Editor's note: Covington News Publisher David Clemons wrote this column for this weekend's issue of The Walton Tribune.
Elsewhere in today’s Walton Tribune, a column by my friend Tim Schnabel declares it’s time for reconciliation in our county.
One way he argues we should do this is by removing Confederate imagery from the welcome signs at the Monroe city limits. Another is through an idea I proposed to him one day several months ago, really just off the top of my head.
Let’s take these in order.
The first time I heard anyone mention the signs at Monroe’s city limits was in December 2015, at a news conference at the Moore’s Ford bridge. (That location is important, and it’s funny how things are intertwined.)
Norman Garrett, then a few weeks from taking office as a city councilman, said he thought the signs should come down. I’m not sure I realized then we had a sign for the Sons of Confederate Veterans at the city limits. I doubt I agreed with him at the time, honestly. Norman probably would be the first to tell you we’ve had our disagreements through the years.
But I got a new perspective on it when I came to Monroe a few months ago with a Covington co-worker, who is black. He wanted to visit the Monroe office and accompanied me on the drive up Highway 11.
While I know Monroe as a wonderful, welcoming town — seriously, if I, a socially awkward Alabamian who moved here at 28 can be accepted in Monroe, pretty much anyone can — he noticed that divisive emblem first thing and mentioned it.
I instantly felt sick inside. That’s not the Monroe I know, and we should make sure all our guests know we’re better, right?
As to the idea Tim will explain on the Lifestyles page, it’s time to move out of the cycle we find ourselves in with regards to the 1946 tragedy at Moore’s Ford.
Four people were lynched at the Apalachee River. We still don’t know who’s responsible, in the sense no one was arrested or tried for the heinous crimes.
A group led by former state Rep. Tyrone Brooks has commemorated the event for a decade now with a reenactment each summer at or near the anniversary. It is a macabre spectacle that carries a Monroe, Georgia, dateline to the world.
The idea of an apology from the county was mentioned to me, and I immediately knew that would be a nonstarter. For one, the perpetrators are dead or beyond the point of being able to face account for their crimes on earth.
But perhaps someone in an official capacity could state, for the record, that what happened that day was a tragedy, and we have grown from it. At the same time, the Moore’s Ford Committee may accept the statement and agree the time for reenacting the tragedy has passed.
Because what’s a mistake if we don’t all learn from it?
There is precedent, even in Georgia. LaGrange police Chief Louis Dekmar issued a statement in regards to the lynching of Austin Callaway in 1940.
“I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin’s lynching, both through our action and our inaction,” Dekmar said in January 2017 at a predominantly African-American church.
If nothing else, consider that a national museum dedicated solely to the national tragedy of lynching opened this week in Montgomery, Alabama. As part of the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a pillar is created to honor lynching victims in Walton County (along with every other American county with a lynching).
The idea is for each county to claim its marker and set up a local memorial. Will Walton County?
It’s time to confront this shameful legacy and move past the way we commemorate it now, which has long since ceased its usefulness. We can’t keep re-living our worst moments, but we can’t pretend they didn’t happen either.
Let’s consider a new approach.
David Clemons is the editor and publisher of The Covington News. He was the publisher of The Walton Tribune in Monroe from 2009 to 2011 and managing editor of the paper from 2015 to 2017. His email address is dclemons@covnews.com. Twitter: @scoopclemons.
