Sewanee Old South Day: Annual Commemorative Event of Kappa Alpha Fraternity at the University of the South
Item
- Legacies Classification
- Memorial Type
- Memorial Context
- Memorialized Subject
- Title
- Background and Context
- Date created, installed or dedicated
- Location: Institution, City, State
-
Memorial Event
-
Commemorative Event
-
Confederate States of America and social order of the antebellum white Southerners
-
Sewanee Old South Day: Annual Commemorative Event of Kappa Alpha Fraternity at the University of the South
-
The local college chapters of the Kappa Alpha Order, a men's fraternity that associates its origins with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, began celebrating "Old South Day" in 1939. The Alpha Alpha chapter at Sewanee inaugurated their annual celebration in March 1952. The campus newspaper reported: “A familiar expression, ‘the South will rise again,’ is to become a brief actuality. … as the KAs launch their first Old South Week End… The rebels have made preparations for everything from an early morning fox hunt to a traditional Southern Ball, and they will be wearing Confederate Army uniforms and Southern Gentlemen costumes to add. Realism and favor to the event.” The first celebration (March 15) took place at the United Daughters of the Confederacy's campus memorial to Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby-Smith. It occurred a week before the date usually associated with the “Second Founding” or “re-founding” of the University on March 22, 1866. At the inaugural Old South event, the University's acting Vice-Chancellor Edward McCrady praised the four Confederate generals (Leonidas Polk, Josiah Gorgas, Edmund Kirby-Smith, Frances Shoup, who served the University after the Civil War and credited them with laying the foundation of the University's values and traditions. Each, he said, brought “a great dignity of bearing, a deep sense of duty, a devout religious attitude and an exceptional refinement of gentility and manners of speech” to Sewanee.
Old South Days continued to observed and celebrated at Sewanee for decades. The national Kappa Alpha banned the themed event in 2016, but the local chapter may have discontinued its observance before that year.
-
March 15, 1952
Position: 1950 (42 views)