This might be a good time to recall that the white citizens of Selma, AL paid for a new bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest (a key figure in the early KKK) to be publicly displayed in the year 2000. Not coincidentally, that was the same year Selma elected its first black mayor. https://t.co/T6FdQlBpdS
— Seth Cotlar (@SethCotlar) February 8, 2022
But HISTORY! is not a get-out-of-ignominy-free pass…
Georgia’s GOP-controlled Senate has voted to erect a monument to U.S. Supreme Court Justice and Georgia native Clarence Thomas. The vote followed a heated debate, with some Black senators saying that Thomas' legal opinions have hurt African Americans. https://t.co/GNKHwvmz9v
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 8, 2022
Muscogee historians say a statue of their ancestor, Chief Tomochichi, that is set to be installed in Atlanta’s Peace Park is disrespectful and presents a historically inaccurate conception of Native Americans. https://t.co/9QpsSwGNbp
— The Associated Press (@AP) February 7, 2022
…Atlanta plans to install a statue of a Native American man atop a 110-foot (34-meter) column in its new Peace Park, where it will tower over statues of 17 civil rights icons, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Developer Rodney Mims Cook Jr. calls Chief Tomochichi “a co-founder of Georgia” who prevented massacres by warmly inviting British Gen. James Oglethorpe to colonize his people’s land in 1733…
But Cook didn’t ask the Muscogee about their ancestor, and now that he’s unveiled the $300,000 bronze statue, historians say it’s all wrong. “Disrespectful” and “incredibly inappropriate” are some of the reactions three tribal historians shared with The Associated Press.
They say the nearly naked figure presents an offensive and historically inaccurate conception of Native Americans as primitive savages, and glorifies a heavily mythologized figure blamed by the Muscogee for initiating a century of ethnic cleansing. They also say that Atlanta is erasing them again, acting as if they vanished without a fight after handing over their land and heritage…
The city council unanimously approved a plan in 2020 that would align Tomochichi with statues of the late Rep. John Lewis, Coretta Scott King and Rodney Mims Cook Sr., a white Republican legislator who stood out in Atlanta as a civil rights ally.
The statue recently unveiled at a temporary spot outside Cook’s Millennium Gate Museum portrays Tomochichi making a wide, welcoming gesture with his right hand while using his left to clutch a bear pelt that fails to cover his rear end…
patrick II
If they have to lose some of their Robert E Lee statues, putting up a statue of Thomas is almost as big of a fuck you.
Redshift
We have an effort in progress here in my county in Northern Virginia to identify all the public things (roads, parks, buildings, etc.) that are named in honor of Confederates and rename them. Most of the proposals are to have them… most named after people. I suspect that’s going to be a hallmark is this era, though it will effectively be invisible – naming more blandly so as not to take a chance that you’ll honor a person who may become an embarrassment in ways we haven’t thought about yet. (And really, I’m okay with that.)
delk
I bet there will be a lot of coke cans at the Thomas monument.
Jay
Alberta is lifting all it’s Covid Mandates as of midnight, despite having more daily cases than BC, with 2/3rds of the population,
and shortly after the announcement, the Flu Trux Klan shut down the border crossings again,
making it absolutely clear that the Flu Trux Klan don’t really care about Covid Mandates, they are just White Supremacists and Nazis.
eclare
That is bizarre to me to honor someone who gave away the land of Native Americans. And in the same park as statues to John Lewis and MLK? I don’t get it, not enough representation in planning meetings, I guess.
eclare
@delk: I like that idea! Also the Coke museum is in downtown ATL, grab some merch and pile it up!
NotMax
@Jay
Temporary tax of one hundred dollars Canadian per liter on diesel fuel for any non-farm vehicle above a certain weight with Canadian registration.
//
Jay
@NotMax:
Over 95% of Canadian Truckers and all Trucking Companies, ( not some of the 1 man “trucking company”),are fully vaxxed and don’t care about the mandates.
In BC there are over 150,000 trucks and “truckers”, yet in the BC protests last weekend, the Flu Trux Klan could muster less than 50 semis. They were way outnumbered by “participating” redneck pickups and SUVs.
The thing is that 20 trucks, when the Cops won’t do anything, and a 100 screaming white men, can shut down a city.
prostratedragon
@eclare: Would some enthusiastic site preparation along those lines change any minds? Probably not, though the police burden might get to be large.
Burnspbesq
@Jay:
The Feds need to start aggressively enforcing the law, using the military if necessary. Whose country is it, anyway?
Jay
@NotMax:
Jacqui called me into Receiving today, because 2 truck drivers were ranting, almost jumping up and down.
Jacqui is a very “cold” person, focused on the task, the people not so much. She always tells me to take my cart out of there, even though I have never, ever left a cart there, ( but some people do).
She called me because she thought I was the best person in the store at talking people down.
The two guys, had lost several thousand dollars over the weekend because of the Flu Trux Klan antics, and were just feeding and amping on each others anger.
I listened, engaged, calmed them down, then sent them upstarts to the lunchroom where we have a freezer full of icecream.
prostratedragon
Was watching this week’s Finding Your Roots, one of the subjects of which was Tony Danza.
Gates’s team established that one of Danza’s grand uncles owned a bar in Brooklyn in the early 1900s, located at 2048 Broadway in Brooklyn.
The story got some spice from a news clipping of a police raid on the joint as a suspected brothel. Seems that the police found a hidden passageway connecting the bar at 2048 to a building used as a hotel next door, at 2046, where lived some women considered by the powers that be to be “of questionable character.”
To wit, theme from Wang Kar-Wai’s 2046:
Polonaise version
Rumba version
Jay
@Burnspbesq:
it’s not a Federal thing, unless the cops calls on the City, the City calls on the Province, and then the Province calls on the Feds.
When the City Cops are taking selfies and “Terrorist fist bumping” with the Terrorists, there is not a lot that can be done.
Burnspbesq
@Jay:
if that’s what the law says, then the law is an ass. And I suspect that an overwhelming majority of Canadians agree. Y’all are generally not stupid, despite occasional aberrations like box lacrosse and Celine Dion.
prostratedragon
By brand new nonagenarian John Williams:
Jay
@Burnspbesq:
our Police Forces for the most part, are subjected to the same illnesses, as yours, often by the same actors and factors.
they are just more polite and less likely to murder.
on paper, they are Civic employees subject to City Hall but in reality, they are a power to themselves.
like I have pointed out many times, at work, if the Flu Trux Klan were instead, a BLM, Indigenous or Environmental protest instead, we would have been able to smell the tear gas and police brutality from the parking lot.
There were 5 arrests at the Vancouver protests, all of counter protestors, despite over 30 assaults by the Flu Trux Klan. One of the arrests was of a Terminal Food Bank volunteer hauling a cart of eggs back to the food bank, ( eggs are rationed because of the floods that devastated the egg farms in the valley, 2 dozen per customer, so you have to go from store to store if you want or need more), because of 1 report of an egg thrown at a Flu Trux Klan participants vehicle.
mrmoshpotato
@prostratedragon: Good piece, but I detect a disturbing lack of T. Rex.
Baud
Maybe NYC should put up a statue of Trump sucking Putin’s dick.
Jay
@Baud:
full Balloon Juice after Dark.
evodevo
Yah, about that Tomochichi statue…that would be the equivalent of a statue of MLK in shorts or Rosa Parks in a bathing suit…I guess showing him in normal Muskogee garb was too detailed or something? Too difficult for the sculptor? What?
( link to Catlin Creek portrait didn’t post )
Ten Bears
Bronze has a relatively low melting point, just 900C.
To paraphrase a favorite: everyone stops to watch when a tall one tips over, even the hippies.
Falling a 110 foot
treeconcrete column, that’d be something to see …debbie
@Jay:
Those trucker protests have got to be killing air quality.
SFAW
@Baud:
Maybe they can borrow the one Putin has in his office in the Kremlin?
Another Scott
Hmm. Rooting for injuries?
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Anne Laurie
If you read the linked article, the White man paying for the new statue decided to use contemporary British propaganda showing ‘Chief Tomochichi’ as a humble half-dressed savage tripping over himself to give his peoples’ homeland away to the superior White-skinned invaders. There was pushback even at the time; we have more accurate presentations, Tomochichi dressed not that differently than the non-uniformed Brits, because his people had been in contact with Europeans for some years. And besides, the Muskogee say he wasn’t a ‘Chief’ in those terms, and didn’t have the right to give away that land. But the guy paying for the ‘Peace Park’ seems to have his own agenda, and it didn’t involve historical accuracy, to put it mildly.
Lacuna Synecdoche
AP via Anne Laurie @ Top:
Which is exactly why Republicans want to honor him. To the GOP, that’s a feature.
BruceFromOhio
Now that is some impressive whitemansplaining.
patrick II
@Baud:
Putin would like that too much. I don’t want to do him any favors.