Controversial ‘Confederate Memorial Day’ honors soldiers killed during Civil War

WHAT: As the United States prepares for Memorial Day services and activities, several Southern states also recognize a lesser known but highly controversial holiday on varying dates in April and May: Confederate Memorial Day, which is designed to commemorate Confederate soldiers killed during the Civil War. The holiday is officially recognized in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina, and it is unofficially recognized in several other states.

EXPERT: Robert May, a historian and professor emeritus at Purdue University, has written several books on the Civil War, the Confederacy and slavery. He can discuss how Confederate holidays, monuments and flags have been used by Southern states to distort history, romanticize their heritage and downplay their role in the oppression of slaves.

QUOTE: “The Civil War itself and the Confederate monuments and holidays all relate to southern slavery and US race relations in very profound ways. There never would have been a Civil War without a Southern desire not only to perpetuate slavery, but even to spread it throughout the West and much of Latin America. All fights to wave Dixie flags and to preserve monuments and place names and street names are based on an implicit, and sometimes explicit, understanding that slavery was good—or, at the very least, not so bad. You will rarely hear a defender of Confederate memory admit that slavery was horrible. And when you don’t address slavery’s terrors, you imply, sadly, that somehow it was tolerable.”

MORE INFORMATION: May is the author of the forthcoming book, “Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory,” which explores how modern-day Southern Christmas events, often hosted at former plantations, perpetuate the myth that Christmas was joyous time for slaves. The book will be published this fall by the University of Virginia Press. 

Writer: Joseph Paul, 765-494-9541, paul102@purdue.edu

Source: Robert May, 765-490-5189, mayr@purdue.edu