Four statues ringing the Georgia capitol are dedicated to individuals who fought for white supremacy. We believe these statues should be taken down.
Some people will argue these statutes should remain in place because they tell the story of Georgia history. But none of the statues include the role these men played in advocating and perpetuating a system that led to extreme oppression, violence, and death for millions of Americans.
John B. Gordon: One of the largest statues that stands at the Capitol pays tribute to Confederate Gen. John Brown Gordon. He is commemorated wearing his Confederate uniform, on his horse, posed beneath the Gold Dome. Gordon, who commanded half of Gen. Lee’s troops during the Civil War, stated that slavery was “morally, socially and politically right.” During the Reconstruction era, Gordon was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan for the state of Georgia. Gordon also served as Georgia’s governor and later its U.S. senator. This is a heroic tribute to a former Ku Klux Klan leader, a man who fought for the enslavement of black people. Does it belong in front of the building that represents democracy in our state?
Eugene Talmadge: “A safe but progressive administrator of public trust,” is engraved on the statue of former Gov. Eugene Talmadge at the east side of the Capitol. Talmadge served three terms as governor and won a fourth term, but he died before taking office. FBI files released for the first time in 2007 linked Talmadge to the infamous Moore’s Ford Bridge lynching. Referred to as America’s last mass lynching, the brutal events at Moore’s Ford Bridge in Monroe, Georgia, took the lives of two African- American couples. “It's fair to say,” said a University of Georgia history professor when the files were released. “He's one of the most virulently racist governors the state has ever had.”
In 1941’s “Cocking Affair,” Talmadge ousted University of Georgia Dean William Cocking because of his attempts to integrate the university. Talmadge accused the professor of taking money from the Rosenwald Fund, which funded projects to improve education for black people across the South, and referred to the organization as “Jew money for niggers.” Talmadge’s firing of Cocking led to one of the worst crises in Georgia’s higher education history. “Before God, friend,” Talmadge said during a stump speech, “the niggers will never go to a school which is white while I am governor.” Is this man deserving of a statue outside our state Capitol?
Richard B. Russell: The larger-than-life statue of former Georgia Sen. Richard Brevard Russell Jr. looks like it’s holding up the Gold Dome. Russell was a senator from 1933 to 1971. He worked vigorously against civil rights throughout his career. Russell opposed anti-lynching legislation in 1935 and is perhaps best known for his opposition to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which finally ended legal discrimination in public places and outlawed employment discrimination. “We will resist to the bitter end any measure or any movement which would have a tendency to bring about social equality and intermingling and amalgamation of the races in our Southern states,” he said during a 60-day filibuster that failed to defeat the landmark legislation.
Inscriptions on Russell’s monument include none of this history. Instead, there is a quote that misrepresents Russell’s views on race: “All of us of every race, creed, and political persuasion share a common heritage a written constitution” it reads. In fact, Russell used the Constitution to justify segregation and the racial inequality it created. “I do not believe …” he wrote, “our Constitution to compel one group to share its rights with another at the same time and in the same place against its will.” The truncated quote beneath Russell’s statue distorts the legacy of a man who dedicated his life to opposing equal rights for all races.
Joseph E. Brown: The statue of former Georgia Gov. Joseph Emerson Brown and his wife was installed at the Gold Dome in 1928, more than three decades after he died. Smith, a strong supporter of the Confederacy and of slavery, was a millionaire who made huge profits using black convicts for labor for his coal mining business. He feared that the end of slavery would lead to racial equality and the mixing of races. He also served as a justice on Georgia’s Supreme Court, during which time he wrote an opinion that upheld the state’s ban on interracial marriage, writing that such marriages were “productive of evil, and evil only, without any corresponding good.”
In 2013, a campaign was started to take down the statue of Thomas Watson, a racist, anti-Semitic Georgia politician. In 2014, after standing in front of our state capital for 82 years, the statue was removed and moved to a largely fenced off area across the street. In 2015, a statue of Georgia native Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was finally erected on the capitol grounds, 47 years after his assassination. Change can happen.
Taking down these statues at our Capitol will not change our past, but it could change our future. We are sending a terrible message when our state Capitol building is surrounded by monuments celebrating men who fought to preserve slavery, lynching, and segregation.
Georgia’s history is graced by finer champions, and by higher causes than racism and religious hate. We urge the Georgia Legislature to take down these statues. Replace them with monuments honoring some of our many great leaders — monuments that can inspire us and represent Georgia honorably to the world.
