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About Jackson herald. (Jefferson, Jackson County, Ga.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 2023)
PAGE 4A THE JACKSON HERALD WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2023 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. Henry Ward Beecher Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com Remembering a tragic past This year's Black History Month comes amid an atmo sphere where some politicians want to whitewash the na tion’s history (pun intended.) There's two very different sides to this story. One the liberal side, some have taken the extreme posi tion that just about all of to day's social pathologies are due to institutional racism. In this view, all issues are viewed through the lens of race even if the issue isn’t obviously about race. On the conservative side, some politicians are trying to suppress the teaching of black history in pub lic schools, or at least ban teaching that might make white students feel bad about the nation’s treat ment of minorities. Both sides in this debate are wrong. Not every issue can be framed around race or racism. While there is institutional racism in society, to focus entirely on that ignores the individual. The ideology that groups of people are victims based on racial or ethnic heritage doesn’t fully explain the complexity of human nature, or our social/political dynamics. It's a lot more complicated than to simply portray everything through a racial lens. The Black Lives Matter movement is one example. The death of Black men at the hands of law enforcement isn't just about white policemen abusing Black suspects; Black policemen have also abused Black suspects, as was evi dent in the recent beating death of a Black man in Mem phis, Tenn. by a group of Black cops. Racism doesn’t ex plain that event; a bad police culture is perhaps a bigger problem than racism when it comes to the mistreatment of Black suspects. On the other side, the quisling approach to teaching the facts of American history, as is being advocated by some Republicans, does a disservice to students. Whatever its merits and accomplishments. America does have a tainted history with its inhuman treatment of minorities — Na tive Americans were rounded up and herded like cattle onto reservations; slavery and the later violent suppres sion of civil rights of Black Americans is a stain on the nation that is still evident; and the nation has never fully come to terms with its many other minorities, including Asians. Hispanics and Jews. • •• Now during Black History Month, the nation should re member not only the achievements of Black Americans, but also how many Blacks were treated in the past. And that wasn’t just “somewhere else.” Here in our local com munities, some whites treated Blacks shamefully. Here's one of those stories: Exactly 100 years ago this month, a shocking thing happened in Jackson County: A grand jury indicted six white Jefferson men on attempted murder charges for having kidnapped and shot a black man. I've not been able to find the final disposition of those charges, so I'm not naming those indicted here; their families are still in the area and some decedents carry the same name as their ancestors. But here’s the story as reported in the press in 1923. In Oct. 1922. a black man, Jones (or Jesse or Ben, dif ferent first names were published) Maxey was abducted from his home near Jefferson around midnight when a group of hooded white men knocked down his door and came into the house firing pistols into the walls. Maxey was told to get out of bed and put on his clothes. The men then put a sack over Maxey's head and led him to a car, which was followed by a second car through Jefferson and toward Winder. When the two cars got to the Mulberry River, they stopped on the side of the road and took Maxey out of the car. The men were angry with Maxey because he had dared to sue one of them in court over $60. Maxey had loaned one of the men the money a couple of years earlier when he had worked as a sharecropper on the man’s farm. But the man refused to pay the money back to Maxey and had him arrested at one point on what was apparently trumped-up charges to avoid the debt. So Maxey sued his former employer (he was by then working for someone else). A black man suing a white man in the 1920s was rare, almost unheard of given the imbalance of power between whites and Blacks in the courts at that time. Two weeks before that lawsuit was to be heard, Maxey was kidnapped. When they got to the Mulberry River, the six men sur rounded Maxey and asked him about the suit. As they talked, Maxey removed the hood over his head and saw the six men, all of whom he recognized. Four were related by marriage, including the man who owed him money. As the men told Maxey to prepare to die, they asked him his final words for his wife. “Tell her good-bye,” Maxey said. As he spoke, Maxey burst through the men and began running up the road. The men began for shoot at him, one bullet striking him in the back. As he veered off the road toward the bushes and the river, another shot hit Maxey in a knee. Out of options, Maxey jumped into the river. The group of men thought Maxey had been wounded severely enough that he wouldn’t survive in the water, so they left and went home, thinking Maxey was dead. But he wasn’t. Maxey crossed the river to the Barrow County side and hid in a cornfield until dawn. From the field, he made his way to a nearby farm and Jackson County’s sheriff, Ben Collier, was summoned. That incident led the six men to be indicted for attempt ed murder in Feb. 1923. The indictments made headlines around the state since it was unusual at that time for white men to be charged in a killing, or attempted killing, of a Black man. Bench warrants were issued for the six men in July 1923 to appear in court in August that year. But then the trail goes cold. I've not been able to find any final disposition of those cases. I doubt any of the six men, who were described as being prominent in the community, were convicted even if they were tried. Likely, the case was continued until it was for gotten or tossed out. One part of that may have been that in August 1923, court was postponed due to the creation of the new Pied mont Judicial Circuit and the need to fill positions in that new judicial circuit. The cases may have conveniently fallen through the cracks at that time. • •• At the same time in August 1923, another violent inci dent happened near Jefferson. The body of Felix Davenport, a Black man, was found in the Oconee River between Jefferson and Pendergrass. Davenport had a long rap sheet, having himself been charged in 1896 for attempted murder. One newspaper article said he was “notorious” and a gambler and boot legger. He was certainly in court a lot on various charges. Roy Toney, 25, was soon arrested a charge with the murder. Toney had been a barber in Jefferson and Athens, according to newspaper reports at the time. Toney, who was white, was reportedly the last person to see Daven port alive. In November, a brief newspaper report said that the grand jury didn’t indict Toney for the murder due to in sufficient evidence. That was the typical outcome of these kinds of cases. Few white men were ever convicted of killing a black man; it just didn’t happen. • •• Both of those events happened during a violent time in the state’s history where lynchings, floggings and beat ings of Black citizens by white men happened on a regu lar basis. The KKK was strong in the state at that time and politically powerful. To not remember these events, to pretend they didn’t happen, is to ignore history. Politicians may be successful in having public schools downplay the history of that troubled time in our state and nation, but many others will continue to write about the events in the hope that our nation will never repeat its past mistakes. Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspa pers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com. Religious freedom cultural war again a state legislative topic By Jill Nolin Georgia Recorder A new push for greater religious protections in Georgia has revived one of the most bitterly debated mea sures under the Gold Dome and re newed calls for a state-level nondis crimination law. State Sen. Ed Setzler, an Acworth Republican who sponsored the state's 2019 abortion law, has filed a bill that would extend federal protections passed in 1993 to the state and local level, which he argues would protect religious Georgians from unfair gov ernment intrusion. His bill is a pared down version of a bill that former Republican Gov. Na than Deal vetoed in 2016 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s same- sex marriage ruling after major com panies threatened to boycott Georgia. “The intention is to do something that's very basic, very convention al and should, as a matter of law, be noncontroversial - adopting the same protections that we have at the feder al level and applying in the state and local government,” Setzler said at a press conference this week. Setzler cited pandemic-era tensions between public health restrictions and the ability of people to attend church services as his motivation for resur recting the debate over whether great er religious protections are needed in Georgia. At least two dozen GOP senators have signed on to the bill. Gov. Bri an Kemp has said in the past that he would sign a bill that mirrored the federal law, but it’s unclear whether he will go along with the timing. A spokesman for the governor's office declined to comment Wednesday be cause it is pending legislation. Setzler’s proposal was immediately met with concerns that it would justi fy discrimination, particularly against members of the LGBTQ community. It also remains to be seen how the business community - which was in fluential in blocking the 2016 law - will respond. “While we can all agree that free dom of religion is a cornerstone of our beliefs, it is imperative that in an effort to protect religion that we do not create a license to discriminate,” said Jeff Graham, executive director of Georgia Equality, which advocates on behalf of the LGBTQ Georgians. Georgia is one of only three states lacking a comprehensive state civ il rights law, Graham said. So, he has offered a counter proposal: Pass statewide nondiscrimination protec tions for “all Georgians who fear dis crimination because of who they are. who they love or how they pray.” A nondiscrimination bill had not been filed in the Senate as of Wednes day, but pushing for those state-level protections has been a priority in the past, said Sen. Elena Parent, an At lanta Democrat. Parent said passing a religious free dom bill without a nondiscrimination statute would “open the door for a lot of types of discrimination on ‘reli gious grounds.'” Setzler said he would need to see the specifics of an anti-discrimina tion bill to fully comment on it, but he voiced skepticism about the need. He pinned the failure of the 2016 measure on attempts at the time to specifically exempt certain people or situations. “I think the flawed thinking that the balancing test of RFRA is not suffi cient is this belief that it’s going to somehow bring about some perverse end,” he said Wednesday. “RFRA does not bring about any guaranteed outcome for any one party in the cir cumstance.” When asked specifically if his proposal would shield a faith-based adoption agency that refused to work with same-sex couples, he said that would be up to the courts to sort out. Local governments can also pass ordinances that he argued would provide enhanced nondiscrimination protections. So far, 13 cities have passed such ordinances, according to Georgia Equality. But opponents say Setzler’s bill could potentially negate those local protections. “The challenge would be doing a statewide (RFRA law) without also doing a statewide nondiscrimina tion,” Parent said. Setzler’s bill adds fuel to the par tisan culture war battles that are be ginning to crank back up during what had been an otherwise low-key legis lative session. Other Senate proposals would restrict doctors' ability to provide gender-affirming care to transgender minors and block teachers and oth ers from answering questions from a young person about the child's sexual orientation or gender identity. Cole Muzio, president of the con servative Frontline Policy Action, praised Setzler’s bill and said 34 states have passed similar measures over the years. His organization has advocated for proposals that critics have panned as anti-LGBTQ. “Religious freedom is a human right that must be protected without further delay,” Muzio said in a state ment. At press conferences this week. Setzler brought visual aids to make the point that religion has only third- class rights when compared to other First Amendment guarantees, like freedom of speech. He pointed to a Georgia case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court last year where a Georgia Gwinnett Col lege student was allowed to proceed with a claim against the school on free speech but not religious grounds. The school had stopped him from preaching in a free-speech zone. Jill Nolin has spent nearly 15 years reporting on state and local govern ment in four states, focusing on pol icy and political stories and tracking public spending. She has spent the last five years chasing stories in the halls of Georgia’s Gold Dome, earn ing recognition for her work showing the impact of rising opioid addiction on the state’s rural communities. Your one- ® stop site to search your ^ community's ^ public notices as well as other notices from across i the state. IT'S YOl JRRIC IHI, a toTk NOW. The Jackson Herald Founded 1875 Merged with The Commerce News 2017 The Official Legal Organ of Jackson County, Ga. Herman Buffington, Publisher 1965-2005 Mike Buffington Scott Buffington. Alex Buffington. Hannah Barron... Taylor Heam Co-Publisher Co-Publisher .News Editor Reporter Sports Editor MEMBER • Georgia Press Association • National Newspaper Association • Inland Press Association • International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors Postmaster: Send Address Changes To: MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. PO Box 908 Jefferson, Georgia 30549-0908 Web Site: www.JacksonHeraldTODAY.com Email: mike@mainstreetnews.com Voice: 706.367.5233 Fax:708.621.4117 (news) Periodical Postage paid at Jefferson, GA 30549 (SCED 271980) Yearly Subscriptions: $45 / $40 for seniors
