We need to talk about the burning of the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy last night in Richmond, VA. I was expecting the monuments to get hit, but the UDC building took me completely by surprise.

It shouldn't have. #CivilWarMemory #RVA

As many of you know the UDC was responsible for many of the Confederate monuments dedicated at the turn of the twentieth century. Their dedication has been understood as a reflection of the reemergence and maintenance of white supremacy during the Jim Crow era.

Popular explanations of the UDC's understanding of the war often reference the Lost Cause narrative. This is true enough, but the Lost Cause evolved over the course of the postwar period. The generation that fought the war eventually handed over...

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Lost_Cause_The 

...responsibility of memorializing the Confederate cause to a younger generation of white southerners. Enter the UDC.

In the immediate postwar period the Ladies Memorial Association focused their attention on commemorating the Confederate dead, but the UDC focused...

...on more public forms of commemorations and ways of controlling the historical narrative.

But what is often missed is that the ladies of the UDC came of age not during the war years, but during Reconstruction. They lived through military occupation and black political action.

Their memory of the war was filtered through the dark years of Reconstruction. The monuments they dedicated and the school books they published and reviewed for use for southern classrooms were intended to control how a younger generation remembered this period and...

...as rallying cry to ensure that it would never happen again. To get a sense of just how important Reconstruction was to the UDC consider their attempts to frame the Ku Klux Klan as heroes. In 1916 Annie Cooper Burton, who served as president of a UDC chapter in Los Angeles...

...published THE KU KLUX KLAN.

https://books.google.com/books?id=IS4KAAAAIAAJ&pg=PR6&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=3#v=onepage&q&f=false

In 1914 S.E.F. Rose pubished THE KU KLUX KLAN OR INVISIBLE EMPIRE. The book was dedicated to the "youth of the Southland, hoping that a perusal of its pages will inspire them with a respect and admiration for the Confederate soldiers, who were the real Ku Klux..."

In 1926 the UDC dedicated a monument/marker to the Ku Klux Klan outside the city of Concord, North Carolina. It's important to understand that the UDC did not distinguish between monuments/statues to Confederates and the Klan. https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/06/group-behind-confederate-monuments-also-built-memorial-klan

They UDC acknowledged that the work of the Klan was a continuation of the work of their Confederate ancestors. Of course, many members of the Klan were former Confederate soldiers. The war to protect white supremacy began in 1861 and continued well into the twentieth century.

It should come as no surprise that protesters targeted the UDC headquarters last night. But this history doesn't fully explain it.

As far as I can tell this is the first time in recent years that protesters have targeted both the monuments and the UDC building.

It is an unassuming building that sits between the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. I suspect that the recent dedication of the Kehinde Wiley statue on the grounds of the VMFA has something to do with it. https://www.vmfa.museum/about/rumors-of-war/

It was dedicated this past September and attracted a very large crowd. The UDC prevented visitors from watching the dedication from their property. I suspect that this may have served as an introduction to this particular site for many. Either way, the city of Richmond...

...is going to have some tough questions to work through now that the city has the right to remove Confederate monuments. On the eve of the five year anniversary of the Charleston shootings these monuments are now back in the spotlight.

Stay tuned.

Further Reading:

Kevin M. Levin, SEARCHING FOR BLACK CONFEDERATES
@SassyProf, DIXIE'S DAUGHTERS
@CarrieJanney, REMEMBERING THE CIVIL WAR
@AdamHDomby, THE FALSE CAUSE
@EthanKytle @BlainRoberts1 DENMARK VESEY'S GARDEN
Micki McElya, CLINGING TO MAMMY

Here are a few more pics of the Confederate monuments in Richmond in the light of day. Source: Virginia Flaggers Facebook page.