Savannah Renames Square Honoring America's Chief Racist
Enslaved Woman is Honored Instead
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Who was the most racist person in America, past or present? Even if we limit the competition to public figures who held a major office. I can think of dozens who contended for the title. Yet one man has done more to distinguish himself in this category than anyone I can think of. That man, John C. Calhoun, had his name removed from a square in Savannah that bore his name for 170 years. It was renamed for Susie King Taylor, who taught formerly enslaved people to read after the Civil War and was the only Black woman to write a memoir of her life during the war.
Bestowing the title "Chief Racist" wasn't as hard as one might think. America's borders are what they are because of Calhoun and those he persuaded. Much of what is now Mexico might be part of the United States, but for his insistence, we didn't want any more of Mexico because there were "too many Mexicans."
“Nor have we ever incorporated into the Union any but the Caucasian race. To incorporate Mexico would be the first departure of the kind; for more than half of its population are pure Indians, and by far the larger portion of the residue mixed blood. I protest against the incorporation of such a people. Ours is the Government of the white man.” — John C Calhoun
Before Ron DeSantis extolled the benefits of slavery, Calhoun talked about it, though he may have only intended the benefit for white people.
“I take higher ground. I hold that in the present state of civilization, where two races of different origin, and distinguished by color, and other physical differences, as well as intellectual, are brought together, the relation now existing in the slaveholding States between the two, is, instead of an evil, a good — a positive good. . . . I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.” ~ John C. Calhoun
