Our Westminster

Abstract Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia is one of the most iconic cemeteries in the United States, featuring an array of significant memorials and graves relating to the US Civil War. The Hollywood Memorial Association, a group of middle and upper-class white women, would play an outsize role in remaking Richmond as Confederate holy ground. They began with Hollywood Cemetery itself—which they came to call “Our Westminster”—establishing it as the city’s preeminent memorial site. Drawing on research at the HMA archives in Richmond, this article examines Hollywood Cemetery and related sites around Richmond as material secular forms that were sacralized through the work of the HMA . There are two facets considered here: the first is the way that the Confederacy was sacralized in order to authorize the “Lost Cause” myth propagated by Confederates to obscure the real motives and causes that led to Southern secession. The second is the distinct way that whiteness itself was sacralized. The Hollywood Memorial Association was a key player in the creation of a sacred secular material culture that glorified white supremacy and helped to undo the halting efforts at equalizing Black citizens during Reconstruction.