Alabama spends $670k/yr on a Confederate memorial while Black history museums struggle.
MOUNTAIN CREEK, Ala. — Down a country road, past a collection of ramshackle mobile homes, sits a 102-acre "shrine to the honor of Alabama's citizens of the Confederacy."
The museum’s exhibits explain what the White Alabamians who took up the cause of the Confederacy felt was on the line — Alabama was 10th of the then 33 states in the value of livestock, seventh in peas and beans, and second in cotton production. The only hope to save its economic position, the exhibit quotes a former state governor as saying, was for it to secede from the union, and though not mentioned directly, maintain the bondage of hundreds of thousands of Black Americans. On a recent morning, there was just one visitor on the property and he didn’t enter the museum.
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.
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.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/alabama-spends-more-than-a-half-million-dollars-a-year-on-a-confederate-memorial-black-historical-sites-struggle-to-keep-their-doors-open/2021/10/03/77953f7e-222a-11ec-8fd4-57a5d9bf4b47_story.html?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F34df4dc%2F615b29e59d2fda9d41fb49d9%2F5bc97fa5ae7e8a50f8217d42%2F38%2F74%2F615b29e59d2fda9d41fb49d9
