Georgia Struggles to Take Name of a Vicious Racist Off a Bridge

Why is This So Hard? Oh, Conservatives

A bridge into Savannah is named for a former Georgia Governor, Eugene Talmadge. Here is his history.

His white supremacist views and staunch segregationism make for a troubling legacy. For example, he vowed to purge the state university system of any employee who supported “Negroes in the same schools with white folks in Georgia,” a stand that helped cost the state’s white colleges their accreditation. He staged an electoral comeback with a pledge to restore all-white primary elections. He used martial law to wage political turf battles, and he was implicated in corruption.

So why is this a problem. Well Georgia will not rename the bridge. Instead the people who dislike Talmadge, that is, decent people, are looking for a loophole in that the bridge may not have been formally named and so they can change the name by just officially naming it.

If officials do find proof that the 1991 bridge was formally named, any proposal to change it will be “dead in the water,” he said, but “as long as you’re not talking about a renaming, I’m not running into resistance at all.” (Natalie Dale, a spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Transportation, whose board had the power to name bridges until 2002, said Friday that formal action to name the new bridge in 1991 had not been necessary.)

But it should not be that way. But as long as the bigots hold sway, it will. Nice going Georgia.