New Orleans Confederate Museum In Fight Over Ownership
By Ed Ballam

NEW ORLEANS, La. - Believing that they could be evicted from the Confederate Memorial Hall they've occupied for 110 years, Confederate Museum officials are poised to do battle with the University of New Orleans (UNO) Foundation.
The foundation, a non-profit support group of the university which is building the Ogden Museum of Southern Art on three sides of the Confederate Museum, claims ownership of the Confederate hall.
Confederate Museum officials say they hold ownership rights to the building. UNO, on the other hand, says it has performed at least two title searches and is the new owner, having paid $425,000 just a few months ago to Tulane University which held the title.
Thus the lines are drawn for what could be a protracted legal battle over the building ownership and, ultimately, the fate of the Confederate Museum, the second largest Confederate collection in the world. Its holdings are only bested by the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond.
The Confederate Museum's artifacts include the personal belongings of Jefferson Davis donated by his wife, and nearly 100,000 other items, 5,000 which are on display at most times. The remainder are housed at Tulane for research purposes.
Confederate Museum officials are digging in hard because they believe if UNO convinces a judge that UNO owns the building, the Confederates will be handed their kepis and shown the door.
"I have tried to negotiate with the chancellor of the school to see if there is a way we can both co-exist, but they don't want any part of us," said attorney James Carriere, vice president of Memorial Hall Museum Inc., who is helping with the fight against the university. "They say we're too Confederate."
But that's not true, said Elizabeth M. Williams, executive director of the University of New Orleans Foundation.
"We think it's a very valuable and important collection," Williams said. "…Flags are an art form of the South. Battle flags are very important parts of the culture and art of the South."
Williams said it is possible that the museum could stay in the building as a tenant and pay rent with no change in the collection or the way the museum is run.
"I'm not willing to walk away from negotiations," Williams said.
Carriere said that he thinks there is no reason to negotiate, in terms of the building's ownership.
"We'll fight them tooth and nail on that one," Carriere said, noting that the Confederate Museum has the lawsuit in readiness and is prepared to file it in local court to settle the real estate title dispute and have the court determine who really owns the building. "We feel we have the superior legal argument here."
The dispute became public in a May 8 Times Picayune newspaper story. Writer Doug MacCash quoted a Tulane official as saying occupation by the Confederate Museum was a stipulation of the building's donation to Tulane.
UNO had been negotiating quietly with the Confederate Museum to build a small hallway-like tunnel through the museum's basement to connect the expansive Ogden Museum's buildings which surround the Confederate hall on three sides.
One art museum wing is the former Howard Memorial Library, now the Patrick F. Taylor Library. The other wing is a new five-story contemporary building. The tunnel access is necessary to complete the art museum which is to open within a year. The Confederate Museum wanted a rear fire escape in exchange for the basement tunnel.
Williams said the UNO Foundation bought the Confederate Museum when negotiations for the tunnel "broke down" and there was a fear the Ogden Museum opening would be delayed.
Carriere said the negotiations broke down only after UNO made its move to buy the building.
Williams said UNO Foundation received an unwarranted deed from the Howard Memorial Library Association when it bought the building, which was appraised for $650,000, for $435,000.
"We had a title search done on it and they [the library association] had a title search done and we convinced ourselves they had a good title and they sold it to us," Williams said.
Carriere said no one has a deed to the property, not even the Confederate Museum. And that's the biggest problem.
"That's why we're going to have to go to court," he said. The Confederate Museum is relying on the intent of the original owner and subsequent affirmations indicating that the founder wanted it to be forever a repository of Confederate artifacts. (See related story.)
Ironically, in the wake of the deed dispute, negotiations for the tunnel have resumed, Carriere said.
"I have no animosity toward them," Carriere said. "There's no reason why we can't continue negotiating. They want the tunnel and we want the fire escape."
According to Carriere, the museum was built in 1891 by Frank T. Howard as a place for Confederate artifacts to be preserved and displayed. It also honored his veteran father with "an object which he profoundly revered and with these army organizations which were bound to his heart by the tenderest associations."
In his original gift of the museum building to The Louisiana Historical Association, a forerunner of Memorial Hall Inc. and the Confederate Museum, Howard wrote that the building "while it is an adjunct of the Howard Memorial Library Association, is to be set apart forever for the use of your organization."
The Jan. 8, 1891, gift document directed the collection and care of Confederate memorabilia.
Carriere said the Confederate Museum title and its ownership by Memorial Hall Museum Inc. was further supported by a 1931 document that gave the Howard Library permission to use the museum's basement.
"The Howard family acknowledged us as the owner of the building," Carriere said. "There's no doubt in my mind that we have the superior legal case."
In what seems to be an unacceptable compromise, at least for the Confederate Museum, Williams said her UNO Foundation can envision the building as a transition area between the art of the Old South displayed in one wing and the art of the New South in the opposite wing. She sees a Civil War display between the two buildings as a natural and fitting transition.
But would uniforms, weapons and Confederate battle flags have a place in the Ogden Museum?
"I don't know," Williams said. "We have our own needs for space. Some of the artifacts are art and some are not. I don't think a pocket knife or a canteen is art, but perhaps there is some compromise."
If a compromise is not reached, and the Confederate Museum is forced to relocate, Daniel Bristol of Metairie, La., has offered a possible solution. He recently wrote to Beauvoir, the Jefferson Davis Shrine in Biloxi, Miss., suggesting that the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library might be an appropriate place for the Confederate Museum collection.
However, Patricia Ricci, the acting director and curator, who has worked for the Confederate Museum for 22 years, doesn't mince words when it comes to the possibility of closing, moving or blending collections.
In a May 7 news release, Ricci wrote: "The Confederate Museum will not surrender to the UNO's narrow-minded vision of political correctness. The Confederate Museum is part of the heritage of Louisiana and will be preserved in its historic home."
Ricci said her museum welcomes the Ogden Museum as its new neighbor, but it regrets that UNO will not co-exist with the Confederate Museum.
In a telephone interview, Ricci said that the museum, which had more than 20,000 visitors last year, also owns uniforms of Braxton Bragg, Albert Blanchard, Franklin Gardner and others. About 85 percent of the collection was donated by the Howard family and these artifacts have remained in the collection, as the family requested.
Ricci said that Memorial Hall Museum Inc. is a non-profit organization with 14 board members that runs the Confederate Museum. The museum is supported financially by revenues from admissions and receives occasional donations.
Carriere said that the funds to proceed with the lawsuit and to settle the title dispute would come from the museum's coffers. The board recently hired a high-profile New Orleans law firm to help with the battle and the legal costs are going to be substantial.
Tax-deductible donations are requested to help defray legal costs and may be sent to Memorial Hall Foundation Inc., 929 Camp St., New Orleans, LA 70130. For information call the museum at (504) 523-4522.