[VAcourier] South Carolina paper on MOC

[Virginia Division SCV Communication List]

 From Chaleston, SC
The Post and Courier

Confederacy museum considers move, name change

BY BRIAN HICKS
The Post and Courier

Once again, the Confederacy could be gone with the wind.

The Museum of the Confederacy - a 117-year-old repository of Civil War 
artifacts and papers - is considering a move out of Richmond, Va., and 
may even drop the word "Confederacy" from its title.

Some locals found this news from the capital of the Old South 
distressing, and deemed it an idea that would never even be considered 
in Charleston, where the war began.

"It's a disgrace to Richmond and the Museum of the Confederacy, and a 
disgrace to the memory of all those Confederate soldiers," said June 
Murray Wells, director of The Confederate Museum here and a former 
president general of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. "Any city 
that does not use that word in the name definitely should not have the 
museum."

The Museum of the Confederacy is now housed in downtown Richmond, a 
modern building next door to the Confederate White House where Jefferson 
Davis lived during most of the war. The facility is being squeezed out 
of town by the towering hospital buildings that now surround it.

Plans to move the old White House were abandoned, but S. Waite Rawls 
III, executive director of the museum, said the facility will almost 
certainly have to move. The collection could end up in Lexington, Va. 
Museum officials are in talks with city officials there, but some 
Lexington officials won't welcome any building with the word 
"Confederacy" on it.

Rawls said the museum is considering Lexington and some other sites. And 
he concedes that where the museum lands may determine its name.

"We would like to stay in Richmond. We've been here 117 years, but our 
responsibility is to the collection, not the city," Rawls said. "If we 
relocate to a battlefield, that might determine what our name is. The 
same with a university campus."

Although the idea of moving the museum, the largest collection of 
Confederate artifacts, out of the Old South capital, riles some people, 
they are even more upset at the prospects of making its name more 
politically correct.

A group of writers, historians and preservationists said last year said 
the word "Confederacy" is barely better than the battle flag. Their 
report said the word carried "negative intellectual baggage." The 
Confederacy and, by association, the museum "now symbolize racism."

Rawls said, however, the museum will not shun the word Confederacy. Its 
mission is to educate Americans about what happened, and that will 
continue. The name may change, he conceded, but not necessarily to 
something that would offend the museum's staunchest defenders.

"All these people have jumped to the conclusion that we're going P.C. on 
them, but we're not going to shun the Confederacy," Rawls said. "It 
could be something like the Center for Study of Confederate History. We 
haven't even started to consider this."

A move to Lexington would put the museum's collection in the same town 
where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson are buried. 
Still, most members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans believe the 
museum belongs in the old capital. And they believe changing the name is 
heresy, questioning what alternatives there could be. The Museum of the 
War of Northern Aggression? The Museum of Our Recent Unpleasantness?

"It's ridiculous, you've got a museum of Confederate artifacts. What 
else are you going to call it - the Southern Military Museum of 
1861-1865?" said Randy Burbage, the South Carolina division commander 
for the SCV. "For 100 years, the Confederacy stood for something great, 
and now it's become a bad word and we've got to change that."

Burbage and Wells both say the museum would be welcome here but ought to 
be in Virginia - as long as it's not at Appomattox.

David Slade and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Reach Brian Hicks at 937-5561 or bhicks at postandcourier.com 
<mailto:bhicks at postandcourier.com>


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