United Daughters of the Confederacy (2024)

The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is a women’s heritage organization best known for honoring Confederate veterans of the Civil War, memorializing the Confederacy, and promoting the “Lost Cause” interpretation of southern history, which positions Old South slavery as a benevolent institution, Confederate soldiers as heroic defenders of states’ rights, and Reconstruction as a period of northern aggression, through its monuments and educational campaigns. Members are required to prove that they are bloodline descendants of men and/or women who served honorably in the Confederal States of America.

The National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy, the organization’s original name, was founded on September 10, 1894, at a meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, organized by Caroline Meriwether Goodlett of Tennessee and Anna Davenport Raines of Georgia as a national unification of Ladies Memorial Associations, which began memorializing the Confederacy in 1865 and had state-based women’s organizations in Tennessee, Georgia, and Missouri. The National Association of the Daughters of the Confederacy established its five primary objectives as memorial, historical, benevolent, and social. The name Daughters of the Confederacy was suggested after Gen. John B. Gordon so introduced Winnie Davis to the veterans; several of the groups during the 1860s had also used similar names. The name of the organization was changed to United Daughters of the Confederacy at the second meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895. The UDC grew quickly and by World War I the organization had nearly 100,000 members. The UDC’s membership numbers eclipsed those of many other women’s clubs in the early twentieth century U.S. South.

Texan women played an important role in shaping the UDC’s mission and helped the organization grow. Laurene (Ray) Myers, also known as “Mrs. J.C. Myers,” of Dallas attended the founding meeting in Nashville and was elected as a national vice president. She was soon replaced in the vice president role by Katie Cabell Currie. The UDC leaders determined that it was unacceptable for her to be vice president because her husband was a “Union man.” Currie, who was also from Dallas, guided the national organization through a dramatic growth in membership during her tenure as UDC president from 1898 through 1900. She also organized the Texas Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Victoria, Texas, on May 25, 1896. In subsequent decades, the Texas Division consistently registered more chapters and members than any other state division.

The Texas UDC was pivotal in developing the national UDC’s early educational agenda. In 1899, the Texas Division UDC launched an educational movement that established children’s auxiliaries, public lectures, and chapter libraries to educate members, children, and the general public about the Lost Cause. In 1902 the Texas Division created standing committees to inspect textbooks used in public education, establish chapters in colleges, and amplify efforts to create UDC libraries and children’s auxiliaries, known as the Children of the Confederacy. These efforts provided a model for the inauguration of the national UDC educational movement in 1908, which was launched by then-UDC President Cornelia Branch Stone of Galveston.

The Texas UDC was an influential presence in the state’s culture and politics from the 1900s to the 1950s. Their most visible accomplishments were the sixty-three Confederate monuments erected across the state, most of which were placed at courthouses. The organization was influential in persuading the state to erect a marker at Baytown, near the site of Bayland Orphans’ Home for Boys. It also erected a monument in Hereford honoring the memory of three donors of a tract of land that was deeded to the Texas Division. In the 1960s the division erected a monument in Little Mound Cemetery, near Gilmer, honoring Emma Sansom, a Confederate heroine from Alabama. Confederate veterans' graves are actively sought and marked by the appropriate government marker and dedicated by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The Texas UDC also engaged in benevolent efforts such as the establishment of the Confederate Woman’s Home in 1908, which served indigent women who aided the Confederate effort and was one of the only options for destitute white women in the state for decades. The Texas Division sponsored the Texas Confederate Home for men closed after it was no longer needed to care for the aging veterans. But the organization’s most powerful and enduring work was in shaping public education. In the 1910s multiple UDC members served on the Texas Textbook Review Board and the division reported that its efforts to “highly censor” schoolbooks were successful.

Though the Lost Cause version of history was largely hegemonic by the 1920s, the Texas UDC still saw their ideals as under attack and thus continued their efforts. In so doing, they began to more explicitly link their Confederate ideals with anti-integrationist and anti-communist viewpoints. In 1924 the Texas UDC stated that a key aspect of its agenda was to “fasten more securely the rights and privileges of citizenship upon a pure Anglo-Saxon race.” In the 1930s members protested local and national manifestations of Black empowerment and representations of “creeping social equality” in popular media. The Texas UDC also built connections and collaborated with more recognizably conservative groups such the American Legion and the Minute Women of the USA. In the 1950s members became engaged in more explicitly political actions such as increasing poll tax registration among members and petitioning senators to vote against socialized medicine and for restrictive immigration legislation.

Under the administration of Ruth W. Widener, president from 1962 to 1964, the membership gave approval to close the Confederate Woman's Home in Austin. The home had been deeded to the state of Texas in 1911, and all expenses of its operation since that date had been paid by the state. The home was officially closed in September 1966; only one Confederate widow remained living at that time. After the closure, the Mrs. Norman V. Randolph (Janet Weaver Randolph) Relief Fund, established in 1910, provided a monthly assistance check to Daughters who were not in a nursing home environment. In 1994 ten Daughters were enrolled in this program.

In the 1960s a few members of the Texas UDC grew bolder in their use of racially charged and right-wing rhetoric, but at a broader level, the group’s enthusiasm and political influence began to wane with end of Jim Crow laws and accelerating federal intervention in education. The activity and effectiveness of the Texas UDC’s outreach committees related to textbooks, radio, and television, civil defense, and legislation declined. From the 1970s through the present day, the activism of both the Texas UDC and the national UDC has rarely extended beyond historic preservation. Memorial observances are held annually to remember not only the Confederate veterans but veterans of all wars. The UDC’s membership has also declined significantly, although the group has not provided an official estimate. According to the organization, Texas had eighty-four active chapters and 3,305 members as of August 31, 1994. Since the mid-2010s public interest in the UDC has been renewed as activists, legislators, and members of the media have scrutinized Confederate monuments and called for their removal. Some UDC chapters asked to take back ownership of monuments, some hired attorneys to fight removal, and others relented. At the national level, the UDC has largely remained silent on the topic.

The organization continues to promote education and memorialization through scholarships and Children of the Confederacy chapters. Thousands of dollars in scholarships are given each year to descendants of Confederate veterans. Local chapter scholarships, as well as division and general scholarships, are awarded annually. Some are restricted to certain colleges, universities, or fields of study. Members are encouraged to donate to the George W. Littlefield Fund for Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. The Albert Sidney Johnston saber is awarded annually to the outstanding cadet at Texas A&M University. Per the Texas Division’s website, the aims of the Children of the Confederacy to “honor and perpetuate the memory and deeds of high principles of the men and women of the Confederacy,” observe Confederate Memorial Days, “serve society through civic affairs and to perpetuate National patriotism as our ancestors once defended their beliefs.” The children’s auxiliaries are open to boys and girls from birth to eighteen years of age who descended from Confederate veterans. Male auxiliary members are allowed to hold dual membership in the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and adopted children must qualify through their biological ancestors. The Texas Division also maintains the Texas Confederate Museum.