From New Orleans to Atlanta to New York, local officials and their constituents—not judges—are deciding what to do with Confederate monuments. But when a court was pulled into a dispute between Vanderbilt University and United Daughters of the Confederacy of Tennessee over the name of a campus building, the result was a curious mix.
The state appeals court in 2005 held that the university was bound by contract to keep the name Confederate Memorial Hall. It was built in the 1930s as a women’s dormitory with a $50,000 donation from UDC in return for naming the building and granting free rent to descendants of Confederate fighters.
