Alabama wrestles with Confederate tax
One hundred and fifty-six years after the end of the Civil War, property owners in Alabama are still paying a tax originally levied to fund pensions for Confederate soldiers.
And although most of the millions of dollars in revenue generated from the tax fund things such as schools and pensions, a portion of the tax – 1% – funds operations of the Confederate Memorial Park, site of the old soldiers’ home. Now, a push is underway to dedicate the same amount of revenue, which totals more than $500,000 annually, to Black history preservation in Alabama.
The tax was adopted in 1901 as part of the state Constitution. It remains the only tax in the South that’s directly tied to the Confederacy.
In addition to pensions, the tax funded the old soldiers home, which sits on 102 acres in Mountain Creek, in Chilton County, a stone’s throw over the Autauga County line. The last soldier died at the home in 1934, leaving seven widows as residents.
The state closed the home on Oct. 31, 1939, by legislative act, and the five remaining widows were placed on the state welfare rolls, according to a pamphlet about the park’s history. For years, the site was mostly forgotten, with the State Soil Conservation Service being responsible for maintaining the two cemeteries.
In 1964, the Legislature created the Confederate Memorial Park on the site as a “shrine to the honor of Alabama’s citizens of the Confederacy.” according to the pamphlet. The park is run by the Alabama Historical Commission.
The move to establish the park was made in the buildup of the centennial of the end of the Civil War in 1865, and in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement.
The tax and funding of the park have long been the subject of political discussion in the state. There have been threats to pull funding for the park, but nothing has materialized.
In the past year, the impact of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings by police has led to a burgeoning social movement that has brought the legacy of the Confederacy to a renewed reckoning. Confederate memorials and statutes on public property have been torn down, taken down or covered up in former Confederate states, including Alabama.
Two Alabama state senators want to create legislation that might settle the tax matter and form a repository of sorts for Confederate monuments that have been removed in Alabama.
A compromise
Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Prattville, and Sen. Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, plan on sponsoring a bill that would safeguard the funding for the park. It would also establish a fund to preserve and promote Black history in the state, funded by an equal 1% coming from the Confederate veterans tax. The Black history effort would also be supervised by the historic commission.
The bill hasn’t been filed, and Chambliss said he is confident there is enough time in this session to get it through the process.