Protest scheduled tomorrow against Thomas Watson statue's permanent relocation

• Joeff Davis
• The Thomas Watson statue currently stands in a plaza at the front of the capitol.

State officials' plans to remove a statue outside the Georgia Capitol that has long paid tribute to Georgia politician, author, and self-described white supremacist Thomas Watson is expected to face opposition this weekend.

Two groups, the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South, have scheduled a demonstration tomorrow to oppose the state's decision to relocate the controversial Watson statue from the Georgia State Capitol's front steps.

Last month, Governor Deal signed an executive order to relocate the 12-foot-tall statue across the street to Plaza Park, he wrote, as part of forthcoming renovations at the Gold Dome. Georgia Building Authority Spokesman Paul Melvin previously told CL that the statue would not be moved back to its current location due to high costs associated with transporting the statue a second time.

Organizers behind this weekend's protest have called the Watson statue's removal "an abject capitulation to political correctness and a heinous assault on our Southern heritage." John Preston, one of the organizers, told CL in an email that they don't "see any difference between the destruction of Buddhist monuments by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the PC liberals in Georgia who want to remove the Tom Watson statue."

Creative Loafing published an editorial last spring that called for the statue's removal from the front of the State Capitol because of Watson's racist, anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic views.

• Joeff Davis
• Fresh concrete was poured yesterday where the Thomas Watson statue will be relocated.

The Thomson, Ga., native, who had supported African-American voting rights during the first part of his career, became a self-declared white supremacist after the turn of the 20th century. Watson worked in various editorial capacities for several news outlets and published numerous articles attacking blacks, Jews and Catholics. In 1908, his newspaper, The Jeffersonian ran an editorial that called blacks an "inferior being: [who] is not anymore our brother then the apes are" and that shouldn't be allowed to "live on a footing of equality" with whites.

Watson's publications also waged a hate-filled campaign against Jewish businessman Leo Frank. After Frank was convicted in 1913 of murdering Mary Phagan, a young girl who worked in his Downtown Atlanta pencil factory. Watson's writings were said to have contributed to the anti-Semitic frenzy that ultimately led to Frank's lynching.

Despite Watson's past, the plaque on the Gold Dome's statue, which was unveiled in 1932, calls the former lawmaker a "champion of right who never faltered in the cause."

The Georgia Building Authority hasn't released an exact date for the statue's removal, but construction workers have started pouring cement at its new home.

Tomorrow's protest will start at 10 a.m. in front of the Thomas Watson statue.