[VAcourier] Lexington debates MOCs benefits

Wed Mar 28 23:32:49 EDT 2007

Lexington City officials continue to defame the Confederacy and its 
embattled emblems.  Lee the soldier takes another hit.  Suffolk is 
reportedly offering the MOC $50 million to relocate there if a name 
change occurred and that is a city which had a black mayor declare 
Confederate History Month just a couple years ago and a mayor was 
recently unseated by an SCV member after refusing to follow suit.  
Appomattox is reportedly offering another mult-million dollar incentive 
package with no strings attached (fly your flags and keep your name 
Appomattox loves it all).  Other localities have made offers, but the 
details are not available at this time.  Lexington's attitude is very 
poisonous for the future of the MOC unless this rhetoric comes to a 
stop, however that is not likely to happen thanks to people like Mimi Elrod.

The Roanoke Times
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/110346
March 26, 2007

  City debates museum benefits

    Some Lexington residents don't want a museum that focuses on the
    Confederacy.

Jay Conley

Since an announcement in January that Lexington is being considered as 
the new location for the Museum of the Confederacy, now in Richmond, 
there have been questions in the small city over whether the museum's 
arrival would be positive or profitable for the community.

Landlocked by Virginia Commonwealth University's medical campus and in 
need of larger quarters, the museum is looking for a new home in time 
for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in 2011.

Lexington is among about 10 localities that plan to submit proposals to 
the museum by April 15 in an effort to attract the facility and the 
tourism dollars that come with it. Museum officials won't say where the 
other sites are, but revealed about half of the localities are near 
Civil War battlefield sites.

Waite Rawls, the museum's director, said there's much that the museum 
and Lexington have to offer each other.

"It is a tremendous opportunity to Lexington," Rawls said. "We are the 
most important Civil War collection that exists in the world."

The museum's educational and research programs could match up well with 
Virginia Military Institute and nearby Washington and Lee University. 
Lexington also has the Lee Chapel and Museum, where Robert E. Lee is 
buried, as well as the Stonewall Jackson House, where Jackson lived 
while he was a professor at VMI before the war. Jackson is also buried 
in Lexington.

The Rockbridge County Board of Supervisors and Lexington City Council 
are considering a proposal to locate the museum in the old Rockbridge 
County Courthouse complex on Main Street.

Rawls said the museum drew 50,000 visitors last year and generated close 
to a half-million in sales tax revenue.

"The numbers show history tourists shop till they drop," Rawls said.

Lexington, in turn, has a pedestrian-friendly downtown and will have 
plenty of parking when the new Rockbridge County Courthouse and its 
parking garage are completed in two years.

"This is, at its heart, an economic development opportunity," said Brian 
Shaw, chairman of the Rockbridge Area Tourism Board and executive vice 
president of the George C. Marshall Foundation in Lexington.

Rawls said the museum's primary appeal is to retired baby boomers, the 
same target audience that is already attracted to the Lexington area.

"The demographic profile of their visitor fits the demographic profile 
of the Lexington visitor," said Shaw, who said the additional tourist 
traffic from the museum could bring a million dollars annually in total 
tax revenue to the area.

At least one Lexington official isn't convinced the museum would be a 
success there.

"I'm not sure it's going to be as income-producing for our citizens as 
people think it is," said Lexington City Council member Mimi Elrod, who 
voted against the city submitting a proposal to attract the museum. "I 
have real questions about the numbers."

Elrod is among those who view the museum's focus on the Confederacy, 
which fought to preserve slavery, to be as divisive now as it was during 
the Civil War.

"My concern with the Museum of the Confederacy is it is celebrating a 
cause that was established to maintain the enslavement of people," she 
said. "I don't want to celebrate the Confederacy."

Elrod said the museum would be more acceptable if it were a Civil War 
museum that represented both sides of the war.

She had hoped that the museum's mission would be broader when Rawls said 
recently that museum officials were considering changing the museum's 
name to remove the word Confederacy.

Rawls said people have misinterpreted his statements.

"We've tried our best to tell people ... that speculation about a name 
change is exactly that. We're not considering a name change until we can 
determine where our future location is," he said, adding, "There's no 
fundamental change in the mission being contemplated at all."

Rawls said controversial topics such as slavery should be explored from 
an educational standpoint in order to truly understand them.

"It's therefore vital that our educational mission be emphasized," he 
said. "I think we do a very good job of making people understand better 
the causes of the war, the aftermath of the war, how it was conducted, 
who fought it, what they believed in at the time."

Elrod also objects to the museum's intent to fly the Confederate flag 
over its building if it were to relocate in downtown Lexington.

"If you're flying the Confederate flag, you're celebrating the 
Confederacy, and I don't think we need to do that in Lexington," she said.

Shaw said any Confederate flag that would be flown wouldn't be the 
battle flag that's most associated with the Confederacy, but rather a 
Confederate state flag.

"That's an important distinction," he said. "I would not want to see a 
Confederate battle flag out on Main Street. That's not what it's going 
to be."

Ted DeLaney, a history professor at Washington and Lee University and a 
Lexington native who is black, said such a prominent display of the 
Confederacy at the museum would create division in the community.

"Even during the days when Lexington was a segregated community ... 
Lexington was a civil place," he said. "I don't see anything that is 
positive in the museum relocating to a community like this. The tenor of 
the debate so far indicates to me that there is great potential for a 
lack of civility."

A poll taken by a Lexington-area newspaper showed 80 percent of 
respondents in favor of the museum, and Elrod said she has received 
about 90 negative e-mails attacking her stance since she first began 
speaking out against the museum.

DeLaney, too, said he was criticized for his comments against the museum 
at a tourism board meeting last week.

At Washington and Lee, where just more than 4 percent of the student 
population is black, it's unclear if the school's minority recruiting 
efforts would be hampered by the museum.

"I think it is fair to say that the Museum of the Confederacy would not 
be a net plus for the recruitment of African-American students to 
Washington and Lee," W&L President Ken Ruscio said in an e-mail. 
"Whether it would actually be a detriment depends on several factors, 
including the identity, mission and even the very name it ultimately 
adopts if it moves to Lexington."

Ruscio said the school honors Lee the educator, not the soldier.

Ultimately, the discussion in Lexington may be much ado about nothing.

Rawls said the museum's board of directors would like for it to remain 
in Richmond, which was the capital of the Confederacy during the war.

"Our feeling all along is that we have a preference for Richmond," he 
said. "We've been here for 117 years and we kind of like it."

But proposals from localities such as Lexington that present an 
appealing financial incentive package will be seriously considered, 
Rawls said.

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