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NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Vanderbilt University would violate a decades-old contract if it stripped the word "Confederate" from the name of a dormitory built with the help of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a court ruling released Wednesday said. The heritage group donated a third of the building's cost. In return, the name Confederate Memorial Hall was chiseled into stone over the main entrance.

The battle over Southern heritage was waged Saturday as hundreds filled Elmwood Cemetery for a rally to resurrect the Confederate battle flag.The flag hasn't flown at the cemetery since the city of Charlotte removed it two weeks ago, but protestors waved dozens among the monuments and spoke from a podium draped in the flag.Organizers said the rally was the first step toward gaining the attention of city leaders, and political hopefuls used it as a platform to campaign for office.Democratic mayoral candidate Craig Madans and Doug Hanks, who's running for Patrick Cannon's at-large seat on the Charlotte City Council, spoke...

Vanderbilt's ongoing litigation with the United Daughters of the Confederacy over the changing of the name of Confederate Memorial Hall to Memorial Hall is an example of a trend that is taking place in schools across the South. As a Feb. 12 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out, in addition to Vanderbilt, schools in the Southeast such as Sewanee: The University of the South; the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and the University of Texas at Austin are all choosing to remove Confederate symbols and Southern traditions to better compete in attracting the nation's best and most...

We talk a lot in this town about diversity and embracing differences. On Presidents Day, before dashing for holiday markdowns at the mall, we may even rest a beat to reflect on our history. But if the story of your particular diversity is told in Southern accents -- especially if it dares breathe a word about historic roots stretching back to the Confederacy -- you're more apt to get a slug than a hug. Marjorie Reeves knows that from personal, painful experience. The Alabama transplant wasn't all that "Southern," she says, before moving to Seattle in 1998. But the minute...

Group trying to block building name change: NASHVILLE, Tennessee -- A state appeals court heard arguments Wednesday over whether Vanderbilt University can remove the word "Confederate" from a dormitory the United Daughters of the Confederacy helped build in the 1930s. The Tennessee chapter of the group claims the university's effort to drop the first word from Confederate Memorial Hall violates decades-old contracts, but Vanderbilt claims the contracts are no longer valid. The judges, who did not say when they will issue a ruling, had strong words for both sides. "You're arguing social values and making the courts be the tough...

There was a story that the late U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond never tired of telling his fellow members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It was about how, in April 1865, after the tattered survivors of Gen. Robert E. Lee's army stacked their rifles in surrender at Appomattox, his grandfather, George Washington Thurmond, walked more than 300 miles back to his farm in Edgefield County, S.C. Now, Thurmond's mixed-race daughter, Essie Mae Washington Williams, is taking action to claim her share of that heritage. She's planning to apply to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a 109-year-old organization whose...

Essie Mae Washington-Williams, a biracial woman who stepped forward last year to acknowledge that she was the daughter of the late Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, now wants to join the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization of descendants of soldiers who fought for the South in the Civil War. Evidently she is eligible: Senator Thurmond, once a fierce segregationist, was a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a similar group for men. Ms. Washington-Williams, a 78-year-old retired teacher who lives in Los Angeles, also plans to apply for membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution...

The biracial daughter of the late Strom Thurmond is pursuing membership in the United Daughters of the Confederacy - a group founded to honor the memory of those who fought for the South in the Civil War. Essie Mae Washington-Williams will make the application based on her relationship to Thurmond, whose ancestors fought for the Confederacy. Male members of her family also will seek to join the Sons of Confederate Veterans, of which Thurmond was a member, said Frank Wheaton, her attorney. "Through my father's line, I am fortunate to trace my heritage back to the birth of our nation...

ROCK ISLAND, Ill. - (KRT) - A bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" and the bugler played "Taps." Then a group that gathered here to honor the war dead sang the song known as "Dixie." On a gray, damp Sunday morning punctuated by bright flashes of the Confederate flag, visitors to the Rock Island National Cemetery saw the dedication of its first monument to 1,950 Southern soldiers buried on Arsenal Island. "I feel it is something that has been long overdue," said Loretta Finnegan, a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a coordinator of the event. "This is not...

<p>The United Daughters of the Confederacy said yesterday that it will appeal the recent dismissal of its lawsuit to keep the word ''Confederate'' in the name of a Vanderbilt University residence hall.</p> <p>Vanderbilt announced in September 2002 that it would drop the word from the name of Confederate Memorial Hall, which the UDC helped build in 1935. The organization sued a few weeks later, and Davidson County Chancellor Irvin Kilcrease dismissed the suit late last month.</p>

<p>As more than 100,000 blacks gathered in Indianapolis to celebrate their heritage, about 20 descendants of Confederate soldiers huddled at Crown Hill Cemetery to remember theirs.</p> <p>The Sons of Confederate Veterans on Saturday honored 1,616 Southern soldiers buried in a mass grave. The men died while prisoners of war at Camp Morton on the Near Northside during the Civil War.</p>

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - A judge ruled Tuesday that Vanderbilt University can change the name of Confederate Memorial Hall to something it considers less inflammatory. After Vanderbilt announced plans last fall to drop "Confederate" from the building's name, the private university was sued by the Tennessee chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, whose $50,000 donation helped fund construction of the dormitory 70 years ago. Chancellor Irvin Kilcrease, on his last day before retiring from the bench, ruled the university had fulfilled its contractual obligations to the Confederate heritage group by installing a plaque on the side of the...

<p>A D.C. labor lawyer has exercised formidable influence in shaping the University of the District of Columbia's leadership, which is the subject of a city ethics probe into favoritism in UDC's high-paying executive hires.</p> <p>Edmund D. Cooke Jr., a partner in the D.C. law firm of Winston & Strawn, helped his close friend William L. Pollard last year acquire his $200,000-a-year job as president of the District's only public institution of higher learning. Mr. Cooke also helped Ernest Jolly last year secure the school's No. 2 job of executive vice president, which boasts a $131,080 annual salary.</p>

<p>In addition to the wreath he laid at the Tomb of the Unknowns on Memorial Day, President Bush has once again sent a wreath to the hallowed grounds of the Confederate Monument at Arlington National Cemetery.</p> <p>Earlier this year, Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat &#8212; after reading a misleading article in Time magazine &#8212; took to the Senate floor to criticize the administration for having reinstituted wreath layings at the Confederate Monument, after the practice purportedly was dropped by his father in 1990.</p>

Interhall, Vanderbilt&#8217;s Residential Student Government, polled 511 students last month unearthing some surprising results, one being that Vanderbilt&#8217;s women are more liberal than their male counterparts. The study was a random, confidential phone poll on issues such as political affiliation, war and campus safety. On all questions asked, roughly 17 percent had no opinion.&#8220;One of the most surprising things I thought, given that Vanderbilt is perceived as a conservative campus, was for the split to have been nearly 50-50 in terms of political ideology and party affiliation,&#8221; said Josh Burgener, communications director for Interhall. &#8220;The fact that so many students...

<p>Lest we forget, the Confederacy aimed to destroy the United States. Every Confederate soldier, by the mores of his age and ours, deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows. The UDC honors traitors.</p>

<p>The United Daughters of the Confederacy was founded as much to pass down a pro-Confederate version of history as to keep alive the memories of the soldiers who fought for the South, a historian who has written a book about the organization said yesterday.</p>

<p>At about the same time it was deciding to remove the word ''Confederate'' from the name of a residence hall, Vanderbilt University was moving three small, African-American fraternities into a house on its Greek Row for the first time.</p> <p>The university could not have planned that the house would be the one belonging to Kappa Alpha Order, a fraternity suspended by its national headquarters in February for hazing prospective members. In fact, Vanderbilt first offered the house to Delta Gamma, a predominantly white sorority, said David Williams, the university's vice chancellor for student life and general counsel.</p>

<p>In a collision between the imperatives of diversity and history, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy are livid over Vanderbilt University's decision to remove the word ''Confederate'' from the name of a residence hall — and may take the university to court.</p>

A lawsuit against Vanderbilt could be on the horizon because University officials failed to notify the United Daughters of the Confederacy of their plans to rename Confederate Memorial Hall on campus.