EMPORIA Commemorating the Civil War remains a complicated business, nearly 150 years after the fact.
On Dec. 1, the City Council in this Southside Virginia hub unanimously approved a Sons of Confederate Veterans marker in a municipal park as part of the 150th anniversary commemoration of the war.
"It is to these men, both Confederate and Union, who fought and died for their beliefs, that we dedicate this field of battle," its inscription would read. The marker is to be placed near a railroad bridge over the Meherrin River, the site of a battle on Dec. 9, 1864.
But the city park at issue has become a field of battle between the City Council and the Greensville-Emporia NAACP.
The marker is planned for Veterans Memorial Park, dedicated to U.S. service members killed in battle. Debra Brown, president of the local NAACP, opposes that.
Her husband is a retired Army veteran, and her father founded a local American Legion Post. "He would turn over in his grave," she said.
The local Sons of Confederate Veterans unit sees it differently.
"I think the park should be open to all veterans," said Fred Bare, a past commander of the unit. "After all, the union veterans are included on the bronze plaque. So how can you object?"
The local NAACP does. Its members asked John R. White, one of three black council members, to revisit the marker issue on Dec. 15. But the council declined to do so on a 4-3 vote along racial lines.
"There's no more appropriate place for a memorial to veterans than Veterans Park," Councilman F. Woodrow Harris said during an interview Tuesday.
As for Brown's argument that the site is inappropriate to honor Confederate soldiers, "They were all Americans involved in" that battle, he said.
Well, that certainly wasn't the Confederate take on matters from 1861 to 1865.
Brown wonders why another marker site can't be found along Main Street, the home of numerous historical signs.
"If that park has already been dedicated to the veterans who protect the United States of America, then I don't think we should have anything referring to the Confederacy, period," Brown said.
As for White, my brief phone call to him Tuesday ended with a dial tone buzzing in my ear. He didn't return a call before deadline yesterday.
That phone call is a metaphor for the council's handling of this matter -- tone-deaf.
NAACP members complained about lack of opportunity for input. Indeed, the council places "public comment" at the end of its meeting agendas.
As the Civil War's sesquicentennial approaches, the council should take a more open and less dogmatic approach to matters as sensitive as the cohabitation of Confederate and black heritage.
The hilltop at Veterans Memorial Park is the former site of Shiloh Baptist Church, which was founded in 1866 by newly freed African-Americans. When the church moved a mile across town in 1968, it sold the property to the city. A modest brick memorial to the old church sits atop the hill.
Residents such as Brown view this site as sacred ground, no less hallowed than the battlefield the Sons of Confederate Veterans unit plans to memorialize.
With its tin-eared handling of this situation, the Emporia City Council missed an opportunity to cultivate common ground.
Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.
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