United Daughters of the Confederacy in the context of "Ku Klux Klan"

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in Williamsburg, Virginia. Its 301-acre (122 ha) historic area includes several hundred restored or recreated buildings from the 18th century, when the city served as the capital of the colonial era Colony of Virginia. The district includes 17th-century, 19th-century, Colonial Revival, and more recent structures and reconstructions. The historic area includes three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets, which are designed to represent how Williamsburg existed in the 18th century. Costumed employees work and dress as people did during the colonial era, sometimes using colonial grammar and diction.

In the late 1920s, the restoration of colonial Williamsburg was championed as a way to celebrate patriots and the early history of the United States. Proponents included W. A. R. Goodwin and other community leaders, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Colonial Dames of America, United Daughters of the Confederacy, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, also known as the Lost Cause Myth or simply as the Lost Cause, is an American pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. First articulated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the Southern United States into the 21st century.

The Lost Cause reached a high level of popularity at the turn of the 20th century, when proponents memorialized Confederate veterans who were dying off. It reached a high level of popularity again during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to growing public support for racial equality. Through actions such as building prominent Confederate monuments and writing history textbooks, Lost Cause organizations (including the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans) sought to ensure that Southern whites would know what they called the "true" narrative of the Civil War and would therefore continue to support white supremacist policies such as Jim Crow laws. White supremacy is a central feature of the Lost Cause narrative.