The Thomas E. Watson statue in front of the Georgia Capitol celebrates a white supremacist who compared African-Americans to apes, praised the lynching of a Jewish man, and was prosecuted for sending anti-Catholic-literature through the mail. He believed that black people should be denied the right to vote, that lynching should be legal and that Catholics were traitors.
So why does Watson’s statue still stand in front of the Capitol’s main entrance with a plaque that calls him “a champion of right who never faltered in the cause”?