On Thursday, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a viciously anti-voter law that would, among other things, penalize people for simply handing out water or snacks to people waiting in hours-long lines. (Lines that are long by design.) In fact, the bill is so blatantly designed to suppress the vote in Georgia that it includes nearly 100 pages of new voter restrictions.
There is no question these restrictions are racist in nature, from the first to the last. As Nsé Ufot of The New Georgia Project told Kos and Kerry Eleveld on an episode of The Brief, this bill and others like them are a “whitelash” response to the success of Stacey Abrams, The New Georgia Project, Fair Fight, and the campaigns of Sens. Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
As bad as this bill is, there is another sinister element to this bill signing, which took place as six white men looked over the shoulder of Kemp. Philadephia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch noticed the painting behind Kemp and rattled off a Twitter thread about the historical significance of that painting and the plantation depicted in it. Buckle up, folks—this is going to be infuriating.
2. Notice the antebellum-style portrait behind Kemp as he signs the suppression law? Thanks to Twitter crowdsourcing and particularly @TheSeaFarmer, I can report the measure to limit Black voting was signed under the image of a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County, GA
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
4. Today, the Callaway Plantation is a 56-acre historic site where -- as the ExploreGeorgia website cheerily notes -- tourists can get "a glimpse into the by-gone era of working plantations in the agricultural South." https://t.co/BslVZYLSC4
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
6. The harsh reality of life for slaves in the era of the Callaway Plantation is captured in this oral-history "slave narrative" of Mariah Callaway, a woman who was born into slavery on the plantation in 1852. In her account, she notes that... https://t.co/oW8Pq5tf0y
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
8. Visitors today to the Callaway Plantation say this legacy of inhumanity is downplayed. One wrote on Trip Advisor the slave cabin "is hidden in some trees and mentioned as an afterthought and something you can go to and look at yourself." https://t.co/RYtMkpwif1
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
10. ...enacted a series of harsh Jim Crow laws to segregate all public facilities and block Black people from voting. The state, for all of Atlanta's "Too Busy To Hate" bluster, was a KKK hotbed in the 1960s' civil rights era, and in the 1980s...
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
12. ...of Kemp signing this bill -- that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting on the sometimes 10-hour lines that state policies create in mostly Black precincts -- under the image of a brutal slave plantation is almost too much to bear.
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
14... that took place behind the placid scenery of Brickhouse Road in Wilkes County, to the suppression now hidden behind a phony facade of "voter integrity." This legacy is a crime against humanity, and it cannot stand - 30 -
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
So there you have it. Kemp and a gaggle of white men signed a bill that is a legal monument to white supremacy under a painting of a plantation that is a monument to white supremacy, slavery, and Georgia’s (as well as America’s) painful past.
Posted with permission from Daily Kos.
