File #7: "Flags over the Cemetery at the Confederate Memorial Park"

This artifact’s portrayal of the “indigent[s’]” cemetery further clarified how said imbuement remained consistent for its stakeholders. Just as the newspapers stressed that the soldiers’ home had been built from “Alabama lumber,” they similarly noted the U.D.C.’s tombstone donations as “made from A-1 Alabama white marble,” and fulfilled “[a] long neglected duty to properly place headstones” [1]. Their Alabamian material specification and invocations of “duty” reinforced how the soldiers’ home facility fit in the context of post- Reconstruction out-memorialization between the former Confederate states with their own soldiers’ homes. Hence, only “the greatest good” was sufficient for the contemporaneous stakeholders, veterans and visitors alike. Accordingly, even after the home’s closure in 1939 began its temporary obscurity, petitions from the U.D.C. and Sons of Confederate Veterans during the 1950s-60s culminated with the 1964 Civil War Centennial, during which then-Governor George Wallace and the State Legislature proclaimed that site as part of a memorial park, “a ‘shrine to the honor of Alabama’s citizens of the Confederacy’” [2]. A direct response to the Civil Rights Movement, the Legislature’s designation of the park reinforced the militarization intrinsic to the cemetery’s layout. As each tombstone had been placed in linear formation and thus situated into a company unit under Confederate flags, they were further symbolized as “soldiers of the ‘Lost Cause.’”

1. W. P. Thompson, “Headstones for Mountain Creek Veterans -- Full List of Men Who Have Died at Soldiers’ Home Since It Was Established, Giving Date, Age, Confederate Company, and Place of Burial,” in the Birmingham Age-Herald (Apr. 20, 1913), in the University of Alabama Libraries, in the Library of Congress Digital Archive.
2. Harry D. Butler, “Confederate Memorial Park reveals part of state’s heritage,” in the Gadsden Times (Jan. 7, 2015); Nick Lackeos, “Confederate Memorial Park Effort Nearly Complete,” in the Montgomery Advertiser (Jan 27, 2003); Brian Palmer and Seth F. Wesser, “The Costs of the Confederacy,” in the Smithsonian 49, no. 8 (Dec. 2018); Adam C. Estes, “Why Alabama Is Still Collecting Taxes for Confederate Veterans,” in The Atlantic (July 20, 2011).

References

• “Confederate Memorial Park.” Narrated by Bill Rambo. C-SPAN. May 30, 1996.
• “Digital Walking Tour of Confederate Memorial Park.” Narrated by Calvin Chappelle. May 23, 2020. In the Confederate Memorial Park’s FaceBook.
• Highsmith, Carol M. “Cemetery at Confederate Memorial Park, Marbury, Alabama.” Photographs. May 10, 2010. In the Carol M. Highsmith Archive. In the Library of Congress Digital Archive.