Chamblee54

This content was published November 15, 2008. … There is a twelve foot tall statue of Tom Watson in front of the steps to the Georgia State Capital. It is on the west side, looking at Central Avenue and Atlanta City Hall. The green metal likeness of Mr. Watson, with his left arm raised in rhetorical combat, has seen many things over the years.
Today, there was a rally for the right of same sex couples to marry. The expression on the statue did not change during the event. One suspects that the anti-Catholic crusader would have been amused by the call for the church to mind its own business. The rally was a happy, friendly event. There have been reports of racial unrest at previous Prop 8 rallies, but that was not seen by this reporter. In fact, the best costume of the day was worn by a black lady. Another black lady spoke, and said “we are not fighting hate, we are fighting ignorance.”
UPDATE: In 2013, the statue of Tom Watson was moved to Georgia Plaza Park. On June 26, 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges was issued. The Supreme Court ruling “requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.”
Thomas Edward Watson was a piece of work. TEW rose to fame as a Populist politician, fighting for issues that I don’t understand 140 years later. At some point, TEW became a well known hater of Black people, Catholics, and Jews. TEW was a prominent rabble rouser in the Leo Frank case. Later, he opposed the entry of the United States into World War One.
“The test of this belief was not long in coming. Watson’s campaign for reelection to Congress in 1892 was opposed by powerful conservative Democrats who were determined to keep him out of Washington. His district was gerrymandered and his life was threatened; many of his speeches were made from platforms surrounded by armed Populist guards. Because he solicited the black vote and frequently shared the platform with black speakers, he was accused of undermining white supremacy and of being a socialist. When a young black minister supporting Watson was threatened, a call went out to the countryside, producing, as Watson pointed out in an editorial, a spectacle very rare indeed in Georgia, “the sight of white farmers riding all night to save a Negro from lynching.”… During the 1892 campaign Watson published “The Negro Question in the South” in a national magazine, The Arena (October 1892), presenting the Populist view that the ruling elite encourages animosity between the races in order to keep them from joining forces in pursuit of political power; the poor, he said, would be better advised to put class interests above racial interests.”
“Probably more important was his stand against American intervention in World War I, which he blamed on “ravenous commercialism.” He carried on a vigorous campaign against conscription until the U.S. Post Office banned his publications, and he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1918 and in the presidential primary of 1920 on a platform endorsing the restoration of civil liberties revoked during wartime and American rejection of the League of Nations. Elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 1920, he briefly returned to his old ideals, showing support for the Soviet Union and organized labor. He died two years into his term, at the age of sixty-six, of a stroke brought on by severe attacks of bronchial asthma.”
“Not long before the Frank lynching, Watson was calling himself “a red socialist through and through” and risking imprisonment for opposition to U.S. participation in World War I. In terms of the relative importance of the demons that beset his imagination, it was notable that he saved his most violent hostility for … Woodrow Wilson, the “insufferable prig” he viewed as championing the interests of capitalist elites.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Wolcott Post took the social media picture in May 1939. “Students in typing class in school. Ashwood Plantations, South Carolina” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah