What do the fictional, Willa, and the real life Mrs. Essie Mae Washington Williams (God rest her soul) have in common? They are both American girls, whose stories must claim the spotlight.
They are both descendants of warriors, and American Girls. What does this have to do with my experience as your Pet Florida Cracker, loyal to the rightful winners of the American Civil War, Masters and Mistresses of the African Diaspora? Everything.
I did not leave the United Daughters of the Confederacy because I rejected my ancestry.
I left because I took my ancestry seriously.
From 2004 to 2012, I served Seattle #885 as Registrar, President, and Director of Patriotic Affairs. My work focused on veterans, monuments, historical accuracy, and reconciliation—not mythology. I was recognized by UDC headquarters in Richmond for patriotic service to post-9/11 troops through the Department of Defense’s America Supports You program. That award belonged not to me alone, but to every woman who chose service over spectacle.
Over time, however, it became impossible to reconcile my oath to truth, hospitality, and honor with an institutional refusal to confront the moral failures embedded in the “Lost Cause” narrative.
The best way to honor Southern heritage is not through ethnic exclusion, false nostalgia, or inherited grievance—but through hospitality, integrity, and honor.
My people were farmers, wagoneers, preachers, and caregivers. They valued neighborliness, faith, and duty. That tradition does not require denying the full humanity of others, nor does it survive when history is used as a weapon.
When an organization insists on veneration without accountability, memory curdles into ideology.
My impeachment as President of Seattle #885 came after I advanced the membership application of Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the eldest child of Strom Thurmond. George Washington Thurmond, her ancestor, was present on 9 April 1865 when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at the Appomattox, Virginia Courthouse. Ancestral warriors within her lineage are many, yet her war was a quiet one. She remained regal in her honor of her Mother, Mrs. Carrie Butler, and her complicated father, Strom. She was admitted to the Daughters of the American Revolution, but denied the UDC.
Her denial by the UDC was not a clerical matter. It was a moral one.
Mrs. Washington-Williams lived the very history the UDC claimed to preserve—yet she was excluded because her existence exposed the lie that lineage and whiteness are synonymous. When I refused to participate in that exclusion, I was removed. When I continued to advocate for her memory and her family after resigning, I was served a cease-and-desist letter.
That is when I understood: the institution was no longer capable of honoring the fullness of its own past.
The recent film One Battle After Another captures this tension powerfully when a fictional character is awarded the “Bedford-Forrest Award”—an unmistakable reference to Nathan Bedford Forrest.
History records that Forrest later disavowed the Ku Klux Klan, but that fact cannot erase the terror the organization inflicted during Reconstruction. Stepping away after damage is done is not redemption; it is consequence.
The film’s moment is not about the past—it is about how easily honor becomes hollow when institutions refuse moral reckoning.
Willa—the child of Perfidia in said movie – like every child who inherits a complicated past—is an American Girl because she represents the evolutionary tradition of this republic: the slow, painful, necessary work of making life better for everyone.
That is the same tradition embodied by Mrs. Washington-Williams, who sought not revenge or erasure, but acknowledgment and belonging. It is the tradition my Civil Rights–warrior grandparents lived. It is the tradition my Florida ancestors fought to preserve when the Union was broken—and the tradition that demands we not break it again.
We are one race with many ethnicities.
Citizenship is not blood purity.
History is not ownership—it is stewardship.
I left Seattle #885 because honor without truth is theater, and heritage without hospitality is idolatry.
I remain committed to:
Leaving was not a rejection of my people.
It was an act of fidelity to them.
And that, in the end, is the only kind of loyalty worth keeping.
#heididutytime #VetSafe #TeamUSA #globalstandards #healthiswealth #OneBattleAfterAnother #AmericanGirl
