SPLC grants support organizations that seek to remove Confederate symbols

By Safiya Charles | Read the full story here

Friend,

Once a month, members of the Committee for Justice, Equality and Fairness (CJEF) meet in the small back room of Sandra Macon’s church to discuss what to do about the problem at the Walton County Courthouse in DeFuniak Springs, Florida.

Just outside the courthouse stands a marble pillar erected in honor of “Walton County’s Confederate dead,” and flying just beside it is a Confederate flag. Macon, a retired U.S. Army veteran who was born and raised in DeFuniak Springs, passes by it every day.

“It’s a slap in the face,” Macon said. “Like a wound that’s been rubbed with salt.”

Macon, 66, was born during Jim Crow, just as the modern Civil Rights Movement was gaining steam. She remembers the segregated – then integrated – schools she attended in the Florida Panhandle town, where about 7,000 people live today. She recalls how her family entered restaurants and businesses through back doors and how the railroad tracks that bisect Baldwin Avenue divided the town’s Black and white neighborhoods.

For Macon and the members of CJEF, there is no honor in what these Confederate symbols represent. Last year, the group received a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center to aid its effort to remove the flag and relocate the monument.

“The SPLC was of the first groups to offer us support and guidance,” said CJEF co-founder Mike Bowden. “Our work with them has really been wonderful for us. It’s a lonely business doing this committee work. We don’t have much in the way of tangible results, but we continue to pledge ourselves not to give up on this effort. So, it’s really great to have the SPLC on our side.”