By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
By all accounts the public comments portion of Brandon’s Board of Alderman meeting August 4th was contentious. Several people spoke emphasizing the important history and heritage represented in the 37-foot-tall Confederate Statue in Brandon’s Town Square. Then there was Mrs. Angela English, President of Rankin County NAACP. Her message was personal, and stunning. As relayed to her by her grandfather who was 15 at the time, her great uncle – Mac Maclin – was accused of assaulting a young white woman despite not being in the same county at the time, tried and sentenced to hang in 1908. After hanging, her great uncle was dragged behind a pickup truck as white locals partied and had a picnic, and then what was left of his body was hung again, this time from the Confederate monument in question, which had been erected just one year earlier.
She concluded her remarks, with these words. “We need to stop and start reconciliation processes. And the only way we can heal is to remove the salt that has been poured into our wounds for decades. We are tired and we want the statue removed. It’s dead. it’s a concrete monument. The man that’s on it is dead. Dead things belong in a graveyard. There is a graveyard that it needs to be put in.” The entire meeting can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om-wn44Nuxs.
At the meeting there were more 200 people in attendance, as relayed to The Mississippi Link newspaper by numerous attendees. Isn’t it ironic that for the August 18th meeting, a brand-new sign had been posted, limiting attendance to 70 people, and further that half the seating room had special “Reserved” signs on the chairs – supposedly for Police and Firefighter recognitions, although numerous White non-first responders were seated there, and further that a Brandon Police Chief directed all people standing to leave the room and go to the Civic Center across the hall where they could see and hear the meeting – 99 percent of whom were Black.
The scheming – what else could you call it – didn’t end there. They never established the audio-video feed of the meeting across the hall in the Civic Center. A minimum of 35 people got iced out completely. No sound or video. Another issue, so willful, so deliberate by the white powers that be in Brandon – they accepted public comments only from residents residing in the 39042-zip code. The U.S. Postal Service indicates there are three zip codes for Brandon – 39042, 39043, and 39047. Brandon is the county seat of Rankin County, which makes their little zip code game yet again another piece of disenfranchising behavior.
Of the five speakers registered for public comments, just two were about the 118-year-old monument. Mike Lee, who emphasized he was no relation to Brandon Mayor Butch Lee, went on for two and a half times the allotted three minutes. Everything from his kin folk that served the Confederacy in the Civil War, to Lincoln’s address, to Confederate soldiers being exhumed from rural cemeteries and then reburied in Arlington National Cemetery, etc. Even when the mayor told him his time had expired, he went on and on.
Janie Mclaurin-Wheaton, a member of Concerned Citizens of Rankin County, came up next and spoke on removal of the statue. “Mike Lee and other historians would like to let you know why the Confederate statue should stay. I’m going to tell you why it should go. This statue has called so much pain. They want to tell you about what their grandfathers and great grandfathers did. Our great grandfathers were out there also. They want to remove the books from the school, the library, and did. Well why do you want the statue to stay when you want to remove the books from the library and the schools that talk about Black history. It should go. It’s time…Is that something that you would want for your grandfather that served in the war, or yours, mayor, or board? If history doesn’t serve everybody, and we pay taxes – If it don’t serve everybody then it shouldn’t serve anybody – it should come down.
We heard about how African Americans served in the Confederate war, well don’t tell me that unless you’re going to tell me the whole thing. We didn’t have a choice. We were killed. Our children were killed. They were hung, they were raped, they were molested. It was the whole nine yards. Books were removed from schools, but you want that statue to stay. Where were the historians when the books were being removed? Why couldn’t they come before you then and say leave the books alone because that’s history. You’re flip flopping. A young man spoke that was a principal (previous meeting) and he spoke on his own time. He wasn’t at school. He didn’t talk about school, you all asked us where we worked and where we lived and he answered that. But, you all sit there as low-down people and call his job, but he was speaking with freedom of speech. No fairness.”
The entire August 18th Board of Alderman Meeting can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gboltSSal90.
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