THE GREATEST DAY OF THE TYLER UDC - It was estimated some 5,000 or more were gathered on the grounds of Oakwood Cemetery, among them a number of choirs from all the area churches. Children dressed in white scattered flowers over the newly restored Confederate dead plot. For decades to come, this would be remembered as the happiest occasion the Mollie Moore Davis U.D.C. Chapter ever experienced. The celebration was more than a veneration of the dead but also a lesson in the cause of White Supremacy. 

It was a matter of Southern theological pride to be among the slave-owning class, and it was supported by “the overwhelming majority of churches and ministers” in the South, especially in Tyler, Texas. Southerners engaged in “the white man’s burden” or the “Lord’s work” would soon be stunned by the defeat of the Confederacy and the end of their way of life. “And so after the Civil War Blacks and whites simply went their separate ways,” Texas College professor of history and religion Edward J. Robinson says. “It’s called de facto segregation.”