Recommended Reading: Goodby Alabama Hoop Skirts

About an annual "Birmingham Belles" event at Arlington in Birmingham:

Barry McNealy, education consultant for the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, grew up near the plantation home and toured Arlington Historic House as an elementary school student.

McNealy doesn’t mince words about romanticizing the Old South. “When you get down to brass tacks, it’s about white supremacy,” he said. “If we can’t have that moment of clarity as a society, we’re going to continue to have little girls dress up in hoop skirts and twirl around and believe they’re doing something laudable.”

From a Washington Post story about the annual event at a lookalike Plantation Home--Arlington--- in Birmingham.

     The irony here is that while Birmingham had more than its share of modern civil rights sins, it is a post Civil War City. I doubt there were many hoop skirts in the gritty industrial steel-making city in the late 1800's when the city formed.