White Georgia Lawmaker Threatens Black Former Colleague Over Confederate Statue

A Republican Georgia lawmaker told a former black colleague, “You won’t be met with torches but something a lot more definitive,” if she continued to push for the removal of Confederate statues and monuments.

State Rep. Jason Spencer posted a series of photos on Facebook Monday at the Jefferson Davis Memorial Historic Site in Fitzgerald, Georgia. The site marks the place where Confederate States President, Jefferson Davis, was captured in 1865. One of the photographs is a selfie.

“This is Georgia’s history. #DealWithIt,” wrote Spencer, who represents a district in southern Georgia.

Former State Rep. LaDawn Jones didn’t appreciate the post.

“Yes get it in … before it is torn down. Are state tax dollars going to this? If so I need to take a closer look at the state budget. I’ll deal with it, but don’t want to pay for it,” the Democrat wrote. She represented a district in Atlanta until 2016.

Spencer also wrote that “people in South Georgia are people of action, not drama” and suggested that people that don’t get it “will go missing in the Okefenokee,” referring to a swamp in southern Georgia. He also insinuated that the people of southern Georgia would not like the idea of being told to get rid of the statues and monuments. “Too many necks they are red around here,” he wrote.

“She is from Atlanta – and the rest of Georgia sees this issue very differently,” Spencer told the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC) Tuesday. “Just trying to keep her safe if she decided to come down and raise hell about the memorial in the back yards of folks who will see this as an unwelcome aggression from the left.”

Spencer was elected in 2010 and Jones served from 2012 until 2016.

Jones said that the two sat next to each other while serving in the Georgia House of Representatives, and shared an interesting relationship.

“If it were anybody other than Jason Spencer, then I would be alarmed. But we had a unique relationship in the Georgia Legislature,” said Jones to AJC. “If that had come from anybody else, I’d take it as a serious threat.”

She said she was still concerned.

“Sounds like a threat of physical violence … is that what we are doing now? Desperate times call for desperate measures huh? Afraid of what is going to happen in southern GA?” she wrote below the photos. “WINTER IS COMING. You know it too … otherwise you wouldn’t have found a need to even make this post or those hollow threats of not coming to south GA.”

Confederate statues became a flash point this month when a far-right protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned violent. A group protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee there contained neo-Nazis and white supremacists and were met with a counter-protest. A man with alleged ties to white supremacy smashed a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one woman.

The tense national conversation was exacerbated by President Donald Trump's remarks about Charlottesville. He created a moral equivalency between the actions and hateful rhetoric of the neo-Nazis and white supremacists and the counter-protest, sparking wide-spread criticism.