Black worker at Confederate site raises race complaint


Alabama welcomes visitors at the “First White House of the Confederacy,” a historic home next to the state Capitol where Confederate President Jefferson Davis lived with his family in the early months of the Civil War.

The museum managed by the state’s Department of Finance says it hosts nearly 100,000 people a year, many of them school children on field trips to see such things as the “relic room” where Davis’ slippers and pocket watch are preserved. Near the gift shop, a framed article describes Davis as an American patriot who accomplished “one of the most amazing feats in history” by keeping the “north at bay for four long years.”
Evelyn England, an African-American woman who worked for 12 years as a receptionist at the historic site, said some visitors, both Black and white, were surprised to see her there.

“I’m in a unique position because whites don’t really want me here, and Blacks don’t want to come here,” England told The Associated Press.
After all those years working among the Davis family’s furniture and belongings, England wishes the museum would take a broader view of history. That slavery was a catalyst for the Civil War “is sort of stated around,” she said.

“Tell it like it is. Just tell it like it is. This happened. This is what is known to have happened. Give it as absolute truth as you can….. Until that, you are painting a false narrative that this was a gala — no, there were some ugly things that happened,” she said.

Explanatory displays at the museum, where the first Confederate flag still flies outside, mostly discuss the furnishings and how rooms were used, and make little to no mention of slavery, which Davis promoted as “a moral, a social and a political blessing.”

England, who lives in Marion, said she is a distant cousin of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist shot and killed by a state trooper in 1965. His death helped inspire the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. England was a young child at the time, but still recalls the commotion and pain.

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