By CARLEE LAMMERS
Charleston Gazette-Mail
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The Rev. Marlon Collins said the country has seen a “detestable monster” rear its head after the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, this weekend.
“Here’s the problem. There is a sick monster that has been alive in this country since it was founded,” Collins, the pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church, said to a group of more than 100 people who attended a vigil for solidarity with Charlottesville on the Capitol grounds in Charleston Sunday.
“All of my life — through the 70s, 80s and 90s — this detestable monster has reared its head every now and again. A year and a half ago, this detestable monster started to wake up again. And how he woke up is he started to hear a voice that said, ‘Make America great again.’ The more that monster heard, ‘Make America great again,’ the more he woke up. [Saturday] we saw the manifestation of a seed that had been planted a year and a half ago.”
The group gathered in a circle around the Stonewall Jackson statue on the Capitol grounds to call for the statue’s removal, condemn racism and stand in solidarity with the community of Charlottesville. Collins, along with other local civil rights leaders, spoke at the vigil, including faith leaders, community members and representatives from the NAACP.
The Charlottesville turmoil swelled during a Unite the Right rally Saturday, organized by white supremacists to oppose the city’s plan to remove a Robert E. Lee memorial. Both Lee and Jackson were Confederate generals during the Civil War.
A man drove his car into a crowd of people protesting the white supremacists, killing one person and injuring 19 others, police said. The man was later charged with second degree murder.
Similar gatherings in solidarity with Charlottesville were also held in Morgantown, Huntington and across the country Sunday.
Dozens who attended the Charleston vigil made signs calling for the removal of the Stonewall Jackson statue, signs saying “hate has no home here,” and signs condemning white supremacy.
Deskins, a Raleigh County native, also challenged West Virginians to take a deeper look at the history of Stonewall Jackson.
Less than 10 people who attended the vigil opposed the removal of the statue. Some held signs that read, “Preserve our history,” some began to sing the lyrics to “I Wish I was in Dixie,” and others yelled out, “It’s history,” throughout the vigil.
“We don’t want to take away their history. We want them to learn even more about their history,” Deskins told the crowd. “What they’re not going to tell you is she owned six slaves, got a slave as a wedding present and gave his wife a slave — a young black girl — as a gift. … Here he stands like a stone wall for white supremacy, like a stone wall for white nationalism, like a stone wall for racism. But we see this in every day life.”
Collins said while he supports the removal of the statue, he believes it shouldn’t be the main focus.
“You can take the statue down, but the problem is the idealism that put the statue up. If it comes down, the mentality does not change. We have to be able to dialogue with people,” Collins said.” There are certain things we need to love about our history and certain things we need to learn from our history. And if history is what makes us hate each other, then let’s do away with the whole thing.”
Gov. Jim Justice released a statement Sunday night calling the events in Charlottesville “deplorable and totally unacceptable.”
“There is no place for hatred and bigotry in our society,” Justice said. “Three people lost their lives and many others were injured, and that’s heartbreaking. We will not tolerate violence like that here.”
Like President Donald Trump’s statement after the incident, Justice’s statement did not condemn white supremacy by name. When asked if there was a reason the statement didn’t mention white supremacy, Justice’s communications director, Butch Antolini, did not respond.
The Revs. Darick Biondi and Cindy Briggs-Biondi, both United Methodist pastors at churches in Kanawha County, called for the removal of the statue, prayed at the close of the vigil and encouraged the group to share Christ’s love with all.
“I’ve got a past. I have things in my history that I am not proud of. It’s my history,” Darick Biondi said. “It made me who I am today, but it doesn’t mean that I celebrate it. It means I learn from it. We as a country need to remember our history as a lesson to learn from.”
Cindy Briggs-Biondi encouraged the crowd to reflect on the lines “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven” from the Lord’s Prayer.
“We as people are called to take the hard step at looking at our own hearts and at the systems from which we benefit,” she said. “We are called to be agents of change and we are only able to do that when we love one another and when we serve one another and when we recognize the image of God in one another.”
A second vigil will be held at 7 p.m. today at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Quarrier Street in Charleston.
The AP contributed to this report.
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