United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC)
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The Longstreet Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) pose with the Sanders Chapter of the Children of the Confederacy in Gainesville, Georgia, circa 1910. The Children of the Confederacy was an organization sponsored by the UDC intended for descendants of confederate soldiers who served in the Civil War.
Courtesy of Hall County Library System, Hall County Georgia Historical Photograph Collection.
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A manual prepared by Mildred Lewis Rutherford that provides instruction for determining if textbooks on history and literature in southern schools align with the “truths” of Confederate history or whether they are “unjust to the South.” Rutherford was a devoted member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and an advocate of the Lost Cause version of southern history.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Historic Books.
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A manual prepared by Mildred Lewis Rutherford that provides instruction for determining if textbooks on history and literature in southern schools align with the “truths” of Confederate history or whether they are “unjust to the South.” Rutherford was a devoted member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and an advocate of the Lost Cause version of southern history.
Courtesy of the University of Georgia Libraries, Georgia Historic Books.
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The Longstreet Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) dress in 1860s fashion to honor Robert E. Lee’s birthday in Gainesville, Georgia in 1935. Robert E. Lee was the commander of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.
Courtesy of Hall County Library System, Hall County Georgia Historical Photograph Collection.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) engaged extensively in educational reform during the Progressive Era in an effort to preserve the Lost Cause myth as historical fact. In the Lost Cause myth, the Civil War is recast as a noble attempt by Confederate soldiers to defend southern culture against northern tyranny, rather than a failed attempt among wealthy, white enslavers to preserve the political and economic power they maintained through slavery. The UDC embarked on educational campaigns that monitored public school textbooks and instructional lectures to ensure they contained historical narratives that included Lost Cause rhetoric commemorating Confederate heroes and glorifying the antebellum South. Other educational initiatives to transmit the Lost Cause myth to future generations included providing college scholarships for descendants of Confederate veterans as well as for white women who planned on becoming teachers and holding essay contests for students on topics related to the Civil War and the Confederate South. Educational campaigns to memorialize the Lost Cause narrative within Georgia’s public school system were linked to efforts to perpetuate notions of white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. The UDC would profoundly shape pedagogy in southern school systems and remains largely responsible for the endurance of the Lost Cause myth in narratives of American history.