Monument or toilet? Group behind theft states its intent
A group claiming responsibility for the theft of a Confederate monument in Selma, Ala., laid out ransom terms in emails to local media Monday.
The price for the relic’s return? Not cash, but a demand that the headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Richmond hang a banner quoting a Black radical on Friday, the 156th anniversary of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at the end of the Civil War.
The Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair, which was first reported missing from Live Oak Cemetery in Selma last month, is an ornately carved stone chair that was dedicated in 1893 to the Confederate president’s memory and is estimated to be worth $500,000.
Calling themselves “White Lies Matter,” the group sent a message to the Montgomery Advertiser and Al.com that included a proof-of-life type photo of the chair, a ransom note styled to look like it came from the 1800s and a photoshopped image of what their banner might look like hoisted above the UDC headquarters more than 700 miles away.
“Failure to do so will result in the monument, an ornate stone chair, immediately being turned into a toilet. See enclosed photograph,” the group said in the email to Al.com.
“Nobody knows what to make of this, it’s just really strange,” Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson told the Washington Post.
The group cited U.S. history as their motive for the theft:
“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 … We decided, in the spirit of such ignominious traditions, to kidnap a chair instead. Jefferson Davis doesn’t need it anymore. He’s long dead. To be honest, he never even had the chance to sit in it in the first place.”
Davis died in 1889, four years before the chair was dedicated. He was a Mississippi native and had not visited Selma for decades before his death.
The chair was stolen on March 19, according to the Advertiser, the same weekend as the Selma Pilgrimage, an annual festival celebrating Selma’s antebellum architecture and featuring tours led by white women dressed in hoop skirts.
It sat in an area of the cemetery known as Confederate Circle, which holds the graves of Confederate soldiers and several monuments. The city sold the area around Confederate Circle to the UDC in 2011. Who owns the circle itself is a subject of debate, according to the Selma Times-journal, though a
sign currently posted in front of it says it is privately owned and maintained by the local UDC chapter.
White Lies Matter demanded the UDC, which is responsible for many of the nation’s Confederate statues and memorials, hang a banner it said it had already provided on its headquarters in Richmond, Va. The banner reads: “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives,” which is a quote by Assata Shakur.
Shakur, as a member of the Black Liberation Army, was convicted of the murder of a New Jersey state trooper in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 and has been living in asylum in Cuba for decades. From there she has written books and become a cultural hero to some Black artists, including Common and Yasiin Bey.
The UDC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We took their toy, and we don’t feel guilty about it,” the White Lies Matter group wrote. “They never play with it anyway. They just want it there to remind us what they’ve done, what they are still willing to do.”