of a Confederate memorial hall on the campus of the George Peabody College for Teachers which merged with Vanderbilt University in 1979.{{cite news|last1=Tamburin|first1=Adam|title=Vanderbilt to remove 'Confederate' from building name|url=http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2016/08/15/vanderbilt-remove-confederate-building-name/88771680/|access-date=August 15, 2016|work=The Tennessean|date=August 15, 2016|quote=Anonymous donors recently gave the university the $1.2 million needed for that purpose; the Vanderbilt Board of Trust authorized the move this summer.}}{{cite news|last1=Koren|first1=Marina|title=The College Dorm and the Confederacy|url=https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2016/08/vanderbilt-confederate-hall/495941/|access-date=August 15, 2016|work=The Atlantic|date=August 15, 2016|quote=Vanderbilt will return $1.2 million to the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the present value of the $50,000 the group donated to the school in 1933 for the construction of the dorm. ... The school said the $1.2 million payment will come from anonymous donors who gave specifically for the removal of the inscription.}} A university effort to remove the inscription "Confederate" from the building, resisted by the UDC, led to a 2005 Tennessee appeals court ruling that the inscription could be removed only if the UDC donation was returned at present value. In 2016 an anonymous source donated $1.2 million to the university specifically for that purpose, and the inscription was removed.

The UDC encouraged women to publish their experiences in the war, beginning with biographies of major southern figures, such as Varina Davis's of her husband Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy. Later, women began adding more of their own experiences to the "public discourse about the war," in the form of memoirs, such as those published in the early 1900s by Sara Pryor, Virginia Clopton, Louise Wright and others. They also recommended structures for the memoirs. By the turn of the twentieth century, a dozen memoirs by southern women were published. These memoirs were part of the growing public memory about the antebellum years and the Lost Cause narrative, which critics have described as white supremacist, as they vigorously defended the Confederacy and its founding principles (which included the enslavement of African Americans).{{sfn|Blight|2001|p=259}}{{sfn|Gardner|2006|pp=128–130}}

=== Southern Cross of Honor ===

{{Main|Southern Cross of Honor}}

{{multiple image

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The Southern Cross of Honor was a commemorative medal established by the United Daughters of the Confederacy for members of the United Confederate Veterans. It was proposed at a meeting in 1898, with 78,761 crosses issued by 1913.{{cite book|title=North Carolina Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=466tLkmCwBQC|pages=93|last=Butler|first=Douglas J.|publisher=McFarland|date=2013|isbn=978-1476603377}}{{cite book|title=Georgia's Landmarks, Memorials, and Legends: Volume 1, Part 1|last=Knight|first=Lucien|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wGIA63XGjF8C|publisher=Pelican Publishing|date=2006|pages=222–223|isbn=978-1455604814}} The medal was never authorized to be worn on the United States Army, Navy, or Marine Corps uniform.{{cite book|last=Tucker|first=Spencer C.|title=American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection [6 volumes]: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9dvYAQAAQBAJ&pg=PA2202|date=30 September 2013|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1851096824|page=2202}}

During the first decades of their existence, the UDC focused on caring for Confederate soldiers and their widows. When the numbers of Confederate veterans began to dwindle, they focused on their remaining objectives.  Education of the descendants of those who served the Confederacy became one of the key interests of the organization.{{sfn|Cox|2003|pp=73–74}} Some state divisions within the UDC built dormitories and sponsored scholarships, but there was no coordinated support for education by the national organization.  The divisions were responsible for scholarships and building dormitories for women.  At the 1907 General Convention, Caroline Meriwether Goodlett spoke of the shift in the UDC's focus.  As monuments were erected, she "sat by ... thinking that the monument fever would abate." She believed that "the most thoughtful and best educated women" in the organization should have realized that the "grandest monument (they) could build in the South would be an educated motherhood."{{sfn|Cox|2003|p=90}}

The UDC combined education with support of the military during World War II by establishing a nurses' training fund. Each scholarship provided approximately $100 per year for a three-year nursing program.  When a scholarship was offered, local Chapters were encouraged to contact local schools to locate students who needed assistance to fund their education.{{cite journal |title=News about Nursing |journal=The American Journal of Nursing |date=1942 |volume=42 |issue=7 |pages=820–844 |jstor=3415840 }}

In addition, the UDC sponsors essay and poetry compositions, in which the participants are not to use the phrase "Civil War," "War Between the States" being the preferred term.{{cite journal |last1=Woodruff |first1=Juliette |title=The Last of the Southern Belles |journal=Studies in Popular Culture |date=1985 |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=63–70 |jstor=23412915 }}

The Children of the Confederacy, also known as the CofC, is an auxiliary organization to the UDC. The official name is Children of the Confederacy of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It comprises children from birth through the time of the Children of the Confederacy Annual General Convention following their 18th birthday. UDC chapters sponsor all Children of the Confederacy chapters.{{Cite book |author= |title=The History of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Volume I and II: 1894–1955 |location=Raleigh, N.C. |publisher=United Daughters of the Confederacy |date=1956 |lccn=94135238|pages=181–189 |oclc=1386401 |via=Edwards & Broughton Company}} Children are taught Lyon Gardiner Tyler's "Catechism on the History of the Confederate States of America, 1861–1865," which says that Northerners did away with slavery because the climate was unsuitable, that they had no intention of ever paying the South for its slaves after abolition, that slaves in the South were faithful to their owners, who were caring and gentle people: cruel slave owners existed only in the North.

Before 2015, the "Creed" of the CofC read:

{{Blockquote | Because we desire to perpetuate, in love and honor, the heroic deeds of those who enlisted in the Confederate Services and upheld its flag through four years of war, we, the children of the South, have united in an Organization called the "Children of the Confederacy," in which our strength, enthusiasm and love of justice can exert its influence. We therefore pledge ourselves to preserve pure ideals, to honor the memory of our beloved Veterans, to study and teach the truths of history (one of the most important of which is that the War Between the States was not a rebellion, nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery), and always to act in a manner that will reflect honor upon our noble and patriotic ancestors.}}

The phrase "nor was its underlying cause to sustain slavery" was deleted by the UDC General Convention of 2015.{{cite news

|first=Laura

|last=Conner

|title=Director General's Message

|magazine=The Courier

|issue=2

|date=2015–2016

|url=https://hqudc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CofC-Courier-Winter-2016.pdf

|access-date=October 22, 2019

|archive-date=October 22, 2019

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191022142146/https://hqudc.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/CofC-Courier-Winter-2016.pdf

|url-status=dead

}}

{{main|George Floyd protests|George Floyd protests in Richmond, Virginia}}

During the early morning hours of May 31, 2020, the Memorial to the Women of the Confederacy headquarters building in Richmond was vandalized with graffiti and set ablaze during a chain of protests across the city in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.{{cite web |last1=Vogelsong |first1=Sarah |last2=Oliver |first2=Ned |title=Confederate memorial hall burned as second night of outrage erupts in Virginia |url=https://www.nbc12.com/2020/05/31/confederate-memorial-hall-burned-second-night-outrage-erupts-virginia/ |website=WWBT |access-date=June 2, 2020 |date=May 31, 2020}} The Richmond Fire Department extinguished the fire using nine fire trucks.{{Cite web|url=https://www.richmond.com/news/local/updated-daughters-of-confederacy-headquarters-on-fire-2-capitol-police-officers-injured-as-violence-erupts/article_a2299cb2-367a-5f13-a107-97a4ca8a1f68.html|title= Daughters of Confederacy headquarters on fire, 2 Capitol Police officers injured as violence erupts during second night of protesting in Richmond|first=Sabrina |last=Moreno |website=Richmond Times-Dispatch|date= May 31, 2020|access-date=June 7, 2020}} The President-General of the UDC reported that the building's windows had been broken and fire was set to the curtains hanging in the building's Caroline Meriwether Goodlett Library.{{cite web |url=https://www.facebook.com/ConfederateBroadcasting/posts/1310136835842592?__tn__=K-R |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/iarchive/facebook/406548326201452/1310136835842592 |archive-date=2022-02-26 |url-access=limited|title=Latest update |last=Confederate Broadcasting |date=May 31, 2020 |website=Facebook |access-date=June 3, 2020}}{{cbignore}} The fire was largely contained to the library, but there was extensive smoke and water damage throughout the building and charring on the building's Georgia marble façade.{{cite web |url=https://hqudc.org/memorial-building-2/ |title=Memorial Building |last=United Daughters of the Confederacy |publisher=United Daughters of the Confederacy |access-date=June 3, 2020}} Staff reported that all the books in the building's library had incurred some damage and that library shelving had been destroyed.

{{See also|Lost Cause of the Confederacy|Neo-Confederate}}

Meredith College history professor and former Children of the Confederacy member Daniel L. Fountain states that organizations like the UDC have deeply "implanted the Lost Cause's falsified version of history" in the South. "Rallying behind powerful women such as Mildred Lewis Rutherford, the UDC relentlessly lobbied legislatures for public school textbooks that presented a pro-Confederate version of regional history and successfully blacklisted" other books. "By targeting the region's middle- to upper-class children, they ensured an army of future teachers and leaders would carry forward and defend their message for decades to come. Embedding their version of Confederate history into the sacred spaces of Southern society (the home, cemeteries, churches, city squares, street names, colleges and schools) made erasing it physically difficult and personally painful."{{cite news

|title=Why young Southerners still get indoctrinated in the Lost Cause

|first=Daniel L.

|last=Fountain

|date=May 16, 2019

|newspaper=Washington Post

|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/16/why-young-southerners-still-get-indoctrinated-lost-cause/}}

During the period 1880–1910, the UDC was one of many groups that celebrated Lost Cause mythology and presented "a romanticized view of the slavery era" in the United States. The UDC promoted white Southern solidarity, allowing white Southerners to refer to a mythical past in order to legitimize racial segregation and white supremacy.{{sfn|Janney|2012|pp=12–13, 139}} The UDC worked to "define southern identity around images from an Old South that portrayed slavery as benign and slaves as happy and a Reconstruction that portrayed blacks as savage and immoral."{{cite journal

|last1=Johnson

|first1=Joan Marie

|title='Drill into us... the Rebel Tradition': The Contest over Southern Identity in Black and White Women's Clubs, South Carolina, 1898–1930

|journal=The Journal of Southern History

|date=2000

|volume=66

|issue=3

|pages=525–562

|jstor=2587867

|doi=10.2307/2587867 }} In 1919 their lost cause narrative was codified in Mildred Rutherford's Measuring Rod to Test Text Books and Reference Books,{{Cite book

|title=A Measuring Rod to Test Text Books and Reference Books

|last=Rutherford

|first=Mildred

|author-link=Mildred Lewis Rutherford

|date=1920

|url=https://archive.org/details/measuringrodtot00ruth/mode/2up |access-date=2020-02-26}} which the UDC endorsed and successfully used in debates over history textbooks across the South.{{Cite web|url=https://www.facingsouth.org/2019/04/twisted-sources-how-confederate-propaganda-ended-souths-schoolbooks|title=Twisted Sources: How Confederate propaganda ended up in the South's schoolbooks |last=Huffman|first=Greg|date=2019-04-10|website=Facing South|access-date=2020-01-26}}{{cite encyclopedia |last=Elder |first=Angela Esco |article=United Daughters of the Confederacy |encyclopedia=New Georgia Encyclopedia |orig-date=January 23, 2010 |date=February 8, 2022 |article-url=https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/united-daughters-of-the-confederacy/}} More recently, historian James M. McPherson has said that the UDC promotes a white supremacist and neo-Confederate agenda:

I think I agree a hundred percent with Ed Sebesta, though, about the motives or the hidden agenda not too deeply hidden I think of such groups as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. They are dedicated to celebrating the Confederacy and rather thinly veiled support for white supremacy. And I think that also is the again not very deeply hidden agenda of the Confederate flag issue in several Southern states.{{cite episode| title = George W. Bush and the Confederacy: Where Does He Stand? | series= Democracy Now! | credits = Presenters: Amy Goodman interviewing Ed Sebestian and James M. McPherson | network = Pacifica Radio |url = https://www.democracynow.org/1999/11/3/george_w_bush_and_the_confederacy | air-date = 1999-11-03 | minutes = 42:36}}

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) considers the UDC as part of the Neo-Confederate movement, intrinsically white supremacist, that began in the early 1890s. The SPLC contends that the UDC promotes "a reactionary conservative ideology that has made inroads into the Republican Party from the political right, and overlaps with the views of white nationalists and other more radical extremist groups."{{cite web

|title=The Neo-Confederates

|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2000/neo-confederates

|publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center

|date=September 15, 2000}}{{cite news

|last1=Hague

|first1=Euan

|title=The Neo-Confederate Movement

|url=https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2010/01/25/neo-confederate-movement

|publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center

|date=January 26, 2010}} In August 2018, its website still stated that "Slaves, for the most part, were faithful and devoted. Most slaves were usually ready and willing to serve their masters."{{cite news |last1=Breed |first1=Allen G. |title='The lost cause': the women's group fighting for Confederate monuments |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/10/united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-statues-lawsuit |work=The Guardian |agency=Associated Press |date=10 August 2018}}

According to lawyer Greg Huffman, writing in Facing South, "perhaps nothing illuminates the UDC's true nature more than its relationship with the Ku Klux Klan. Many commentators have said the UDC simply supported the Klan. That is not true. The UDC during Jim Crow venerated the Klan and elevated it to a nearly mythical status. It dealt in and preserved Klan artifacts and symbology. It even served as a sort of public relations agency for the terrorist group." At its 1913 annual national convention, the UDC unanimously endorsed The Ku Klux Klan, or The Invisible Empire,{{Cite book|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo1.ark:/13960/t9x06pj87&view=2up&seq=8|title=The Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire|last=Rose|first=Laura Martin|publisher=L. Graham Co., Ltd.|year=1914|isbn=978-1333658205|location=New Orleans, Louisiana}}{{page needed|date=June 2020}} a book written by UDC historian Laura Martin Rose, then president of the UDC's Mississippi Division, which alleged that the Klan had rescued the South from carpetbagger-inspired racial violence.{{Cite web|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/laura-martin-rose/|title=Laura Martin Rose (1862–1917) Author|last=Lowery|first=J. Vincent|website=Mississippi Encyclopedia}} Published near the height of the UDC's Confederate statue-installation and textbook-vetting efforts, the book became a supplementary reader for Southern school children.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N30VAQAAMAAJ&q=minutes+of+the+twentieth+annual+convention+united+daughters+of+the+confederacy&pg=PA5|title=Minutes on the Twentieth Annual Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy|publisher=Edwards and Broughton Printing Company|year=1914|location=Raleigh, North Carolina|pages=39}}{{sfn|Cox|2003|pp=[https://archive.org/details/dixiesdaughtersu00coxk/page/n126 106]–110}} A local chapter of the UDC funded a now-vanished memorial to the Klan erected in 1926 near Concord, North Carolina.{{cite book |title=North Carolina's Confederate Monuments and Memorials |first=Blanche Lucas |last=Smith |year=1941 |publisher=North Carolina Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy|page=35}} As late as 1936, the UDC's official publication featured an article which lauded the role of the Ku Klux Klan.{{Cite journal|last=Cook|first=Walter Henry|date=July 1936|title=Secret Political Societies in the South During the Period of Reconstruction|url=https://jeffreydavidburgess.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-defend-KKK-1936.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190816200138/https://jeffreydavidburgess.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-defend-KKK-1936.pdf|url-status=dead|archive-date=August 16, 2019|journal=The Southern Magazine|volume=III|pages=3–5, 42–43}}

{{main|List of United Daughters of the Confederacy members}}

Since its founding, many notable women have been members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy including civic leaders, politicians, and society figures. Early members often came from prominent southern families and were noted socialites of their day, including Virginia Clay-Clopton, Jeannie Blackburn Moran, and Sarah Ewing Sims Carter Gaut.{{Cite web |title=Journal of Clan Ewing |url=https://occgs.com/projects/rescue/family_files/files/EWING%20Family.pdf}}Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, pp. 237-247 Throughout the Jim Crow era, many of these members were outspoken white supremacists and proponents of racial segregation in the United States, such as Mary Hilliard Hinton, Florence Sillers Ogden, Mildred Lewis Rutherford, and Laura Martin Rose.{{Cite web|url=https://mississippiencyclopedia.org/entries/florence-sillers-ogden/|title=Ogden, Florence Sillers|website=Mississippi Encyclopedia|last=Ziker|first=Ann|publisher= Center for Study of Southern Culture|date= July 11, 2017|access-date=June 22, 2020}}{{cite web|url=https://files.nc.gov/dncr-moh/antisuffrage.pdf|title=Mary Hilliard Hinton and the antisuffragists|author=Elna Green|website=Files.nc.gov|access-date=3 February 2022}} Some members, such as Edith D. Pope, went so far as to call for repatriation of African-American United States citizens to Africa.{{sfn|Simpson|2003|pp=1–2; 23; 29–31; 45; 63}}{{cite web|last1=Simpson|first1=John A.|title=Edith Drake Pope |url=https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entry.php?rec=1072|website=The Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture|publisher=Tennessee Historical Society and the University of Tennessee Press|access-date=September 24, 2017}} Members of the UDC were historically active in politics. Loula Roberts Platt was the first woman to run for a seat in the North Carolina Senate, Vernettie O. Ivy sat in the Arizona House of Representatives, Gertrude Dills McKee sat in the North Carolina Senate, and Emma Guy Cromwell served as the Secretary of State and State Treasurer of Kentucky. Others had important public state roles, including Rosa Lee Tucker, the State Librarian of Mississippi, and Fanny Yarborough Bickett, Margaret Gardner Hoey, Fay Webb-Gardner, and Mary Woodson Jarvis, who all served as first ladies of North Carolina.{{Cite web|url=https://www.ncpedia.org/hoey-margaret-elizabeth-gardner|title = Hoey, Margaret Elizabeth Gardner | NCpedia}} By the 21st-century, UDC membership opened up to African-American women, including Mattie Clyburn Rice and Georgia Benton.{{Cite web |last=Jones |first=Jessica |date=August 7, 2011 |title=After Years Of Research, Confederate Daughter Arises |url=https://www.npr.org/2011/08/07/138587202/after-years-of-research-confederate-daughter-arises |access-date=2023-05-04 |website=NPR}}{{cite news |last= Mobley|first= Chuck|date= February 22, 2014|title= African-American Savannah woman takes her place among United Daughters of the Confederacy|url= https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2014/02/23/african-american-savanah-woman-takes-her-place-among-united-daughters-confederacy/13536428007/|work= Savannah Morning News|location= Savannah, Georgia|access-date= May 3, 2023}}

==See also==

• List of monuments erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
• List of women's organizations
• Southern Dames of America
• Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War, 1861–1865
• National Society Daughters of the Union 1861-1865

{{Reflist|30em}}

{{Div col|colwidth=30em}}

• {{cite book |last=Blight |first=David |date=2001 |title=Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory |url=https://archive.org/details/racereunion00davi |url-access=registration |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |publisher=Harvard University Press}}
• {{Cite book|last=Cox|first=Karen L.|title=Dixie's daughters: the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the preservation of Confederate culture|year=2003|isbn=978-0813064130 |publisher=University Press of Florida |location=Gainesville|url=https://archive.org/details/dixiesdaughtersu00coxk |url-access=registration}}
• {{cite book |last1=DuRocher |first1=Kristina |year=2011|title=Raising racists: the socialization of white children in the Jim Crow South |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=978-0813130019}}
• {{cite book |last=Faust |first=Drew |date=2008 |title=This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War |url=https://archive.org/details/thisrepublicofsu00faus_0 |url-access=registration |location=New York |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf|isbn=978-0375404047 }}
• {{cite book |last=Gardner |first=Sarah |date=2006 |title=Blood And Irony: Southern White Women's Narratives of the Civil War, 1861–1937 |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0807857670}}
• {{cite journal |last1=Gulley |first1=H. E. |title=Women and the Lost Cause: Preserving A Confederate Identity in the American Deep South |journal=Journal of Historical Geography |date=1993 |volume=19 |issue=2 |pages=125–141|doi=10.1006/jhge.1993.1009 }}
• {{cite book |last1=Janney |first1=Caroline E. |title=Burying the dead but not the past: Ladies' Memorial Associations and the lost cause |date=2012 |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |isbn=978-0807831762}}
• {{cite book|last1=Simpson|first1=John A.|title=Edith D. Pope and Her Nashville Friends: Guardians of the Lost Cause in the Confederate Veteran|date=2003|publisher=University of Tennessee Press|location=Knoxville|isbn=978-1572332119|oclc=428118511|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Dwh0dEOFS8C&q=9781572332119&pg=PA75}}
• {{cite book |last1=Towns |first1=W. Stuart |title=Enduring Legacy: Rhetoric and Ritual of the Lost Cause |date=2012 |publisher=University of Alabama Press |isbn=978-0817317522 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-x2-R9A3ePMC&pg=PR15 |language=en}}
• {{cite book|editor-last1=Mills |editor-first1=Cynthia|editor-last2=Simpson|editor-first2=Pamela Hemenway|title=Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscapes of Southern Memory|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sFzzUvCTkpkC|year=2003|publisher=Univ. of Tennessee Press|isbn=978-1572332720}}
• {{Cite book |author= |title=Minutes of the Fifty-first Annual Convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Incorporated, Held at Nashville, Tennessee, November 21–24, 1944}}

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• {{cite book|last1=Poppenheim|first1=Mary B.|title=The History of the United daughters of the Confederacy|date=1956|publisher= Edwards & Broughton Co.|location=Raleigh, North Carolina|oclc=1572673}}
• {{Cite book |author= |title=The History of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Volume III: 1956–1986 |date=1988 |location=Raleigh, NC |publisher=United Daughters of the Confederacy |via=Edwards & Broughton Company}}
• Foster, Gaines M. (1987). Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Parrott, Angie (1991). "'Love Makes Memory Eternal': The United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, 1897–1920," in Edward Ayers and John C. Willis, eds. The Edge of the South: Life in Nineteenth-Century Virginia, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
• {{cite book |last=Rutherford |first=Mildred Lewis |date=1916 |title=What the South May Claim |url=https://archive.org/details/whatsouthmayclai00ruth |location=Athens, Georgia |publisher=M'Gregor Co.}}
• {{cite thesis|last1=Codieck|first1=Barrett |title=Keepers of History, Shapers of Memory: The Florida Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1895–1930 |date=2012 |url=http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-4772 }}
• {{Cite book|last=Cox|first=Karen L.|title=Dixie's daughters: the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the preservation of Confederate culture|year= 2019|isbn=978-0813064130|edition=|publisher=University Press of Florida |location=Gainesville, Florida |oclc=1054372624}}
• {{cite news |title='The lost cause': the women's group fighting for Confederate monuments |newspaper=The Guardian |first=Allen G. |last=Breed |date=August 10, 2018 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/10/united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-statues-lawsuit}}
• {{cite news

|title=7 things the United Daughters of the Confederacy might not want you to know about them

|first=Kari

|last=Holloway

|date=October 5, 2018

|magazine=Salon

|url=https://www.salon.com/2018/10/06/7-things-the-united-daughters-of-the-confederacy-might-not-want-you-to-know-about-them_partner/}}

• {{cite news

|title=Time to Expose the Women Still Celebrating the Confederacy

|quote=Their name is on all their monuments, but maybe because those plaques are rusty and faded people don't realize the UDC is still a functioning organization.

|first=Kali

|last=Holloway

|date=November 2, 2018

|newspaper=Daily Beast

|url=https://www.thedailybeast.com/time-to-expose-the-women-still-celebrating-the-confederacy}}

• {{cite thesis |last1=King |first1=Earl |title=Lost Cause Textbooks: Civil War Education in the South from the 1890s to the 1920s |date=1 January 2018 |url=https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/275/ }}
• {{cite journal |last1=Bailey |first1=Fred Arthur |title=The Textbooks of the 'Lost Cause': Censorship and the Creation of Southern State Histories |journal=The Georgia Historical Quarterly |date=1991 |volume=75 |issue=3 |pages=507–533 |jstor=40582363 }}

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== External links ==

{{commons category}}

; Official

• {{Official website}}

; General information

• {{ProPublicaNonprofitExplorer|540631483}}
• [https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=15O4IHHl41rWpIhax6z_ak238mh4eFqpQ&ll=38.74846353200162%2C-104.15096044652044&z=6 Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy], map by SPLC, showing places dedicated to the memorial of Confederates
• [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=udcconv Minutes of the Annual Convention] at The Online Books Page
• [http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy United Daughters of the Confederacy] at Encyclopedia Virginia
• [http://politicalgraveyard.com/group/un-dtrs-confederacy.html United Daughters of the Confederacy politicians] at The Political Graveyard
• {{Internet Archive author|name=United Daughters of the Confederacy}}

{{portalbar|American Civil War|Society|United States}}

{{Woman's club movement}}{{Falsification of history}}{{Authority control}}

Category:501(c)(3) organizations

Category:1894 establishments in Tennessee

Category:Aftermath of the American Civil War

Category:American Civil War veterans and descendants organizations

Category:Heritage organizations

Category:History of Nashville, Tennessee

Category:History of women in the United States

Category:Lobbying organizations in the United States

Category:Neo-Confederate organizations

Category:Magazine publishing companies of the United States

Category:Nonpartisan organizations in the United States

Category:Non-profit organizations based in Richmond, Virginia

Category:Organizations established in 1894

Category:Stone Mountain

Category:Women's organizations based in the United States