Unveiling Meaning: The Pitt County Confederate Soldiers' Monument

Abstract

In recent years, the meanings of Confederate monuments have become a topic of public debate. Some argue that Confederate monuments are simply memorials for fallen Confederate soldiers and thus stand as reverent commemorations of Southern ancestors. Others argue that these monuments, produced by a post-war Southern propaganda effort, stand as relics of the Jim Crow era and are thus hateful pieces of cultural geography. This case study of the Pitt County Confederate Soldiers’ Monument, which stood in Greenville, NC from 1914 until 2020, attempts to define the meaning of the monument through an analysis of its unveiling ceremony. Sentiments expressed and ritualistic acts performed at unveiling ceremonies can provide evidence of the motives and intentions of the monuments’ creators. Through an analysis of the unveiling ceremony, this researcher argues that the Pitt County monument was intended to promote five central tenets of the “Lost Cause” ideology: glorification and romanticization of the Confederacy, white supremacy, male dominance of political and cultural life, preeminence of Southern Christianity, and generational transference of the four previous ideas.