The natural world scares many people. They freak out when they encounter a snake or a spider. Not me. I think they are interesting creatures and not something to fear. For my annual Halloween blog article I could write about snakes or spiders or some ferocious dinosaur or pre-historic mammal that formerly roamed Georgia, but I don’t consider them monsters. They killed for food, territory, or mates; and their behavior was largely instinctual. The most terrifying monsters in the history of Georgia are our fellow human beings. Below is a short summary of the most heinous monsters in Georgia history.
All Confederate soldiers were monsters. They were fighting, whether they realized it or not, for the institution of slavery. The Confederacy used extremist militias to take over an entire region of the country, sparking a 5 year conflict that included family members and relatives killing each other. After the Civil War was over, southern sympathizers imagined and put into writing a revisionist version of what the conflict was about. The war was over slavery and nothing else. All the southern state legislatures and governors admitted they were seceding from the Union to preserve the institution of slavery. (You can find these historical documents online.) I believe their confessions. Later revisionists were simply a bunch of cry babies who wanted to pretend southerners were victims, even though they brought their destruction down upon themselves. The Confederate soldiers were not victims–they were all slave-owners, sons of slave-owners, or poor shmucks who aspired to be slave-owners.
Confederate soldiers from Georgia. They claim they fought for States Rights. Yeah, the right of states to keep slavery legal.
The next generation of Georgia monsters included racists who lynched innocent black people. Now, most of the monsters on my list in this article look like ordinary people, but the monsters in the below photo look like refugees from the movie, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Just think. Their grandchildren post pro-Trump propaganda on Facebook today. Facebook won’t let them use the N-word on their platform, but they have enough influence with Facebook for the platform to ban the word, White Trash, as if it is an equivalent. (I am currently blocked from posting for 24 hours for saying conservatives = White Trash.) It’s a false equivalency. The word, White Trash, refers to a mindset more than a race.
Scary bunch of rednecks.
Eugene Talmadge served as Georgia’s governor from 1933-1937 and from 1941-1943. He won re-election in 1946 but croaked of liver cirrhosis before he could serve in office a third time. In the 1946 election he lost the popular vote but won the election anyway because Georgia had a rule that whoever won the most counties won the election. Sound familiar? Talmadge was an ardent segregationist who believed in slave labor. He claimed to be a populist (like Trump) but supported the interests of wealthy landowners (like Trump). He had striking textile workers arrested and put into POW camps. He complained to President Roosevelt about New Deal public works programs that paid better than local farmers who were used to cheating poor people into working for obscenely low wages. Talmadge wasn’t much of a reader, but he did read Hitler’s Mein Kampf 7 times, and he sympathized with both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. In turn Germany’s Nazi Party praised Talmadge. Talmadge attended KKK meetings and bragged about how he flogged black sharecroppers. As governor, he fired de-segregationists serving on the University of Georgia’s Board of Regents, setting back integration there for decades. Talmadge was also behind a lynching that resulted in the deaths of 2 young African-American couples.
Eugene Talmadge, Georgia’s governor for 2 terms during the 1930s and 1940s, read Mein Kampf 7 times and was praised by Germany’s Nazi Party. He was an ardent segregationist.
William Calley commanded the platoon that murdered 504 old men, women, and children at the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. He personally shot 22 of them. Of the 14 men who took part in this war crime, he was the only 1 convicted. He received a slap on the wrist–3 years of house arrest. He should have been given the death penalty. He went on to work in his father-in-law’s jewelry store in Columbus, Georgia. Most of his customers hade no idea they were buying rings and wristwatches from a monster.
William Calley was found guilty of killing 22 innocent civilians during the My Lai massacre.
Wayne Williams raped and murdered at least 23 teenaged boys during the late 1970s in Atlanta. He still claims he is innocent, and some of the victim’s parents believe him, but the evidence against him is overwhelming. He posed as a talent agent to lure his victims into trusting him. Police caught him throwing a body off a bridge into the Chattahoochee River in the middle of the night, and the murders suddenly stopped when he was taken into custody. Moreover, 2 witnesses identified Wayne as the person who attempted to sexually assault them before they escaped. Some additional murders attributed to Wayne may have been committed by other unknown monsters.
Wayne Williams raped and murdered dozens of black teenagers. He still claims his innocence, though the police caught him throwing a body off a bridge and the killings stopped once he became incarcerated.
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