Cleaning Up History

Josh McKoon, whom longtime readers may recall from previous yearly sessions of the Georgia Legislature, has decided to spend some time cleaning up old segregationist language passed by earlier legislatures.
The resolutions themselves are purely symbolic, but the Columbus Republican said they have no place in Georgia’s code.

One would rescind a 1958 resolution that censured President Dwight Eisenhower for federalizing the National Guard to enforce integration at Central High School in Little Rock. The resolution said Eisenhower “sacrificed the honesty and integrity of our highest executive office on an altar of political expediency to appease the NAACP and other radical, communist-sympathizing organizations.”

A second would roll back a 1956 resolution that criticized the Justice Department and FBI for “flagrant invasion” into local affairs with an investigation of a black man convicted in a controversial trial of raping a white woman. He was later executed.

And a third targets a 1956 resolution adopted in the wake of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which Georgia lawmakers declared “null, void and of no effect.”

6 comments:

Eric Blair said...

Well, he's right.

Grim said...

McKoon is an anti-Klan hawk, which I suppose is still valuable, although I tend to think that most of these battles -- including the one he's fighting now -- really belong to an earlier era. The Georgia that passed those resolutions doesn't exist anymore; Atlanta's top cultural export now is hip-hop music and TV shows about hip-hop music, not "Moonlight and Magnolias" romances of a time long gone.

Grim said...

That said, don't let it sound like I'm opposed to spending the legislature's time cleaning up old language. I'd be delighted if the legislature wanted to do nothing with its 40 days a year than go back and repeal old laws that we don't like any more.

E Hines said...

Good to do some clean-out of the closet. Rescinded laws and resolutions are harder to reinstate than merely idled laws and resolutions.

Eric Hines

douglas said...

Nice way to remind folks which party passed those resolutions.

Ymar Sakar said...

The communists and slave lords, plus their propaganda controlled descendants, were working for the same side in the end. Lucifer doesn't want his left hand to know what the right hand is doing.

Israel tribalists have been in forced exile for how many years now, because they broke the commandments. A minor civil war that didn't even wipe out the slave lords, was a small penalty for going against certain divine decrees.