| In many ways, Kirk Lyons is a typical patriotic American. He knows all the verses of "The Star Spangled Banner," even the obscure ones. He leads the color guard in the Fourth of July parade near his home in Black Mountain, N.C.
But on May 13, Lyons will display his allegiance to a different flag, as he dons the gray uniform of a Confederate soldier and joins other members of a local chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in celebrating the Southern troops who fought and died in the Civil War.
“These men were asked by their state to go die,” said Lyons, 49, whose great-great-grandfather fought as an infantryman in the Civil War. “And they did, so they should be honored.”
Lyons is among a small but dedicated cadre of Confederate loyalists who still pay tribute to Dixie. Many Southern locales have done away with Confederate flags and other symbols that honor the Confederacy. But at least 10 states, including Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky, continue to have a Confederate Memorial Day on their calendars.
Though many Americans see celebrations of the Confederacy as an endorsement of a culture built on slavery and racism, Lyons said the Confederate Day remembrance is based on pride, not prejudice.
Lyons laments the war, slavery and the legacy of racial intolerance in the South. But he believes it is not fair to his ancestors and Southern history to shun the Confederate soldiers. “There is no good reason not to remember these heroic dead,” he said.
“We have a special place in our hearts for the men that wore the gray,” Lyons said. “They deserve a particular ceremony honoring just them.”
Not everyone sees the Confederate Memorial Day celebrations in the same light. “I can find no good reason to memorialize terrorists,” said Dwight James, executive director of the NAACP's South Carolina State Conference.
“I think there's room for some tolerance in terms of individuals wanting to recognize their ancestry on a personal level,” James said, “but when it comes to the state taking an official stance, that's where we find difficulty in embracing the concept” of a Confederate Memorial Day.
Gaines Foster, a history professor at Louisiana State University, says celebrating the Confederate war dead can't be separated from support for slavery, racial discrimination and other legacies of the Confederacy itself. “It's tricky,” Foster said. “How do you recognize the sacrifice and what the people did without celebrating their cause?”
Most people, though, are simply unaware of the existence of the Confederate Memorial Day.
“It's not a holiday that has much of a public face,” said Josh Rothman, assistant professor of history at the University of Alabama. “The university is open, businesses are open, mail gets delivered. It's not like the whole place shuts down.”
Foster said he polled his students each year to find out how many knew what Confederate Memorial Day was and how many had celebrated the holiday. Only one student in 15 years of teaching had actually been to a Confederate Memorial Day celebration, Foster said.
“None of them know when it is,” Foster said.
That doesn't surprise Donald E. Collins, a professor emeritus of history at East Carolina University. “Confederate Memorial Day is becoming irrelevant,” Collins said. He explained that each generation beyond the Civil War becomes less and less devoted to history and symbols of the Confederacy.
The fading interest is accelerated by the growing demographic diversity in the South. “What's happening now is that as the South becomes more like the rest of the country,” Collins said, “such things as commemoration of the Confederacy will become a nonissue.”
By most accounts, Confederate Memorial Day actually predates the national Memorial Day celebration, which officially began in 1868. Historical accounts show that women in the South, perhaps even before the end of the Civil War, adorned the graves of Confederate soldiers with flowers and greenery.
There is little consensus on the date of celebration. Many states choose a day around April 26, the day in 1865 when Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston officially surrendered to the Union. A few states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day on June 3, the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Others mark the May anniversary of Davis' capture by Union troops.
Similarly, there is little commonality in how people celebrate the holiday. State governments are mostly closed. The University of Georgia library displays a rare copy of the Confederate constitution. Some decorate graves of Confederate soldiers, in keeping with the origins of the holiday.
Mostly, though, the day passes unnoticed.
Lyons said it wasn't apathy behind muted interest in Confederate Memorial Day, but fear. “There is so much ignorance and political correctness running though the South, and most politicians are too chicken to honor Confederate dead,” he said. “I think that a lot of the hype against every thing Confederate is really not helping the national fabric.”
However, Foster isn't surprised by the lack of interest. Confederate Memorial Day is so irrelevant that even those who oppose it are not “particularly offended” by it, he said. “It's hard to get upset about something hardly anyone knows anything about.”
E-mail: so2171@columbia.edu
© 2006 Columbia News Service |
Re-enactors dressed as Confederate soldiers march through a Civil War battlefield in Kinston, N.C. in March. (Courtesy of Donald E. Collins)
****Please note small file size: 272 pixels by 350 pixels*** Confederate flags line the gravestone of Civil War soldiers on Confederate Memorial Day at Elmwood Cemetery in Charlotte, N.C. (Courtesy of Kirk D. Lyons)
Confederate soldiers are saluted in Riverside Cemetery, Ashville, N.C., on Confederate Memorial Day. (John D. Ezell/Courtesy of John D. Ezell)
A member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans stands watch over a Civil War soldier's grave at Riverside Cemetery, Ashville, N.C., on Confederate Memorial Day. Many Southern states set aside a special day to commemorate the Confederate war dead, a practice that raises some complaints but mostly apathy from Southerners. (John D. Ezell |
