Confederate Heritage Rally 2011

The Confederate Heritage Rally was held on Saturday Feb 19, 2011 in Montgomery AL.  It was an amazing event and a tremendous success.  The festivities began with a march down Dexter Avenue, from the fountain at the intersection with Commerce Street up Dexter to the State Capital.  Children, families, senior citizens, members of the SCV Mechanized Cavalry and other Confederate compatriots lined Dexter waving flags and taking photographs.  The parade participants represented Sons of Confederate camps from over a half dozen states and included drums and a Confederate bagpipe and many and varied period flags of the Confederacy.  The men in their glorious Confederate uniforms and women looking beautiful in their antebellum dresses roused the enthusiasm of the parade spectators.  The parade stretched the entire six blocks down Dexter when all the participants were finally marching and at the State capital building there was a period band and artillery battery awaiting them.  The link on the right side of this blog for the Confederate Heritage Rally (http://www.confederate150.com/2011.html) has a great write up of the event from the Montgomery Advertiser and some great photos.  Despite the Montgomery Advertiser's Josh Moon penning a memorably ignorant op ed prior to the event and highlighting himself as a local embarassment, the paper did a commendable job covering the event although it was noted that their estimate of the crowd was half that of the SCV organizers who placed the participants and spectators numbering 2000 strong.  A front page photo of the color guard preceded two pages of articles and photographs.  Worldwide press coverage included UPI (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/02/19/Hundreds-mark-Civil-War-150th-anniversary/UPI-49751298096508/) and the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12488150) although as is typical, these "news sources" tend to mix editorials with news coverage. The Associated Press coverage was simply nauseating and not recommended reading.  The Montgomery Advertiser on the other hand provided a comprehensive factual accounting - kudos.