Working in a warm spring sun Saturday morning, members of Selma’s Historic Preservation Society worked with pile of bricks as they built a walkway into the red wood and brick building sitting on the river side of Mulberry Ave.

The building, which has been owned by the society for years, is getting more than a facelift.

It’s being resurrected.

What once was a dilapidated building surrounded by rusty machinery is being turned into a showplace worthy of Pilgrimage weekend.

That work has been overshadowed this week by a controversy involving the wording of the Historical Society’s sign.

For roughly a decade the red building on Mulberry had a sign naming the “Confederate Foundry and Naval Works,” the new sign simply names the building “The Foundry.” The change has left some to complain that the society is motivated by political correctness.

It’s a charge that Dave Brooks, who is in charge of the project for the society, refutes.

“We’re going for historical accuracy, this is not the official Confederate Foundry based on Sandborn Map information and deed information for the Foundry itself,” Brooks said.

Pat Godwin, a member of the Order of the Confederate Rose, sees things differently.

“What it all boils down to is political correctness,” she said. “This is what we’ve had to endure in Selma now for years, changing the complexion of our confederate history.”

The issue centers on a single building on what was once a 50 acre site.

The building across Mulberry Ave. from the Old Depot Museum sits on a lot with three other buildings.

The Foundry building is the only part the owned by the Historic Society.

The society researched the area and have maps of site that label the building several different names throughout the years.

“The official Confederate Foundry was located near (what is now) the Old Depot Museum,” Brooks said. “We’re not trying to wipe the history books or the record of confederate history, if anything we’re trying to preserve (it).”

Inside the building, workers have covered the floor in visitor friendly pea gravel and set up some of the old machinery for display.

They’ve put a new roof on the building and are in the process of cleaning the area up and getting it ready for the Pilgrimage tour.

Brooks says people who believe the building is the old Confederate Foundry are misinformed, but understandably so.

The Historic Society’s sign said as much for a decade and he added that local tradition believed it to be in the building.

“Everyone’s got there own opinion, we’re just trying to be historically accurate,” he said.

Brooks added that the society continues to research the site, a point fellow member Jim Wood also brought up.

“We’re continuing to investigate whatever comes from the record,” Wood said. “Our primary reason for calling it The Foundry was we didn’t have documentation.”

Godwin, who has done some research as well, turned to John Hardy’s History of Selma published in 1879.

“Why is it now in March of 2004 they decided to take the word confederate off of it?” she asked. “When the people in Selma realize that our tourists come her for our confederate history and not just civil rights history, than they’ll realize that we have the means for a tourist economy that will help our economic situation.”

Society member George Needham summed up the situation from the society’s perspective.

“We’re trying to save that building and are putting a lot of work in it and we’re going to put a lot of money in it,” he said. “We’re trying to do it in a historically accurate way.

We invested a lot of money in a new sign.

It’s not just confederate.

There was a lot of business there before the war and a lot of business after.”