In 1896 members of the Daughters of the Confederacy founded a museum in Columbia, South Carolina. The point of the museum was to do two things. First, to keep and protect the history of the Confederacy and second, to help the history of the Confederacy to become a part of the whole history of the United States. I don’t think I ever appreciated this idea before. I have always been a bit impatient and probably disagreeable about honoring the Confederacy. I have always thought that that they lost a war they started in the first place and they deserved their defeat. The idea, though, that these ladies had makes sense to me. They were Americans with an important history, and they wanted it remembered.
Because this museum was started in 1896, it wasn’t just a closet full of interesting stuff . The items included in the museum were personal belongings of people the ladies knew and loved, admired and respected. Because of this, the original items are primary documents of the South. I appreciated seeing the dress that one woman wore on the day the Sherman marched into Columbia and proceeded to burn it down. I admired the quilt. Two other relics in the museum I thought were especially interesting were some palmetto badges and some jewelry made with human hair. The palmetto badges were really ornately created art pieces made from palmetto leaves.
A tradition in the mid 1800s was to cut a lock of hair from a loved one and wear it in a locket or weave it into some kind of jewelry to show your love and devotion to that person. Often the jewelry was made if a person was going away or if someone died. Many women took locks of hair from their sons, brothers, husbands or sweethearts before they left for war- both as a memento and in case that person was lost. It sounds creepy, but the jewelry made from these locks of hair were really quite pretty.
After we looked through the museum, the curator of education for the museum talked with us. His name was Joe Long, and he talked about how healing the country after the Civil War ended began with Ulysses S Grant and Robert E. Lee (the two enemy generals of the war). When Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, he tried to hand Grant his sword. This was symbolic of his admitting he was defeated and giving up the fight. Grant refused to accept the sword, and also asked the Confederate officers to keep their pistols, swords, and horses. The reason this is important is that it allowed the Confederates to end the war with dignity, respect, and honor. It also showed them that Grant trusted them to act peacefully from then on. This was the first step to re-unifying the country. Had these enemies not been originally part of the same country, perhaps it would have been different, but they started out as Americans and were ending up as Americans again. By treating the defeated army with respect, the healing began.
We left Columbia and started north. Next stop, Greensboro, North Carolina and the 1960s instead of the 1860s. We found ourselves at a very famous place. It used to be a Woolworth’s five and dime store. And it is the place where the Civil Rights Movement began. On February 1, 1960, ninety nine years after the start of the Civil War, we didn’t have slavery and Blacks could vote, but discrimination had our country gripped tightly and racial tensions were rising. Four college freshmen walked into the downtown Woolworth’s store, walked to the back of the store to a lunch counter there, and sat down. This doesn’t sound important, but in 1961 only white people could sit at that counter. African Americans could order food to go, they could buy things at the store, but they couldn’t sit and eat or drink at that lunch counter. Four boys wanted this to stop, so they politely went in and sat down. They kindly asked for drinks and pie and were told that they would not be served. They didn’t leave until the store closed. The next day, more African Americans came and sat down. This continued until July 25th, when the manager agreed to serve African Americans. The situation got a lot of attention, and before Woolworths started serving all people in July, sit-ins like the Greensboro Four started began happening in over 25 cities. Non-violent resistance to racial discrimination began to change America.
Standing in that Woolworth’s store and seeing the actual lunch counter was quite a moment. The store is now a museum called the International Civil Rights Center. The exhibit is powerful. I saw a coke machine that had two sides to it. On one side the price of a Coke was 5 cents. That side was in the whites only waiting room at the Greensboro train station. The other side of the machine had cokes for 10 cents for sail in the “Coloreds” waiting room.
After we toured the museum exhibits, we got to meet Lewis Brandon, who participated in the sit-ins from the second day. He is still an activist for human rights. One thing he said really resonated with me. I had learned in the exhibit that the manager of the Woolworths eventually began serving Blacks because he was losing money. White people were beginning not to shop at his store because of the protest, so he decided to make it stop. I asked Mr. Brandon if he felt that attitudes had changed. He answered, “There’s a difference between desegregation and integration.” What I think he meant was that while businesses and schools are now all de-segregated and we no longer have white drinking fountains or waiting rooms or Colored Only entrances or bathrooms, we still have hatred and intolerance. I wonder what it will take to really change our hearts instead of just our actions.
