THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602110040
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE ALLEN, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Long : 117 lines
The White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis laid plans to save the South, was a hilltop landmark in one of this city's most aristocratic neighborhoods.
Now, the Victorian mansion hunkers behind a 12-story hospital, out of sight and out of mind for most Richmond residents.
Seeking to win a new generation of devotees, officials of the White House plan to hold a Confederate ball featuring hoop skirts, Rebel uniforms, and a color guard's presentation of the Stars and Bars.
Black leaders expressed astonishment and outrage, asserting that the event would resurrect ghosts of a shameful era. The ball, organized by young professionals, is to be held Feb. 24 at a restored gun foundry in downtown Richmond, a city that is 55 percent black.
``This peels the scab off a sore that is trying to heal,'' said L. Douglas Wilder of Virginia, who grew up in segregated Richmond and became the country's first black elected governor. ``That era is gone. You want it to regrow? It's history, sure. But it's a history of denying basic human rights.''
Wilder said he had not received an invitation.
Backers of the ball said their intentions were innocent and honorable. They said the Confederate White House and its companion, the Museum of the Confederacy, were designed not to celebrate the era of slavery but to tell the story.
``We're looking to our future,'' said Brooke E. Fillmore, 27, chairwoman of the ball committee and the museum's assistant director of development. ``If we don't get young people involved now, the older people will die out, and we won't have that young support.''
The ball is the latest front in a clash of cultures for a city in which some leaders are scrambling to modernize even as others argue for revering, and promoting, the past.
The Museum of the Confederacy, which calls itself Richmond's oldest museum and is the area's fifth most-visited attraction, sits next to the White House, six blocks from the state Capitol.
Davis, the only president of the Confederacy, lived in the mansion from 1861 until Richmond, the Confederate capital, fell to Union troops in 1865.
About a year ago, the museum discussed, but rejected, adopting a less divisive name, such as the Museum of Southern Culture.
``Our members would not appreciate that,'' said Janene E. Charbeneau, the museum's marketing director. ``How do you appease the people who have been supporting you over the last 100 years, and yet also open it up to other groups?''
Having elected to keep a title synonymous with racial and national division, officials now have a complicated marketing problem.
``Some people won't walk in the door, because of the word `Confederacy,' '' Charbeneau said.
The museum, which has received small amounts of state and federal money, has responded with frank, well-reviewed programs highlighting the roles of women and blacks during and after the Civil War. One current exhibit shows a poster from a raffle of a slave girl, as a hidden boom box plays spirituals.
Although some visitors ask why the museum does not refer to ``the War of Northern Aggression,'' officials stress their role as a research institution and say they do not take sides.
Their collection includes 320 swords but also a female admirer's faded blue silk ribbon tied to a buttonhole of a Louisiana soldier killed in battle. Another relic is a doll with a hollow head that was used to smuggle medicine through blockades.
Descendants of Confederate veterans can call the museum for appointments to view the flags of an ancestor's unit, and two or three people a year write to the museum to try to redeem Confederate currency.
About 400 people are expected at this month's soiree, called the Bonnie Blue Centennial Ball, after a flag of secession. Organizers said they did not know whether any blacks would attend, but said they did not expect many.
Neil A. Chiappa, 45, a member of the ball committee, said, ``We realize that there's always going to be an aspect of the population that we're not going to appeal to under any under circumstance.''
Roger H.W. Kirby, 30, a member of the ball committee and a museum trustee, said everyone was welcome.
``At the same time, you can't totally obscure what your greatest asset is,'' Kirby said. ``Our asset is the Confederacy. When you do that, I think you start to blur your niche.''
The organizers said they had not considered the delicate question of whether black people will be among those serving. ``That's probably an issue that the caterer would have to deal with,'' Fillmore said.
The caterer, Suzanne Wolstenholme, said blacks and whites would be among the night's managers, bartenders, carvers and servers.
Tickets, available from the museum, are $75 for each couple. In addition, the committee mailed invitations, which say, ``Black or white tie or period dress preferred.''
Annette C. Price, a historic costumer in Varina, said more than two dozen guests had hired her to create hoop-skirt outfits for $100 to $500. Gray wool uniforms are popular with the men.
``I don't expect any Yankees,'' Price said.
When guests arrive, tents will be pitched and campfires will be blazing outside the Tredegar Iron Works, which produced the armor plate for the frigate Merrimack.
Inside, a fife and drum corps will play as guests mingle before beginning a menu that includes smoked turkey, pickled watermelon rind, sweet-potato biscuits, black-eyed pea salsa, and oysters simmering in cast-iron chafers.
Guests will waltz to antebellum music, then a Confederate re-enactment group will present five flags. The American flag will not be among them. Finally, guests will jam to a popular local band.
Jack W. Gravely, a former Virginia president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the gala sent a chilling message.
``To put on a ball in this day and time, with all the regalia of yesteryear, creates a feeling of acceptability, of apology, of excuse for one of the most racist and repressive epochs in our history,'' Gravely said. ``By participating, you are acquiescing.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
``This peels the scab off a sore that is trying to heal. That era is
gone. You want it to regrow? It's history, sure. But it's history
of denying basic human rights.''
- Former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder
by CNB