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BARROW JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2016
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher -
KKK was not created for ‘law
State Rep. Tommy Benton created a fire
storm of controversy two weeks ago when
he downplayed the racial vio
lence created by the KKK in
the years after the Civil War.
According to Rep. Benton,
the Klan “was not so much
a racist thing but a vigilante
thing to keep law and order.
It made a lot of people
straighten up. I’m not saying
what they did was right. It's
just the way things were. ”
Rep. Benton is a retired his
tory teacher and friend, but
on this issue, I have to part
ways with his interpretation
of history.
There are several examples
of Klan violence in our local
history. One Klan story from here even led
to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision
in 1884.
Here’s that story:
In the summer of 1883, a group of 40-50
masked Klan members began a campaign
of terror in Banks and Jackson counties.
One Banks County black man was beaten
for allegedly having pushed a white woman
off a railroad track. A black woman near
Commerce was whipped because she didn’t
keep her cotton clean. A black boy near
Commerce was shot in the mouth by the
Klan. Other blacks in the Banks-Jackson
area were beaten as well.
In August 1883, a group of citizens from
Banks and Jackson counties met at Burn’s
Store in Maysville where they adopted a peti
tion calling for an end to the Klan violence.
“Rev. J.K. Parker and Professor Caldwell
denounced these would-be kukiux in unmea
sured terms, and called on all the good citi
zens of the counties to rise in their might and
suppress it," said one newspaper article
about that meeting.
A Gainesville newspaper said of the 1883
violence in Banks and Jackson:
“We hope the proper authorities will take
this matter in hand at once and bring every
mother’s son to justice who were engaged
in this midnight lawlessness. It is high time
that this class of assassins are taught to
know that Georgia is living under civilized
statute laws and that lawless marauders
are no longer tolerated. ”
Eight Jackson County men were arrested
for the violence and charged by federal offi
cials for “kukluxing.” The brothers Jasper,
Dilmus, Neal and James Yarbrough, Lovie
Streetman, Bola Emory,
Harry Green and Stace
Lendemon were charged
under federal law for
beating one of the blacks
after he voted in the pre
vious election for U.S.
House of Representatives
candidate Emory Speer.
(Speer lost that re-elec
tion bid and was appoint
ed federal prosecutor.
Ironically, he was the
prosecutor of this case.)
Known at the time as
the “Banks County kuk
iux case," the eight men
went to trial in October
1883 before a federal jury in Atlanta of seven
white men and five black men.
Several of the blacks who had been beat
en testified at the Atlanta trial. One removed
his shirt in the courtroom to show where
the Klan group had whipped him with 177
lashes. Another showed the court a bullet
hole scar on his body.
But it was the judge’s charge to the jury in
the case that is telling. In his charge, Judge
McCay said in part:
“This is a very disgraceful offense.
Unfortunately it is an offense apparently
without motive. Twenty years ago nobody
could conceive of any one doing such
a thing. But unfortunately within the last
few years it is not uncommon thing for
men apparently for no other motive except
such as is given in this case to do such
hellish things. It all grows out of the state
of society the freedom of the negro has
brought about. His elevation seems to have
run a part of our people crazy....nothing
has tended so much to bring this southern
country into disgrace — nothing has tended
so much to put the balance of the United
States against us, as this kind of outrages.
They are mean, they are disgraceful, they
are horrible.... ”
The jury found all eight men guilty. It was
the first time in the state’s history that a
conviction had been handed down against
white men for “kukluxing.”
The eight men, handcuffed together in
pairs of two, were marched out of the court
house and down the street to the Fulton
County jail. They were later sentenced
to two years in the federal penitentiary at
Albany NY, and escorted there in December
1883 by federal marshals, one of whom was
and order’
reportedly former Confederate Civil War
Gen. James Longstreet.
But that wasn’t the end of this case.
The eight Jackson County “kukluxers”
petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to free
them, arguing that Congress had no right to
pass laws governing state voting regulations.
But in early 1884, the Supreme Court upheld
the convictions and in doing so affirmed —
for the first time ever — that under the 15th
Amendment, blacks had a right to vote in
Federal elections and that Congress, not
individual states, had the power to protect
and enforce that right.
It was a major decision by the Supreme
Court. In previous rulings, the court had not
defended federal laws protecting the right
of blacks to vote. But in this case (known
legally as Ex parte Yarbrough), the court
recognized the right of blacks to vote and
the right of the Federal government to create
and enforce laws protecting black voters.
Unfortunately, that case didn’t stop
Southern states from disenfranchising
blacks at the ballot box. It wasn’t until the
1964 Civil Rights Act that black citizens were
finally allowed full voting rights in the South.
Nor did that 1884 case end the harassment
and killings of blacks by white mobs and
Klan members. The beatings continued and
458 people, mostly black, were lynched by
mob violence after 1884 and well into the
20th Century.
So contrary to Rep. Benton’s sympathetic
comments of Klan history, the group rep
resented a violent strain of racial hatred.
It was condemned by average citizens, as
evidenced at the Maysville meeting of August
1883. And it was condemned by the courts,
as happened in this landmark Klan case
from Jackson and Banks counties.
The historical record is clear that while
the Klan might have begun as a secretive
social club formed by six Confederate vet
erans in 1866, it very soon evolved into a
terrorist group whose violence was aimed
at harassing blacks in the South and fight
ing Reconstruction. How the Klan began is
immaterial to what it became.
Those white men riding around the
Southern countryside beating blacks while
wearing sheets and hoods over their faces
were racist thugs and cowards.
They do not deserve to be remembered
otherwise.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of
Mainstreet Newspapers. He can be reached
at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Kemp’s primary could be decisive
Two years ago, Secretary of State Brian
Kemp began his push to set up an “SEC
Primary” for a simple reason: he wanted
the world to pay more atten
tion to Georgia and the South
in an important presidential
election year.
“I think for years a lot of
people got frustrated that the
presidential primary race was
over before Georgians ever got
to vote,” Kemp said.
Eventually, he was able
to convince colleagues
in Arkansas, Alabama,
Oklahoma, Tennessee, and
Texas to join Georgia in hold
ing their presidential primaries
on March 1.
“Even Hillary Clinton knows that the road
to the White House now runs through
southern states like Georgia," Kemp said.
That is not an empty boast. As the prima
ry date draws closer, it looks like voters in
Georgia and that handful of southern states
could be the key to determining which can
didates are put on the winning path to the
nominations.
The final results, however, may not be
exactly what Kemp envisioned when he first
floated the idea of a regional primary.
The conventional wisdom then was that
the southern states, with voters who tend
to be more conservative, could give a cam
paign boost to a family values conservative
like Mike Huckabee or Rick Santorum in the
Republican primary.
But the political world has turned upside
down since early 2014, when Kemp first
started working on his grand plan.
Family values candidates like Huckabee
and Santorum have already dropped out
of the GOP race. It’s a battle now between
anti-establishment candidates Donald
Trump and Ted Cruz, on the one hand, and
establishment candidates Marco Rubio, Jeb
Bush, John Kasich, and Chris Christie.
In the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters
clearly preferred the anti-establishment side
of the ballot. Cruz, Trump, and Ben Carson
drew the combined support of 62 percent
of the caucus voters. Rubio and the other
establishment candidates attracted a com
bined vote of less than 35 percent.
A recent poll of Georgia’s GOP voters for
WSB-TV shows they also prefer
that anti-establishment flavor -
the combined support for Trump,
Cruz, and Carson was about 53
percent, compared to less than
30 percent for the establishment
candidates (there was also a 15
percent undecided vote).
If that trend holds up through
March 1, Deep South voters
could well provide the boost that
Trump or Cruz needs to continue
a winning campaign against the
Republican Party establishment.
That would be a rebuke to
Republican stalwarts like House
Speaker David Ralston (he endorsed
Christie), Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle (he sup
ports Bush), and Congressman Lynn
Westmoreland (he’s a Rubio backer).
On the Democratic side, there have also
been momentous changes in the political
landscape since Kemp began putting the
regional primary together.
Back then, it appeared Hillary Clinton had
the inside track to the Democratic nomina
tion, which meant that the votes from a few
southern primaries wouldn’t really matter.
Over the past year, of course, we’ve seen
that scenario change significantly. Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders came out of left field,
literally speaking, and is bolstering his sup
port among Democratic voters, particularly
younger ones.
Sanders came within a handful of votes
of winning the Iowa caucuses, and the polls
give him a lead over Clinton in the New
Hampshire primary. If the New Hampshire
polls turn out to be even somewhat accurate,
then there’s a real race for the Democratic
nomination.
As the Sanders threat grows, it could be
the southern voters in the March 1 primaries
who rescue Clinton. Sanders has done well
against Clinton in states whose populations
are overwhelmingly white. Clinton does
much better than Sanders among black vot
ers, however, and the southern states have
larger percentages of black voters, along
with growing numbers of Latinos.
If Clinton can sweep those states in the
SEC Primary, it could re-establish her as the
favorite over Sanders when the campaign
shifts to other regions.
Kemp is a loyal Republican, so I doubt he
assembled a regional primary with the inten
tion of helping Clinton win the Democratic
nomination. It would be highly ironic if that
turns out to be the result.
That is not Kemp’s fault, of course. As
the emergence of Trump and Sanders illus
trates, the world changes quickly in politics.
If you try to predict what will happen two
years down the road, you just might run off
the road.
Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia
Report, an internet news service at gare-
port.com that reports on state govern
ment and politics. He can be reached at
tcrawford@gareport. com.
The Barrow Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJournal.com
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher
Chris Bridges Editor
Jessica Brown Photographer
Susan Treadwell Reporter
Alex Pace Reporter
Sharon Hogan Reporter
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Campaigning in the
primary of 1990
Items from my political notebook as Georgia’s
presidential primary
approaches:
• The long list of
Republican candidates on
this year’s Georgia presi
dential primary ballot har
kens back to a time when
seeing a lenghty list of
names was not that unusu
al.
While 13 GOP candi
dates are on the Georgia
presidential ballot for 2016,
some have already fallen
by the wayside including Rand Paul, Lindsey
Graham, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki and Rick
Santorum. You will still be able to vote for any
of them, however. Ballots have to be compiled
well before the actual primary date (March 1 for
Georgia) since absentee voting actually began
in January. Advance in-person voting got started
Monday of this week.
Recently, I have been looking back at Georgia’s
Lt. Governor primary from 1990. It was another
case of a long list of candidates, especially on the
Democratic side, and since it marked the first pri
mary I had the opportunity to vote in, the primary
race that spring and summer has always stuck in
my mind.
It should be noted that this was still a time when
Georgia didn’t elect Republicans to statewide
office. If you won the Democratic nomination then
you were all but guaranteed of winning the general
election in November.
Zell Miller, who had been Lt. Governor for 16
years decided to run for Governor in 1990 leaving
his old job attractive to many potential candi
dates. Miller was a lifelong Democrat who later
sided with Republicans, at least nationally, and
would also become a U.S. Senator, as a Democrat
no less.
The Lt. Governor’s race in 1990 (it’s hard to
believe that has been more than 25 years ago
now) included Pierre Howard, Joe Kennedy,
George Berry, Jim Pannell, Frank Bailey. Bud
Stumbaugh, J.B. Stoner. Bobby Hill and Jim
Goolsby.
Some of the names on the list may not mean
much to most. Kennedy and Stumbaugh were both
state senators and Hill, the only African American
in the race, was a state representative. James
Goolsby a Spaulding County commissioner, was
known for riding a small motorcycle to and from
campaign stops with his campaign signs attached.
State Senator Wayne Garner had also announced
he was running and had begun campaigning ear
lier in the year but had to end his candidacy due
to the health of his son, who was in an accident
while riding a Go-kart. Garner was an early favorite
to possibly win the race.
It was the candidacy of Stoner, an avowed racist,
however, that cast a national spotlight on the race.
Some criticized Georgia’s state Democratic Party
for allowing Stoner on the ballot even though he
had run for various offices previously, including
Governor, Lt. Governor and U.S. Senate. Stoner
had been convicted of bombing a church in the
1950s and actually spent time in prison. Since
campaign advertisements cannot be censored
by the FCC, Stoner’s ads had to be aired and if
anyone remembers seeing them, you no doubt
cringed while listening to the dialog.
Stoner’s appearance at various forums across
the state caused some candidates to refuse to
take the stage with him. Others felt the best way to
combat him was to allow him to speak and then
his own words would show him for what he was
all about (although it was really no secret as to his
extremist views.)
In the end, the primary held on July 17, 1990 saw
Howard and Kennedy earn spots in a runoff. With
nine candidates, a runoff was virtually guaranteed.
Howard would serve two terms as Lt. Gov., but
then shocked most political experts by not run
ning for Governor in 2008. While some remember
Howard for waging a battle against teen drinking
and driving, many remember him for being
less than a stellar politician in terms of second
amendment rights and his words about the
tobacco industry showed he was not really a fan
of free enterprise.
Stoner, by the way, finished seventh in the
nine-candidate race, not far behind sixth-place
finisher Stumbaugh. Perhaps most unsettling
was the fact that Stoner finished ahead of Hill.
Statewide primaries in Georgia are typically
not as crowded these days. If a race has four or
five candidates, it is seen as a high number. Yet,
that campaign for Lt. Gov. more than 25 years
ago still sticks in my mind as well as those of
many political pundits. Georgia will likely have an
open race for Lt. Governor in 2018 but one has to
wonder if it will be as interesting to watch as that
one from the initial race of the 90s.
• We’ll keep track of early voting totals in Barrow
County over the next couple of weeks leading into
the March 1 primary date. Presidential elections by
their nature typically generate a high level of inter
est. We’ll see if that holds true this time.
Chris Bridges is editor of the Barrow Journal.
You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal.
com.
chris
bridges
