The Washington Post has an article on expenditures by the State of Alabama to support the Confederate Memorial Park. The park is on the site of the state’s Confederate Soldiers’ Home, which was decommissioned in the 1930s. In the 1960s it was turned into a shrine for the Confederacy. The site has a small museum and includes two graveyards. The funding for the Confederate memorial is apparently mandated by the Alabama Constitution. I am not reproducing the entire article. A point the article makes is that while the Confederate Memorial has significant state funding, museums devoted to African history go begging. According to the article:
On a recent morning, there was just one visitor on the property and he didn’t enter the museum.
There are scattered mentions of slavery throughout the displays, but for the most part the museum focuses on the story of Confederate soldiers on the battlefield, mostly highlighting the bravery they displayed and the principles they were fighting for. The exhibit quotes Confederates like E.S. Dargan, who said: “If the relation of master and slave be dissolved, and our slaves turned loose amongst us without restraint, they would either be destroyed by our own hands — the hands to which they look with confidence, for protection — or we ourselves would become demoralized and degraded.”
Chappelle explained that the purpose of the museum was to tell the stories of Confederate soldiers; visitors who want a fuller picture of Alabama’s racial history — slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow and the Civil Rights movement — would have to go elsewhere.
There are a number of museums that tell those stories spread across Alabama, but the Confederate Memorial Park is different. It is the only museum in the state that has a dedicated revenue stream codified in the state’s constitution. So while other museums struggle to keep their doors open, search for grants for funding and depend on volunteer staff, the Confederate Memorial Park is flush with cash. In 2020 alone, the park received $670,000 in taxpayer dollars. That’s about $22 per visitor and more than five times the $4 admission price for adults.
…Earlier this year, a pair of state senators, a Black Democrat and a White Republican, co-sponsored a bill that would have maintained funding for the Confederate Park, while providing the same amount to Black historical sites. The bill failed, but Sen. Clyde Chambliss Jr., its Republican sponsor, told the Montgomery Advertiser that he planned to reintroduce the legislation during a planned special session. The special session started Sept. 27, but there have been no signs that Chambliss will follow up on his pledge. Neither Chambliss nor his Democratic co-sponsor, Sen. Bobby D. Singleton, responded to requests for comment.
Chambliss had expressed confidence that the bill would win easy passage, but similar measures have failed in the past and there was vocal opposition to the effort from people like Patricia Godwin, a longtime member of the Selma chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
“I would never support that,” Godwin told the Alabama News Network. “Unless I see some balance and we see in April, Confederate history and heritage month in the school system and that that would be a part of the official Alabama state curriculum.” The Washington Post reached out to Godwin for an interview and got her answering machine, which had the message: “The war of Southern cultural genocide rages on, and we’re still on the battlefield so I’m sorry, we can’t take your call right now.” The message ends: “In spite of it all, we do hope that you’re having a Dixie day.” She did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The fight over how to fund Alabama’s museums comes as state lawmakers debate what and whose history should be taught and promoted. In August, the Alabama State Board of Education passed a resolution that banned the teaching of critical race theory, an academic framework that examines the role of race and racism in the crafting of American laws and social norms.
The phrase has become a catchall term that conservatives have used to criticize a number of efforts they say constitute an attack on White Americans and culture. Alabama lawmakers have also introduced bills for the 2022 legislative session that seek to ban the teaching of “divisive concepts” that might make students uncomfortable because of their race or gender. Some have argued that teaching about slavery, racism and bigotry make White students — particularly males — feel bad or ashamed. In Alabama, museums are part of the fight over which telling of the state’s history will prevail.
…The source of the memorial’s funding can be traced back to the state’s Jim Crow-era constitution. Carol Gundlach, a policy analyst at Alabama Arise, a statewide advocacy organization, said that lawmakers in 1901 were looking for a way to introduce new taxes in the conservative state and needed a sympathetic group to attach the tax increase to. Gundlach said they decided on Confederate veterans and their wives. Funds for Confederate veterans became part of a statewide 6.5 mill property tax — 3 mills for public schools, 2.5 mills for the state’s general operating budget and 1 mill for the veterans. That 1 mill provided for pensions for veterans and the construction of a home for indigent veterans in rural Chilton County. (A mill is a tenth of a cent.)
The home closed in 1934 after the last veteran died, but state lawmakers reopened the property as Confederate Memorial Park in 1964, during the height of the civil rights movement and around the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. The park now receives 1 percent of that original tax.
“This tax is really locked in because it is in the state constitution,” Gundlach said. “It’s a part of a bigger problem we have with our post-Reconstruction constitution passed by wealthy Whites when they took back the state government. It was about locking in their power and locking in the authority of the legislature. It contains quite a few of these segregationist and racist policies that we are just now beginning to get rid of.”
Meanwhile… https://whnt.com/news/pisgah-residents-frustrated-with-dirty-water-adem-says-water-is-safe/