England, 62, retired this week from the $34,700 state job, and it wasn’t the friendliest of departures: State records show she was suspended for three days last month for refusing to sign a performance review, and she said she filed a racial discrimination complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A spokeswoman said the Department of Finance declined to comment on the personnel matter.

After all those years working among the Davis family’s furniture and belongings, England wishes the museum would take a broader view of history. That slavery was a catalyst for the Civil War “is sort of stated around,” she said.

“Tell it like it is. Just tell it like it is. This happened. This is what is known to have happened. Give it as absolute truth as you can….. Until that, you are painting a false narrative that this was a gala — no, there were some ugly things that happened,” she said.

Explanatory displays at the museum, where the first Confederate flag still flies outside, mostly discuss the furnishings and how rooms were used, and make little to no mention of slavery, which Davis promoted as “a moral, a social and a political blessing.”

The residence was salvaged over a century ago by The White House Association, a state-chartered women’s organization that still owns its contents and remains involved, even as Finance Department employees staff the site. The legislature mandated in a 1923 law that the state-owned building serve as a “reminder for all time of how pure and great were southern statesmen and southern valor.”

It would be better, England believes, if the historic site was managed by the Department of Archives and History.

The museum’s curator, Bob Wieland, said Friday that he would ask the board to respond to questions about how the museum is run, but he doesn’t think the museum depicts an overly rosy view of Davis.

“Jefferson Davis has never been called great in the house. He was the president of the Confederate States of America. We would say no more, no less than that,” Wieland said.

England, who would sometimes give tours, said guides only gave information such as the dates (February-May 1861) when Montgomery served as the Confederacy’s capital.

The museum has made some changes over the years. She said there once was an area called a “shrine” to Davis. The gift shop stopped selling Confederate flags, except for stickers of the design that was used when the Confederate capital was in Montgomery.

“They have taken steps. It might be baby steps,” she said.

England, who lives in Marion, said she is a distant cousin of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist shot and killed by a state trooper in 1965. His death helped inspire the voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act. England was a young child at the time, but still recalls the commotion and pain.