Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed the “Jim Crow” voting bill under a painting of a slave plantation
Atlanta, Georgia – Brian Kemp sign the 98-page Election Integrity Act of 2021 after much pushback and criticism from many around the world.
But Kemp signed the bill underneath the painting of what one has recognized as an old Georgia slave plantation. Will Bunch, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote about the significance of Kemp signing the Election Integrity Act of 2021. A bill many are looking at as an act of voter suppression and move backwards to the Jim Crow era.
Bunch writes about the portrait and explains the history of the Callaway plantation in Wilkes county, Georgia, that it portrays.
2. Notice the antebellum-style portrait behind Kemp as he signs the suppression law? Thanks to Twitter crowdsourcing and particularly @TheSeaFarmer, I can report the measure to limit Black voting was signed under the image of a notorious slave plantation in Wilkes County, GA
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
4. Today, the Callaway Plantation is a 56-acre historic site where — as the ExploreGeorgia website cheerily notes — tourists can get “a glimpse into the by-gone era of working plantations in the agricultural South.” https://t.co/BslVZYLSC4
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
6. The harsh reality of life for slaves in the era of the Callaway Plantation is captured in this oral-history “slave narrative” of Mariah Callaway, a woman who was born into slavery on the plantation in 1852. In her account, she notes that… https://t.co/oW8Pq5tf0y
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
8. Visitors today to the Callaway Plantation say this legacy of inhumanity is downplayed. One wrote on Trip Advisor the slave cabin “is hidden in some trees and mentioned as an afterthought and something you can go to and look at yourself.” https://t.co/RYtMkpwif1
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
10. …enacted a series of harsh Jim Crow laws to segregate all public facilities and block Black people from voting. The state, for all of Atlanta’s “Too Busy To Hate” bluster, was a KKK hotbed in the 1960s’ civil rights era, and in the 1980s…
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
12. …of Kemp signing this bill — that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting on the sometimes 10-hour lines that state policies create in mostly Black precincts — under the image of a brutal slave plantation is almost too much to bear.
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
14… that took place behind the placid scenery of Brickhouse Road in Wilkes County, to the suppression now hidden behind a phony facade of “voter integrity.” This legacy is a crime against humanity, and it cannot stand – 30 –
— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) March 26, 2021
