This here case is a pretty good story.
It all starts in Orange County, North Carolina. Folks there, well, everywhere, say the wheels of justice turn slowly. But, a few weeks ago, Lady Justice traded in her robe and blindfold for a pair of short cutoff jeans, tossed her scales into the kudzu on the side of a dusty road, and grabbed the keys to a bright orange 1969 Dodge Charger. She jumped in one window and Mendacius rode shotgun. The two of them let out a cry that bystanders called “a foxhunt yip mixed up with sort of a banshee squall.”
She pushed the pedal to the metal and made those 426 cubic inches growl through Orange County (North Carolina, that is) at such a speed that I do say that ol’ road’s hills flattened and its curves straightened for her. She screeched on up back to the courthouse hoping to return before anyone noticed her joyride had taken her from her post. She skidded to a stop, but those wheels were spinning just a bit too fast for her to brake in enough time to avoid running right over poor Veritas, who ironically was waiting outside for her daddy – who always did seem to dawdle when he was in that building. Lady Justice crawled out of the car window and put her blindfold back on, lest she see with her own eyes the consequences of leaving her post to go on such a joyride. And while she blindly wept, Mendacius grabbed her robes and scales and ran right in that courthouse to set things just the way he liked em – dirty.
Now Mr. Doucette ain’t no Greek god, but he might be mistaken for one mythological figure – Mr. Clean. Acts like him too – at least in this story. He’s a lawyer in North Carolina now, but once upon a time, he was on the Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina (“UNC”).
Way back, more than a hundred years ago, a group of ladies went around calling themselves the United Daughters of the Confederacy and putting up monuments to that lost cause. Now this was pretty darn ironic, since General Lee, himself, believed memorials like this would just keep the wounds of the Civil War open. He famously said “I think it well, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”. Well who am I to argue with Robert E. Lee?
I might not be nobody to argue with the General, but a bunch of folks down South didn’t have so much respect for what he wanted. And those former slaves around that time were getting a bit what folks called “uppity.” It was right about 1908 when the started the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or as you know it, the NAACP. They started asking for things like “rights” and “equality.” So those nice ladies went around with smiles as wide as their hats and didn’t have to work too hard to convince the powers that be all across the South to start putting up monuments to General Lee’s lost cause, and nobody paid any mind to what he said about ‘em.
Along came “Silent Sam” – a pretty tall feller made all out of bronze who these nice ladies with a not-so-nice mission got put right there at the front door to the University of North Carolina, in a position of honor. Now that was a pretty ironic kind of position for him to be in, since his mission was about as dishonorable as the soldier he represented. Where the real thing was there to preserve slavery, Sam was there to remind Black people that, if Joss Whedon will indulge me and forgive me, the Confederates might have been on the losing side, but they weren’t quite convinced it was the wrong one.
When they oh so ironically pulled the sheet off of Silent Sam in 1913, this KKK supporter named Julian Carr spoke from his heart, and told the crowd that the Confederate soldiers it honored had saved “the very life of the Anglo Saxon race in the South,” and told the following story:
“One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”
Nobody really remembered that until about 2018, but about then someone dug it up. With a metaphorical flamethrower taken to the tale that Sam stood there as a solemn testament to “southern pride,” some people just couldn’t take looking at him anymore – so they got together and damn if they didn’t tear that statue right down. Now that might not have been the polite, legal, or gentlemanly thing to do. And, I’m not one for giving a pass to destroying art or public property. But, I can still say, with no insincerity at all, that I damn well understand.
It don’t end there. You see there’s this group of good ol boys, call themselves the North Carolina Sons of Confederate Veterans. We’re sure that some of ‘em are pretty nice guys and they mean well. But, them all that run it, they’re still a bit put out that you can buy an old Dodge Charger in the Auto Trader, but there’s no similar publication to buy and sell yourself a Negro, if y’all is so inclined.
So let’s fast forward to November 27, 2019 – when the Sons of Confederate Veterans filed a lawsuit, despite lacking standing to bring it, against UNC for its failure to put Silent Sam back in his place of honor. (check it out) Despite the fact that the plaintiffs lacked standing, seven minutes after the suit was filed, a state court judge approved a settlement between the parties. Whoooo-eeee! Thats there where I was talking about earlier with Lady Justice using all 426 cubic inches of that engine!
Well, in those seven minutes, the Sons of Confederate Veterans got themselves the Silent Sam statue and slap my ass and call me Sally if they didn’t also get $2.5 million United States dollars from the University too. Now if that don’t beat all! Seven minutes of a lawsuit, and a nice sweetheart deal with a bag o’ cash come just raining down on the Confederates!
The day the settlement was approved, the Sons’ “commander” Ronald Kevin Stone, announced this “victory” to thousands of his members – not all of whom agreed with it. Some of those boys who didn’t much like it, they sent Mr. Doucette the victory proclamation. Well you might be surprised to learn that the victory proclamation itself confirmed that this deal stank like the shithouse on a shrimper boat. The Commander himself admitted that the Confederates had no business suing the University, and his victory speech sure made it seem like that someone might have used a bit of impropriety, as they say, to convince Justice to take that joyride of hers.
Now Mr. Doucette thought everyone had a right to know, so he went on and put that victory proclamation right up on the glowin’ tubes of all of the Internets, just so you and me and everyone else could see what they’d done. But, the Confederates didn’t like that. They wanted their skulduggery done in the shadows. So what they did is say that the proclamation was a copyrighted work, would you believe it? They then got it all censor-iffic despite knowing full well they were no more in their rights than if they were firing on Fort Sumter.
Well, Mr. Doucette wasn’t takin that lying down. He gave those boys a chance to come to their senses. They didn’t.
So instead of a rebel yell, we’re just gonna say Murum Aries Attigit, Y’all..
