ORCID

0009-0007-5651-478X

Keywords

Civil War Memory, Public History, Orlando History, Greenwood Cemetery, Lost Cause, Confederate Monuments

Abstract

Civil War memory has shaped historical consciousness throughout the American South, sometimes in surprising and unexpected ways. An unusual example of this phenomenon can be found in Orlando, Florida. Unlike in other Southern cities, in Orlando, Civil War memory did not grow out of wartime experience. Instead, it developed decades later during the post-Reconstruction period as generations removed from the war itself constructed their own understanding of the war’s history and its meaning. As the city grew, Greenwood Cemetery became a key site where Civil War remembrance functioned in Orlando. Women’s organizations played a major role in shaping Civil War memory, particularly the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC), through their promotion of Lost Cause ideology during the early and mid-twentieth century in the nascent city. The UDC cultivated Orlando’s fundamental understanding of the war through textbooks, public ceremonies, and Confederate symbolism such as the erection of monuments and the naming of schools. Simultaneously, the relative decline of Union memory affected generations of residents. Debates over Civil War memory in Orlando came to the forefront in 2017, when Orlando’s Confederate monument was removed from its central location at Lake Eola just east of downtown and relocated to Greenwood Cemetery amid public controversy surrounding the links between Confederate symbols and white supremacy. This study develops and implements a digital, evidence-based public history approach to contextualize and rebalance Civil War memory in Orlando.

Completion Date

2026

Semester

Spring

Committee Chair

Barbara Gannon

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

History

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

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