Civil Rights Vet: Confed. Statue Attackers Are 'Frauds' Denigrating American Values
When a mob of student protesters tore down a statue of a Confederate soldier on the campus of the University of North Carolina this week, the students and their supporters in the liberal media claimed it was a sign of outrage at symbols of hatred that have divided the country.
But some of those who are in a position to know the issue best say the vandals couldn’t be more wrong.
A prominent member of the civil rights movement of the 1960s sees such actions as unpatriotic and a distraction from the issues that matter.
During an interview Wednesday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Bob Woodson, a national civil rights activist and founder of the Woodson Center, which focuses on helping the black community at the ground level, denounced those who destroy Confederate symbols.
Their actions, he told the host, go against the founding principles of America:
“I am outraged that as a veteran of the civil rights movement — we fought to fulfill the dream of America,” Woodson told Carlson.
The civil rights movement, he said, “supported our founding values and our principles and we also didn’t destroy anything in the name of justice. For those people out there who are supposed to be heirs of that legacy, they are a fraud. I am against taking those statues down. To remember something doesn’t mean you are celebrating it.”
Such actions are not only unpatriotic, Woodson said, but they are a distraction from what Woodson called the more serious problem of deadly black-on-black crime in the United States.
“…They are using race, but what it does, Tucker, also is deflect attention away from the more critical issues that we are facing, particularly in black America where we have more blacks killed in one year than were killed in 70 years,” he said.
Woodson concluded by saying that “we ought to be putting our time and attention” to the fact that “more blacks were killed in one year than were killed in 70 years — lynched in 70 years between 1873-1950.”
Woodson lived in a time where civil liberties and civil rights were not mutually exclusive.
It should be remembered that Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t trying to subvert America but perfect its founding principles.
Unlike the far-left Black Panthers, and their successors in the Black Lives Matter movement, King wasn’t about destruction.
He sought to appeal to Amercans’ best instincts and show that his movement was an attempt to fulfill the mission of Abraham Lincoln.
Today, much of the left is about street theater.
They believe — or pretend to believe — that for every politically incorrect statue and monument destroyed they have advanced the cause of civil rights for blacks.
But instead they are engaging in the easy course of violence rather than the real work of addressing key issues.
Bob Woodson could tell them.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
