ABSTRACT
The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, was founded in 1896 as a ‘shrine to the confederate cause and a memorial to the devotion of confederate women’ (Museum of the Confederacy Journal 1996: 3). The dedication was thus worded because white women had been responsible for building and managing what was perceived by its founders to be a testimony to the (white) male confederates of the 1860s. The museum has unashamedly symbolised white supremacy, ever since, through its displays of confederate uniforms, weaponry and flags, as well as furnishings and ornaments which once decorated the finest of the South’s plantation houses. Almost by way of countering this white supremacist historical narrative, which had evidently been embodied since its outset, the museum hosted an exhibition in 1991 under the title, ‘Before Freedom Came: African American Life in the Ante-bellum South’. Photographs of slaves (names unknown) as well as the more repressive means of terror, e.g. slave harnesses and collars, were displayed.
