A Contested Past: Alabama's Centennial Commemoration of the Civil War

By Kris Teters, University of Alabama and CCWRT

Presentation to CCWRT on 18 February 2010, Summarized by Mike Rhein

Photography by Shane Gamble

©Cincinnati CWRT, 2010

In 1962 my parents and this writer toured the Civil War Centennial Center in Richmond, Virginia. As a 13-year-old who had begun his passionate study of our American Civil War since the late 1950s, he was enthralled by the Centennial Center with its displays, his interest being stoked to an even higher pitch. As an aside, in October of that year, he was privileged to hear a speech at the University of Cincinnati by one of the finest Civil War writers this country has produced: Bruce Catton.

With the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War approaching next year, the February presentation by former CCWRT president Kris Teters, a University of Alabama history doctoral candidate, was a timely one. The topic, “A Contested Past: Alabama’s Centennial Commemoration of the Civil War,” though specific to Alabama’s role in the “commemoration” of the War Between the States, broached the general question of perception(s) of our nation’s fratricidal period of 1861-1865. As in any historical period, including our own personal and familial pasts, the mists of memory can cloud our own perception of how things were, narrowing our mental filter as to how we as individuals and as a nation shape our significance of events.

Mr. Teters’ insightful view of the Centennial commemoration in Alabama, beginning in 1961, noted that the “racial aspect was ignored.” He emphasized that black soldiers and emancipation were not mentioned at all. The state’s celebration of its role in the Civil War was shrouded in “romantic rhetoric of white Alabamians,” as the speaker termed it. Mr. Teters stressed that Alabama wanted to “affirm superiority of their own whiteness.” African-Americans were, the speaker noted, “excluded from the Civil War celebration.” According to Mr. Teters, the Alabama Centennial Commission’s formation in 1959 and subsequent preparation culminated with a re-enactment of the inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in 1961 in Montgomery. Attorney T.B. Hill, Jr. reprised the Jefferson Davis inaugural address. At this point, the tone of Alabama’s view of its Civil War heritage became apparent within the 1960s background of America’s “Cold War” versus the Soviet Union, Mr. Kris Teters said, in regards to “North and South unite(ing) versus the Communists” and at the same time “leave out racial issues.”

The Alabama Centennial Commission, led by Governor John Patterson as chairman and university professor Albert B. Moore as executive director, perpetuated the “Lost Cause” mythology, Mr. Teters said, which was the “South’s rationalization for defeat,” and “deified” Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. He added that a key component of the “Lost Cause” was the emphasis on the “North’s resources and manpower as the reason for the South’s defeat.”

The speaker recounted the Feb. 12-18, 1861 Montgomery (Ala) Pageant at the Coliseum, the site of the Jefferson Davis inaugural re-enactment, accompanied by “church bells ringing.” He cited the city of Marion being festooned by Confederate flags and a Confederate ball held. Mr. Teters commented, “The Gone with the Wind version of the Civil War was evident.” In a 100-page book of centennial activities, “not one black was in it,” he added.

In response to the Alabama Centennial Commission’s exclusion of blacks from the commemoration, a black newspaper, the “Alabama Herald,” called for African Americans to conduct their own version of the Civil War Centennial with an emphasis on the “Emancipation Proclamation” issued by President Abraham Lincoln, Mr. Teters said, adding that the proclamation became the “key theme for blacks in the centennial,” thus, “blacks and whites held separate commemorations.” Professor Moore published pamphlets on the Civil War, Mr. Teters related, which “did not elevate slavery to the level of importance as a key factor for the war “and that “state’s rights was more important.”

Besides the “Cold War” issue, there was the national issue of the civil rights movement as the backdrop to the various southern states’ centennial observances. The speaker referred to the civil rights movement challenging segregation. In Mr. Teters’ view, the centennial’s “unification theme” encompassing the “valor of their Civil War ancestors, North and South,” was a response to the “Cold War” and civil rights movement “fears.” He stressed that the centennial was a “pageant for white America.”

In conclusion, this writer recites a statement by Dr. Bell I. Wiley, famed Southern scholar and author, regarding a classic Civil War novel, Gone with the Wind, that he used in his classes: “There’s a little too much of the moonlight-and-magnolia atmosphere…” In essence, Mr. Teters’ perceptive study of the Alabama centennial’s “Lost Cause” focus and its attendant “moonlight-and-magnolia” nostalgia reminds us about lessons to be learned from the 1961-65 centennial in helping our nation to develop a fuller picture of the Civil War for the upcoming sesquicentennial in an all-inclusive framework for blacks and whites.

This writer’s life-long passion for the Civil War period has never dimmed; his Richmond, Va. excursion in the midst of our nation’s centennial as a teenager was a rewarding experience. In looking back through that particular mist of time, here is the question: were his perceptions of the Civil War, to a small degree, subconsciously reinforced by Virginia’s presentation at its centennial center? Mr. Teters, in his thought-provoking presentation, raised pertinent points for discussion as we Ohioans approach our 2011 commencement of the Civil War Sesquicentennial.