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Thread ID: 18819 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2005-06-25
2005-06-25 00:01 | User Profile
Of hate and heritage Georgia's statue of politician and publisher Tom Watson sparks a debate over prejudice and the past STEVEN H. POLLAK Jewish Renaissance Media
The statue of Tom Watson (1856-1922), a journalist, lawyer and U.S. congressman standing in front of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta has become a subject of controversy. His anti-Semitic, anti-black writings belie the description of him on the plaque as "a champion of right." Photo by Charles Rafshoon Just outside the Georgia Capitol stands a 12-foot-tall statue of Tom Watson, a turn-of-the-20th-century figure memorialized as "editor, lawyer, historian, author, orator, statesman. Author of rural free delivery. A champion of right who never faltered in the cause."
Even larger letters hewn into the stone say of the former U. S. senator and one-time presidential candidate: "Honor's Path He Trod."
But in recent months, a new, more complex view of Watson has begun to emerge, one a little bit closer to that of the collective Southern Jewish memory that remembers him most clearly for his virulent anti-Semitic writings that contributed to the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank.
Ironically, the reappraisal was intensified by the comments of Watson's grandson, Tom Watson Brown, a lawyer and minority owner of the Atlanta Falcons and a member of two statewide historical commissions.
Late last summer, in an interview with Georgia's largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Brown dredged up an idea first put forward by his grandfather: that Jews had bribed the governor to commute Frank's death sentence and that the lynching was triggered by public outrage over the action.
"Maybe the Frank people should apologize for bribing the governor," Brown said, responding to a suggestion that citizens of Marietta, the town just outside Atlanta where Frank was lynched, should apologize for that act.
The comment and ensuing protests by an Atlanta rabbi and a group of academics have opened the door to legislative hearings on whether the statue should remain or the plaque should be modified to reflect Watson's bigotry.
Flag's symbolic meaning The debate mirrors an ongoing discussion of whether to remove the Confederate symbol from the Georgia state flag. It touches not only deep-seated feelings about relations between the majority and minority communities but also attitudes about a past that, as in so much of the South, continues to be vividly present.
Historical presence Jews in Georgia have always been well aware of the Frank case.
Convicted of murdering 14-year-old Mary Phagan at the pencil factory where he worked, Frank was sentenced to death. But in 1915, Gov. John Slaton commuted that to life in prison. Shortly thereafter, a mob took Frank from a Milledge-ville, Ga., prison in the middle of the night and lynched him in Marietta.
Based on a signed affidavit from another employee of the pencil factory who said he saw a janitor carrying Phagan's body into the basement, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles pardoned Frank in 1986, citing the state's failure to protect him while in custody but not absolving him of the crime.
Interest in the case has grown because of two modern plays that examine the incident: Alfred Uhry's "Parade," which had a one-week run this summer at a major Atlanta theater, and a new work, "The Lynching of Leo Frank," that was performed in Marietta.
Around the same time, Stephan Goldfarb, an Atlanta historian, posted on the Web a list of people, including prominent community leaders such as Watson, whom he said were responsible for the lynching and for concealing the names of those who took part in it.
Watson's feelings toward Frank were plain. During a yearlong editorial campaign in his newspaper, The Jeffersonian, Watson called Frank a "satyr-faced New York Jew" and a "rich, depraved Sodomite Jew." The U.S. attorney general reportedly thought about prosecuting Watson for the articles.
Watson's tirades came as part of a character shift in his later life. Once viewed as a hero by Georgia blacks, he became a staunch supporter of "white supremacy." He lashed out at blacks, saying, "We have to lynch (blacks) occasionally, and flog (them) now and then." In addition, Watson regularly denounced Catholicism, calling it a "jackassical faith" and playing on non-Catholics' fears of America losing its independence to papal powers.
Watson was born in 1856 on his family's plantation near Thomson, Ga., and built a law practice in the town. He served for a year in the Georgia House of Representatives, then won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1890. He lost the seat after one term and was defeated in another bid in 1894 in a pair of extraordinarily crooked elections. In some counties, his opponent received more votes than the number of registered voters.
But Watson wouldn't stay down. He was nominated for vice president of the United States on the Populist Party ticket with William Jennings Bryant in 1896. Watson ran as the party's presidential candidate in 1904 and 1908, losing both races. During this period, he crusaded for black causes and cultivated the black vote. At one point, he personally protected a black preacher from a lynching by hiding him from the mob.
But somewhere along the way, Watson changed. He began to speak of broadening the Populist Party to incorporate voters who had long aligned themselves with the Democrats. His writings adopted a tone of racism that elicited responses of dismay and bewilderment among readers of The Jeffersonian.
In "Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel," historian C. Vann Woodward, noted that, "Writers of obituaries, with the last years of his career fresh in their mind, uniformly expressed puzzlement upon reviewing his earlier career, and were frankly baffled when they attempted an estimate of his life."
He wrote that "(after 1896), the Jeffersonian equalitarianism and humanitarianism of the '90s" was replaced by "militant sectionalism, fear of the majority rule, racial domination and perceptible overtones of a landed aristocracy."
"No Southern leader of post-bellum times ever equaled Tom Watson in his scathing ridicule of 'Negro domination' as the 'stock-in-trade' of the Southern demagogue," Woodward wrote. "Yet few there were who could rival his later asseverations upon 'the superiority of the Aryan,' or the 'hideous, ominous, national menace' of Negro domination."
From his bully pulpit as editor first of Tom Watson's Magazine and later of The Jeffersonian, Watson continually attacked his enemies. In 1914, he pounced on the Frank case, playing on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories as well as class and North-South tensions.
"Frank belonged to the Jewish aristocracy, and it was determined by the rich Jews that no aristocrat of their race should die for the death of a working-class gentile," he wrote.
With Slayton's commutation, Watson grew adamant. He issued veiled, and sometimes unveiled, threats of lynching. "The next Jew who does what Frank did, is going to get exactly the same thing that we give to Negro rapists," he wrote. "The next Leo Frank case in Georgia will never reach the courthouse."
At the same time, Watson's popularity swelled among Georgia voters. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1920, where he served until he died in 1922. "Between (7,000 and 10,000) people were said to have attended the funeral services," Woodward wrote. "Most conspicuous among the floral tributes was a cross of roses eight feet high, sent by the Ku Klux Klan."
Three years later, the Georgia General Assembly approved the erection of a monument to Watson at the state capitol.
Status of the statue Like many other marble images of the past, the Watson statue has weathered in the rain and snow. The hair, arms and shoulders are almost white. Water has left lime-green stripes on the trench coat. For capitol visitors, it hardly merited a first glance, much less a second.
But more people are looking at it now that Tom Watson Brown has publicly revived his grandfather's bribery charge.
Atlanta Rabbi Steven Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth immediately protested, challenging Brown to document his assertions or retract them and unsuccessfully asking the National Football League to censure Brown, who owns 5 percent of the Atlanta Falcons.
More recently, Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., reopened a movement to have the statue taken down, proposing among other things an inquiry by state legislators to create a record of Watson's less noble side, and requesting a debate between himself and Brown.
At least one Jewish legislator, Mitchell Kaye (R-East Cobb), supports removing the statue. "It appears inappropriate to have a statue of a hatemonger," he said. "Personally, I'm against all the statues that deify people, but given his past, it is even more inappropriate."
State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), a black legislator and history professor, said the irony of seeing a statue dedicated to Tom Watson is never lost on him. "Do I think his statue ought to be removed? Sure. To the extent that the icons we memorialize reflect what our society is all about, what our values are."
Fort, like other black legislators who weighed in on the Watson statue, lamented the large number of racists memorialized at the Gold Dome. "If we begin with Watson, there are a lot of statues and paintings in the state capitol where one could question their presence," he said.
And herein lies the problem of priorities. After Frank's 1986 pardon, the American Jewish Committee set its sights on taking the Watson statue down. But, according to AJC Regional Director Sherry Frank, those plans were set aside so the group could keep its focus on changing the state flag.
Georgia's Black Caucus, while acknowledging problems with the Watson statue, wants to keep the flag top priority. Sherry Frank also says the flag needs to be taken care of first since it is flown throughout the state, and the Watson statue is only at the capitol.
A straw poll by the Journal-Constitution newspaper showed statue supporters and critics equally divided, with 49 percent in favor of removal and 51 percent against it.
Dan Carter, a former Emory University history professor who now teaches at the University of South Carolina, suggested the statue stay but the plaque be revised. "You certainly need to describe him as more than just a revered politician," Carter said. "You've got to describe what he really was."
Carter got involved in the effort to modify the state flag after teaching a course on the cultural history of the South, which examined how to deal with yesterday's symbols that today's generation does not want to embrace. He recalled that during the flag campaign he would often walk by the Watson statue in dismay.
"Every time I went by," he said, "I thought, 'If I was Jewish, I wonder how I would feel having Tom Watson in a place of honor.'"
Steven H. Pollak wrote this article from Atlanta for Jewish Renaissance Media.
[url]http://www.jewishaz.com/jewishnews/001027/hate.shtml[/url]
2005-06-25 16:57 | User Profile
[QUOTE]Late last summer, in an interview with Georgia's largest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Brown dredged up an idea first put forward by his grandfather: that Jews had bribed the governor to commute Frank's death sentence and that the lynching was triggered by public outrage over the action.
"Maybe the Frank people should apologize for bribing the governor," Brown said, responding to a suggestion that citizens of Marietta, the town just outside Atlanta where Frank was lynched, should apologize for that act.[/QUOTE]Wow -- some resistance in Georgia!
2005-06-25 21:20 | User Profile
The jews would probably like to dig Tom Watson up and burn him at the stake; maybe the kikes will if they think they can get away with it.
There is a lot more to Watson---than the jew version of Watson. Unfortuantely the jew version is the one being written & broadcast.
Watson was the leading criminal defense attorney in Georgia, and he didn't get involved writing about the murder of Mary Phagan until over a year after the trial and pardon of the jew pervert Frank.