MOTHERS OF THE LOST CAUSE: HOW THE UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY PERPETUATED WHITE SUPREMACY IN THE NEW SOUTH

In my project, I aim to expose the revisionist history and white supremacist ideals of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The organization’s main objective was to vindicate Confederate soldiers after their loss of the Civil War, or as they called it, “The War Between the States.” In order to achieve their goal of vindication, the UDC created a revisionist history through the lens of white supremacy. They erected monuments, wrote textbooks, and created Confederate organizations for children in order to perpetuate ideals from the “Old South.” My goal with this project is to dismantle that revisionist history and accentuate the fact that they operated on white supremacist ideologies. I looked into the official UDC magazines, other literature from the organization, and secondary sources from historians outside of the organization. The effects of such a narrow, intentionally selected history are still prevalent today and have had many lasting impacts on modern conservatism in the South.