Sad News From Georgia...Just Kidding.
More news from the South, this one featuring an "Imperial Wizard" of the KKK:
Someone did.
"An “imperial wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan died Friday after an hours-long standoff with police, WALB reports.
J.J. Harper exchanged fire with police during an 8-hour standoff in Dooly County following a domestic dispute. He was a well-known and active member of the KKK, law enforcement confirmed. “imperial wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan died Friday after an hours-long standoff with police, WALB reports.
J.J. Harper exchanged fire with police during an 8-hour standoff in Dooly County following a domestic dispute. He was a well-known and active member of the KKK, law enforcement confirmed.
During the standoff, “Harper exited and entered his residence multiple times wearing a bullet resistant vest, gas mask, and other weapons to include a long gun and handguns,” police said in a statement to the Telegraph.
Police told the station that during the standoff, Harper had vowed, “Someone’s going to die today.”
Someone did.
J. J. Harper, exercising his first amendment rights at a previous event.
According to Macon news station WGXA.tv, the confrontation took place on the day before a court-ordered division of property was to take place between Harper and his wife, who were divorcing. Well, it should be a lot easier to divide the property now.
Forgive me for being so contemptuous of this idiot, but what was the last time that a left leaning person in this country went out in such a pathetic manner?
Comments
Park gift shops have expunged the rebel battle flag from playing cards and children's jigsaw puzzles. The Confederate Hall museum, which once displayed military artifacts and sculptures, now focuses on the mountain's geology.
Even the once gung-ho celebration of Southern pride, the Stone Mountain Lasershow Spectacular, a nightly summertime extravaganza that projects digital lasers on the mountainside, has evolved: It now superimposes an image of King, who invoked the mountain so long ago, on the rock face.
Even in Georgia, the desire for money means that a park that is targeted to white supremacists has become a very bad idea. It's good to see some progress here.
It was a tragic mistake when, after the war, in a mistaken attempt to put it behind them, people allowed the former Confederates to spin a malignant fantasy portraying the Civil War as some sort of noble cause, and its perpetrators as anything but murderous traitors. We have been paying the price for that rewriting of history ever since, and every time that someone minimizes the truth in any way, they help the damage of racism live on.
However, as you point out, the second founding of the KKK took place at Stone Mountain, which makes it a historic site. No matter what happens, it's impossible to unlink the mountain from the Klan. Since the KKK was able to take over many local and several state governments during the 1920s, Stone Mountain thus becomes a major historic site: something both very, very influential and very, very evil happened here in 1915, and we have a duty to remember it.
Then we have the State of Georgia defacing a large giant monolith in order to honor the traitors and white supremacy, and doing so in opposition to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The sheer scale of the efforts makes it qualitatively different than other monuments to treason. That's part of the reason MLK referred to Stone Mountain in his "I Have a Dream" speech.
To tell the truth about Stone Mountain, that sculpture needs to be preserved in a museum. You could show a small-scale model of the piece, but I think that would, as you say, minimize the truth, as you don't get the full impact of a nine-story-high figure from a two-foot-high scale model. Since I have no idea how you would get the sculpture off the mountain and into a museum, I would just have to build the anti-Confederate museum around the mountain.
It's complex, so I'll just agree to disagree here.
The first time I lived in Atlanta, I worked not that far from Stone Mountain, and even being close to the place made me feel ill. We certainly need to remember the hateful, violent movement that came out of the meeting there, shoving it down people's throats if necessary, until they accept the truth and agree to change. But anything like this should be preserved only in a context where it is made clear what a monstrous history it has had.