Dublin Core
Title
Description
On June 3, 1925, the Confederate Monument Association of Los Angeles (CMALA), together with the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), unveiled the Confederate memorial at the Hollywood Cemetery. The function of the stone marker was to honor and indicate the burial sites of Confederate veterans. In years prior, the Robert E. Lee Chapter of UDC, the local chapter, bought burial plots in the cemetery section where other Confederate veterans laid to rest [1]. The monument organizer's goal was to create a space where families of deceased Confederate veterans could come together during Memorial Day and other days of remembrance.
In the years after the Civil War, Confederate veterans moved their family members to California. Although the state joined the Union as a free state during the war, the state had many Southern supporters. Five years after the formation of the first chapter of the UDC in 1894, several UDC chapters formed in California promoting the care of ailing veterans [2]. In the Los Angeles region, the UDC operated Dixie Manor, a Confederate veteran's senior living facility in the San Gabriel Valley. An estimated 28 veterans spent the remaining days of their lives in the facility and were later buried at Hollywood Cemetery [3].
The CMALA and the UDC had initially set out to build the Confederate memorial in a public park. However, government officials use the land for other purposes [4]. The gray granite boulder used to fabricate the monument came from the San Gabriel Canyon.
In 2017 due to local opposition to Confederate memorabilia and the monument's defacement, the Cemetery administration and the UDC chapter at Long Beach chose to remove the marker [5].
Creator
Source
2. Tawa, Renee. “Way Out West, South’s Legacy Is Kept Alive.” Los Angeles Times, June 14, 1999. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jun-14-cl-46293-story.html
3. Waite, Keith. “The ‘Lost Cause’ Goes West: Confederate Culture and Civil War Memory in California.”
4. Los Angeles Times. 1925. "Will Unveil Memorial to War Veterans." March 19, 1925. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
5. Tchekmedyian, Alene., Khan, Irfan., & Rocha, Veronica. “Hollywood Forever Cemetery removes Confederate monument after calls from activists and threats of vandalism.” Los Angeles Time, August 16, 2017. https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-forever-monument-20170815-story.html
Date
Removed: August 2017