Reconstruction and Memorial Day
Program Information
Program: Hollywood: Richmond's Garden CemeterySegment Number: 7 (Watch entire program)
Duration: 00:05:57
Year Produced: 2004
Description:
After the war white Richmonders, sought comfort within the confines of reconstruction. With little or no money at hand, they tried to regain their composure any way they could. Many citizens turned their attention towards Hollywood.
Richmond boasts a cemetery, named Hollywood because of the natural proliferation of holly trees on the grounds, whose history, beauty and tranquility have made it a local treasure. Hollywood Cemetery lives out its original intention for the living and the dead. It is a mature green space with a commanding view of the James River that serves the public as a natural retreat within the confines of the city. It is the final resting place for two U.S. presidents, the only confederate president, several confederate generals, a Supreme Court justice, writers and local celebrities - as well as many people who are not famous at all. In addition to its legendary status in Richmond and beyond, Hollywood remains a working cemetery.
For more information visit: http://ideastations.org/hollywoodTranscript
NARRATOR:
After the war white Richmonders, sought comfort within the confines of reconstruction. With little or no money at hand, they tried to regain their composure any way they could. Many citizens turned their attention towards Hollywood.
Suzanne Savory:
“Following the war there was a Hollywood memorial association that took on refurbishment, the burial and the honoring of those soldiers that indeed lost their lives.”
“This organization was similar of those around the country of women who would ban together to handle their lost sons and fathers and uncles and brothers.”
“They raised money through bazaars, through benefits, trying to make sure all of the individual graves were marked. And they then took on larger issues of honoring with memorial events and eventually with the commission of the pyramid.”
“The pyramid in Hollywood Cemetery is a ninety foot pyramid made of James River granite that is one of the most prominent features in the cemetery, and I think it was positioned as such that it would be one of the first things that you would see. And it would be an eye catching monument as you are moving around the cemetery: you don’t even have to be in it, you just can be driving by.”
“It is a massive marker to those who are interred in Hollywood and certainly Richmond as the confederate capital had a significant role to play in honoring the lost.”
NARRATOR:
More and more, people stood graveside remembering family and friends who were victims of the war. What started as a personal endeavor grew throughout Richmond and across the south, until it blossomed into a national event.
Bryan Green: (Photo of Memorial Day crowds)
“The actual origins of confederate memorial day are somewhat hazy. It’s like anything, when you start to talk about the first the best the fastest, everybody’s got an entry. The sort of broader origins of confederate memorial day come from just a need to… again people to regularly visiting the cemetery to clean up gravesites to take care of them.”
“The more particular origins in Richmond come from the 31st of May which was believed to be the first day that cannon-fire was heard in Richmond during the civil war.”
“And they were huge days. It was not uncommon to have ten thousand people come on a memorial day, to come and do a mass clean up and decoration and picnicking. I mean the city turned out for theses things. They were enormous events.”
“Now… there are other cities in the south that claim they had the first Memorial Day, I mean lots of people make this claim, and there’re different reasons, sometimes it was the first engagement. But basically all of these dates cluster around the end of May.”
“What’s interesting is that Memorial Day as we know it now, is a federal holiday, and in many ways you can read that as an attempt to sort of codify this sort of informal thing and sort of pull this together and assign a general date to it. It’s not that different from president’s day. Taking Lincoln and Washington, picking an arbitrary date in the middle and assigning it there.”
“But it’s really an outgrowth of a longer tradition of tending the graves in the spring.”
TOURIST DESTINATION:
Bryan Green: (Visuals Vtine Hwood from the 1870s-Ponds, curbing, mausoleums, people visiting)
“And this is when we start to see the Hollywood that we know today…coming into place: new curbing, you see some larger Mausoleums being built.”
“And then moving into the early twentieth century actually see the creation of a large number of water features in the cemetery; a lot of the lower vales being flooded to create ponds.”
“And it’s really at this point when there are enough burials there, there are enough people coming and going that it really is taking on a life of its own and really becoming an icon.
“And really starts for the first time to really become a tourist destination.”
POST CARD: (ACTOR)
This beautiful Necropolis was first opened for the “tenancy of the dead” about the year 1857.
The view from this point is unsurpassed
Here nature has done her part in the hills, valleys, rivulets, and woods… and the art has embellished, without rendering formal, the beauties of nature.
The landscape embraces every variety---forest and placid stream; hills crowned with woods or with steeples;
And art has embellished, without rendering formal, the beauties of nature.
and almost at your feet, the graceful curve of a broad canal.”
Suzanne Savory:
“Hollywood Cemetery also promotes itself as a business. And you are indeed interested bringing people to your location. Cameras were not quite as popular, the polaroids weren’t around…”
“So that you could remember where you’ve been, tell your family where you’ve been and you can spread the word, the concept of postcards happened in Richmond, it happened across the country.”
“And so there was a number that were developed for Hollywood Cemetery featuring the confederate memorial areas, the rural or garden areas as well as views from the river.”
“If you were going to go to Richmond that was certainly one of the places you were going to stop and see. That was a highlight of your trip.”
“You may have had family or friends or someone interred there, this was again a memento and a way to remember what you had lost.
Virginia Standards
5th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » USI.15th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » USI.10
6th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » USII.1
6th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » USII.3
11th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » VUS.1
11th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » VUS.7
11th Grade SOLs » History-Social Science » VUS.8