Thomas Edward Watson, 1856-1922, was a trial lawyer, writer and publisher in Georgia. He started out as a populist who publicly opposed lynching and supported black Americans’ right to vote. He served briefly in the state Legislature and Congress but was more influential as a kingmaker in Georgia whose endorsement was sought by anyone hoping to win the governorship. By the time he ran for president on the Populist ticket in 1908, however, Watson had transformed into a harshly racist and anti-Catholic figure who filled his newspapers with hatred. His anti-Semitic attacks on Leo Frank and on the influence of Jews and northern interests in Georgia stoked sentiment against Frank and helped lead to his lynching in 1915. He was elected to the U.S. Senate from Georgia in 1920 but died not long after taking office.
Tom Watson, whose statue is to be moved off the main Capitol grounds next month, is not the only racist figure whose likeness has been enshrined at the Capitol. Among Watson’s companions on the pedastals:
Maj. Gen. John B. Gordon
Gordon is widely believed to have been the grand dragon of Georgia’s Ku Klux Klan organization in the 1870s. He rose from obscurity as a coal mine operator with no military experience to take over half of Robert E. Lee’s army by the end of the Civil War. A staunch opponent of Reconstruction, he later was elected to the U.S. Senate, then governor and then senator again. Among other things, Gordon helped engineer the removal of federal troops from the South.
U.S. Sen. Richard B. Russell
Russell is said to have been more a states rights advocate than a racist. For decades, however, he orchestrated Senate filibusters against civil rights legislation. He once wrote a constituent: “I believe that the Negro is entitled to equal and exact justice before the law and that he is entitled to every right that I enjoy. There is nothing in our Constitution … however, that says we must enjoy these rights together at the same time and in the same place.”
Gov. Eugene Talmadge
Talmadge was elected to an unprecedented four terms as governor beginning in 1932. He won his last term in 1946 but died before he could take office. A federal court had disallowed the Democrats’ whites-only primary in 1946, and Talmadge made it one of the key issues in his campaign. “They desire Negroes to participate in our white primary in order to destroy the traditions and heritages of our Southland,” he was quoted as saying at the time.
U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge
Son of Gene, “Hummon” was a governor and longtime U.S. senator from Georgia. He declared in 1956 that “God advocates segregation.” Two years earlier, Talmadge was among the loudest critics of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education and vowed that he would never permit the integration of schools. In 1955, Talmadge even wrote a 79-page book called “You and Segregation” making his twisted case for separating the races.
Sources: AJC files, New Georgia Encyclopedia, New York Times
Georgia civil rights leaders have always found it uncomfortable leading rallies just beyond the outstretched arm of Tom Watson, a one-time populist turned fire-breathing white supremacist who vilified blacks, Catholics and Jews.
There, at the Capitol’s west steps beneath a 12-foot bronze statue of a fist-pumping Watson, generations of civil rights activists have protested everything from the state’s former flag to new voter identification laws.
“Over the years, the irony has not been lost on me and others,” said state Senate Minority Whip Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta. “We’ve held press conferences, rallies and protests conducted in the shadow of a rabid racist and anti-Semite, who was towering over us as we railed against the injustices he helped create.”
By mid-November that won’t be a problem. State officials are moving the Watson statue across the street as part of an extensive renovation of the west steps and entrance to the Capitol.
Once the renovations are done, the statue will remain in the park area across the street, saving the state the $50,000 to $60,000 it would cost to move it back.
“We based our decision on the cost and a chance to open up the west side of the Capitol,” said Paul Melvin of the Georgia Building Authority. “It will provide more room for events. Some of these assemblies spill out into the street, so it’s kind of a public safety thing.”
Gov. Nathan Deal, who signed an executive order authorizing the move earlier this month, offered no comment Monday when his decision became public. Few lamented the move, perhaps saving their powder for a later date.
Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, a charity founded in part to preserve Watson’s legacy, said late Monday he was “just getting my hands wrapped around” the news and had no immediate comment.
Rep. Tommy Benton, R-Jefferson, who sponsored legislation last year restricting the moving of statues, declined comment but said he would still push his proposal in next year’s legislative session. Benton’s House Bill 91 would give agencies an out as long as the relocation was necessary for construction or expansion of buildings, and as long as the statue was being moved to a place of equal prominence.
Few places outside the Capitol are as prominent as the building’s west side front door, where the Watson statue stands now.
The statue was dedicated in 1932, at a time when Georgia was segregated and the former state lawmaker, congressman and U.S. senator was viewed by many as a hero.
Watson rose to prominence in the late 1800s as a Southern populist, supporting the elimination of convict lease labor, favoring taxes to support schools and championing the needs of poor farmers and sharecroppers of all races, according to the New Georgia Encyclopedia.
But that would change, as he used his weekly newspaper and magazine to push views that reflected increasing racial and religious bigotry.
He later endorsed taking the vote from African-Americans. In editorials, he launched anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic diatribes. His crusade against Catholicism led to his trial on charges of sending obscene material through the mail. In his publications he was accused of fanning the anti-Semitic climate that led to the 1915 lynching of Leo Frank outside of Marietta.
Talk of removing Watson’s statue, and those of some other segregationist politicians around the Capitol, have rumbled through the statehouse for years. But nothing ever came of it.
In February, Joeff Davis, the photo editor for Creative Loafing, an alternative newspaper in Atlanta, started a petition demanding the statue’s removal. Davis said he was plagued by visions of his 2-year-old daughter one day wandering by the monument, looking up Watson’s history and “finding this extremist who stands for all these things I didn’t want her to stand for.” The petition attracted about 1,000 signatures.
Some argued that Watson’s statue wasn’t the problem, that the context of the display was. University of Georgia historian James Cobb said the statue should have had an accompanying tablet that outlined his negatives as well as some of the “affirmative” ideas he voiced early in his political career.
“Like the state’s history itself, many of its significant historical figures were complicated people and sometimes contradictory or inconsistent in their words and deeds,” said Cobb. “If the statue is left to imply without qualification that Watson was a heroic or a wholly admirable figure, then it becomes both offensive and a distortion of history.”
The plaque under Watson’s likeness gives his name, date of birth and death, and the words “Honor’s path he trod.” It describes him as an “editor, lawyer, historian, author, orator, statesmen. Author of rural free delivery, a champion of right who never faltered in the cause.”
Marcus Fernandes of Warner Robins, who was checking out the statue Monday, said, “Just because he said some stuff that was racist, that was part of that time frame. It doesn’t affect our present. It shouldn’t be forgotten, it should be remembered because that is where we came from.”
Watson critics will be glad to see him go.
State Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta, who has been holding press conferences around the statue for decades, said, “I wish they’d take (statues of) Eugene Talmadge, Richard Russell and John B. Gordon across the street with him.
Senior Rabbi Steve Lebow of Temple Kol Emeth in Marietta said, “I’m happy and exuberant to know they’re removing the statue of a racist and anti-Semite from the Capitol.”
Lebow has labored for decades to earn a full exoneration for Frank, a Jewish man lynched by a mob in Cobb County for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, a white girl who worked in the factory that Frank managed. Frank was convicted of Phagan’s murder despite questionable testimony and a botched police investigation; public opinion at the time was inflamed by Watson’s nativist newspaper, the Jeffersonian.
“His journalism was a brilliant attack on Jews, blacks and Catholics,” Lebow said.
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