Tommy Benton | |
---|---|
Member of the GeorgiaHouseofRepresentatives from the 31st district | |
In office January 10, 2005 –January 9, 2023 | |
Preceded by | Chris Elrod |
Succeeded by | Emory Dunahoo |
Personal details | |
Born | Thomas Housch Benton May 20,1950 [1] Athens,Georgia [1] |
Political party | Republican |
Spouse | Karen [1] |
Children | 4 [1] |
Residence | Jefferson,Georgia [1] |
Occupation | Retired Teacher [2] |
Thomas Housch Benton (born May 20,1950) is an American Republican politician who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from the 31st district from 2005 to 2023. [2] [3] He has been repeatedly criticized for neo-Confederate comments. [3]
In 2004,Benton ran for election to represent District 31 in the Georgia House of Representatives. He defeated Chris Elrod in the Republican primary with 50.6% of the vote, [4] and was unopposed in the general election. [5] He has been reelected seven times since then,usually without opposition. [6]
He has been criticized for his neo-Confederate views,which lionize the South's secession and have been criticized as racist. He has claimed that,contrary to historical consensus,slavery was not a cause of the war,the Confederacy's leaders were equal to the Founding Fathers,and that taking down Confederate monuments was "no better than what ISIS is doing." [3] As of 2021,he was one of five Georgia legislators who were members of the neo-Confederate Sons of Confederate Veterans. [7]
In 2016,he gained national attention for apologetic comments about the Ku Klux Klan,which he described as "not so much a racist thing but a vigilante thing to keep law and order...It made a lot of people straighten up. I’m not saying what they did was right. It’s just the way things were." [8] [9] [10] Benton also proposed a bill that would have returned Martin Luther King Boulevard in Atlanta to its former name,Gordon Road,which honored John Brown Gordon,a former slaveholder who historians believe was the Georgia head of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1870s. [3] He also argued that criticism of the Confederate battle flag was an attempt to distract from the issue of "black-on-black crime." [11]
In 2017,Benton received criticism for distributing to members of the state legislature an article headlined "The Absurdity of Slavery as the Cause of the War Between the States." As a result,Republican House leadership stripped him of his chairmanship of the House Human Relations and Aging Committee. [11]
In 2020,after the death of civil rights icon John Lewis,Benton criticized Lewis on a radio show,saying "his only claim to fame was he got conked on the head at the Pettus Bridge...and he has milked that for 50 years." He also said Lewis' accomplishments paled in comparison with those of Alexander H. Stephens,the vice president of the Confederacy most noted for a speech in which he proclaimed "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man;that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition." After public outcry at the comments,Republican leadership in the Georgia House of Representatives stripped Benton of his chairmanship of the House Retirement Committee. [12]
In December 2021,Benton announced he would not seek re-election. [13]
The Ku Klux Klan,commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan,is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist,far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. According to historian Fergus Bordewich,the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets at various times have been African Americans,as well as Jews and Catholics.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors,the funding of monuments to them,and the promotion of the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
John Tyler Morgan was an American politician who was a brigadier general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War and later was elected for six terms as the U.S. Senator (1877–1907) from the state of Alabama. A prominent slaveholder before the Civil War,he became the second Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama during the Reconstruction era. Morgan and fellow Klan member Edmund W. Pettus became the ringleaders of white supremacy in Alabama and did more than anyone else in the state to overthrow Reconstruction efforts in the wake of the Civil War. When President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched U.S. Attorney General Amos Akerman to prosecute the Klan under the Enforcement Acts,Morgan was arrested and jailed.
Neo-Confederates are groups and individuals who portray the Confederate States of America and its actions during the American Civil War in a positive light. The League of the South,the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other neo-Confederate organizations continue to defend the secession of the former Confederate States.
Stephen Donald Black is an American white supremacist. He is the founder and webmaster of the neo-Nazi,Holocaust denial,and homophobic website Stormfront. He was a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan and a member of the American Nazi Party in the 1970s,though at the time he was a member it was known as the "National Socialist White Peoples' Party". He was convicted in 1981 of attempting an armed overthrow of the government in the island of Dominica in violation of the U.S. Neutrality Act.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American neo-Confederate nonprofit organization of male descendants of Confederate soldiers that commemorates these ancestors,funds and dedicates monuments to them,and promotes the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
The Enforcement Act of 1871,also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act,Third Enforcement Act,Third Ku Klux Klan Act,Civil Rights Act of 1871,or Force Act of 1871,is an Act of the United States Congress which empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and other terrorist organizations who had terrorized and murdered innocent African Americans,public officials,and white sympathizers in the previous Confederate States of America. The act was passed by the 42nd United States Congress and signed into law by United States President Ulysses S. Grant on April 20,1871. The act was the last of three Enforcement Acts passed by the United States Congress from 1870 to 1871 during the Reconstruction Era to combat attacks upon the suffrage rights of African Americans. The statute has been subject to only minor changes since then,but has been the subject of voluminous interpretation by courts.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan,or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Benjamin Harvey Hill was a politician who is credited with helping inaugurate Georgia's Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta on July 23,1868,in a speech that invoked the use of violence against the governor,the legislature,and freed people during Congressional Reconstruction. His career spanned state and national politics,and the Civil War. He served in the Georgia legislature in both houses. Although he had opposed secession in 1860,he represented Georgia as a Confederate senator during the conflict.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
At the end of the American Civil War,the devastation and disruption in the state of Georgia were dramatic. Wartime damage,the inability to maintain a labor force without slavery,and miserable weather had a disastrous effect on agricultural production. The state's chief cash crop,cotton,fell from a high of more than 700,000 bales in 1860 to less than 50,000 in 1865,while harvests of corn and wheat were also meager. The state government subsidized construction of numerous new railroad lines. White farmers turned to cotton as a cash crop,often using commercial fertilizers to make up for the poor soils they owned. The coastal rice plantations never recovered from the war.
Bill Riccio is a leader in the white power skinhead movement in the United States who gained public notoriety for his appearance in the 1993 documentary Skinheads:Soldiers of the Race War. He has been convicted numerous times on illegal weapon possession charges,the most recent of which was in 1992.
John D. Ragan Jr. is a Republican member of the Tennessee House of Representatives,for the 33rd District,encompassing parts of Anderson County,Tennessee.
The Ku Klux Klan is an organization that expanded operations into Canada,based on the second Ku Klux Klan established in the United States in 1915. It operated as a fraternity,with chapters established in parts of Canada throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The first registered provincial chapter was registered in Toronto in 1925 by two Americans and a Canadian. The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan,where it briefly influenced political activity and whose membership included a member of Parliament,Walter Davy Cowan.
The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a group styled after the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Formed around 2012,it aims to "restore America to a White,Christian nation founded on God's word".
Laura Martin Rose,known professionally as Mrs. S. E. F. Rose,was a historian and propagandist for the Ku Klux Klan employed by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
The equestrian statue of John Brown Gordon is a monument on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta,Georgia,United States. The monument,an equestrian statue,honors John Brown Gordon,a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War who later become a politician in post-Reconstruction era Georgia. Designed by Solon Borglum,the statue was dedicated in 1907 to large fanfare. The statue has recently become a figure of controversy over Gordon's racist views and associations with the Confederacy,with some calling for its removal.
The Martin Luther King Jr. statue is a public monument of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. in Atlanta,Georgia. The statue,designed by Martin Dawe,was unveiled in 2017 and stands on the grounds of the Georgia State Capitol,overlooking Liberty Plaza.
John Richard Rarick was an American lawyer,jurist,and World War II veteran who served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives,serving Louisiana's 6th congressional district from 1967 to 1975.