Posted on April 7, 2021

‘White Lies Matter’ Group Claims Responsibility, Demands Ransom for Stolen Confederate Monument

Kirsten Fiscus and Marty Roney, Montgomery Advertiser, April 5, 2021

An “anti racist action group” is claiming responsibility and holding for ransom a stone chair, dedicated to Jefferson Davis, stolen from Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma last month.

According to an email from the group, “White Lies Matter,” the chair was taken from the cemetery about a month ago. {snip}

Instead of cash, however, the group has asked the United Daughters of the Confederacy to hang a banner outside their headquarters in Virginia for 24 hours, beginning April 9 at 1 p.m., with a quote from Assata Shakur. April 9 is the 156th anniversary of Robert E. Lee’s surrender in Appomattox, Virginia.

“The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives,” says the banner that the group mailed to the UDC.

Shakur was a former member of the Black Liberation Army, convicted of murder in 1977, escaped prison in 1979 and remains free despite being wanted by the FBI after she was granted political asylum in Cuba.

In the notice the group sent Monday morning, they wrote about the tension between “our heritage of white supremacy and our underlying belief in ‘liberty and justice for all.'”

“America’s original sin is that people were kidnapped from their homes and forced to build one of the most prosperous nations in the world, without being allowed to participate in it,” the letter says. {snip}

{snip} There is a $5,000 reward leading to information about the disappearance of the chair, described as being about 3-feet-tall and weighing several hundred pounds.

{snip} Before being stolen, the chair was displayed in Confederate Circle which covers about an acre in Selma’s Old Live Oak Cemetery.

{snip}

The chair is not the first memorial to be taken from Confederate Circle. After a bust of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was vandalized and covered with trash, it was moved from city property to Confederate Circle. It was from there that Forrest’s bronze bust was stolen never to be recovered. Friends of Forrest, a local group, had the bust replaced.

In 2011 the Selma City Council sold the property surrounding Confederate Circle to the United Daughters of the Confederacy. {snip}

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