by Barbara Nevins Taylor
In 1979, I sat at a long table in a law office in a white frame house in Marietta, Georgia with J.B. Stoner. I was there to interview the racist, anti-semitic founder of the National States Rights Party about some aspect of his campaign for governor. I’d interviewed Stoner before, for WAGA-TV, and he always had us set up in front of the big flag with the Nazi thunderbolt behind him. We talked easily while the photographer got the equipment ready. I planned tough questions, but kept it light before we got started. After a few minutes, Stoner cocked his head and said, “You know, you are pretty nice for a Jew-lady.”
The comment took my breath away. Stoner with his bristly hair and clip-on bowtie might have seemed like a cartoon character, but he wasn’t. As a teenager he resurrected a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In the 1950s he was suspected in a string of bombings and attacks against Jews and Blacks in the South. He was indicted in 1963 for obstruction of justice and trying to stop integration in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1969 he represented James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray’s brother Jerry became Stoner’s bodyguard, always hovering nearby. He was there at my interview with Stoner standing slightly to the right. Stoner lost that 1979 governor’s race and a year later Stoner was convicted for the 1958 bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham.
Over many years in Georgia, this hateful racist got air time and newspaper coverage and was a fixture in the vocal right wing of North Georgia politics. Sound familiar?
Racist J.B. Stoner speaking with right wing Congressman Larry McDonald behind him. Photo by Eddie Hunter.
Stoner died in 2005 and I haven’t worked in Georgia since the early ’80s. But when I hear Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene talk, it sounds like I’m back in that little room in Marietta.
Taylor Greene’s 14th Congressional District runs just west of Marietta and north to the Tennessee line near Chattanooga. It’s hard to believe that so much of J.B. Stoner seems to linger in the north Georgia air and is reflected in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rhetoric.
Take a couple of lines from a notorious Stoner commercial using the N word during his unsuccessful run for U.S. Senate in 1974. Stoner sued to require TV stations to run the commercial under the Fairness Doctrine, even though the Federal Communications Commission had a long-standing ban against using the word.
Stoner won. Here’s some of what he said: “I am the only candidate for United States Senator who is for the white people. I am the only candidate who is against integration. All of the other candidates are race mixers to one degree or another.” Stoner lost that race to Sam Nunn. But you get the idea.
Back to Marjorie Taylor Greene. In Facebook videos she said, “There is an Islamic invasion into our government offices right now,” referring to Congresswomen Ilan Omar and Rashida Talib. She said Black people are “held slaves to the Democratic Party” and called the philanthropist George Soros, a Jewish, holocaust survivor, a Nazi.
Her latest plan to form an Anglo-Saxon caucus, reported by Punchbowl, makes her seem even more like Stoner’s heir.
Taylor Greene apparently scrapped the idea of the caucus after Republican leaders criticized it. Yet she remains a voice that may skirt overt racism, but echoes an ugly past. Too bad we’re not over it.
Majorie Taylor Greene is now a fundraising machine. She raised $3.2 million dollars during the first three months of 2021, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC)
One good thing. The AJC’s Jim Galloway reported that Stoner’s house in Marietta now is owned by an oral surgeon who leased the basement to the Cobb County Democratic Party. Active members include Blacks and Jews.
