Full statement from Judge Martin Clark
Posted: Wednesday, September 2, 2015 11:36 am
By JUDGE MARTIN F. CLARK JR. Special to the Bulletin
On August 19, 2015, I personally removed General J. E. B. Stuart’s portrait from the Patrick County Circuit Court’s courtroom.
This will no doubt anger, perplex and disappoint many residents of our county, perhaps even the majority of people who live here. It will be an unpopular decision in many quarters, especially given that the courthouse is located in a town named in Stuart’s honor. Still, it is my goal—and my duty as a judge—to provide a trial setting that is perceived by all participants as fair, neutral and without so much as a hint of prejudice. Confederate symbols are, simply put, offensive to African Americans, and this reaction is based on fact and clear, straightforward history. Bigotry saturates the Confederacy’s founding principles, its racial aspirations and its public pronouncements. For instance, the Declarations of Causes—the legal and philosophical grounds recited by the Southern states for leaving the Union—could just as easily be called The South’s Demands to Mistreat Black People ...
I have heard from several of my local friends that people—like myself—who are critical of Confederate symbols need “to read the real history.” I have ... I’ve read how Confederate flags waived in the galleries after the Virginia legislature passed its racist, embarrassing and unconstitutional Massive Resistance scheme. When George Wallace proclaimed “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” he invoked Jefferson Davis, the “Cradle of the Confederacy” and the “great Anglo-Saxon Southland” ...
... I’m weary of the argument that we shouldn’t remove certain intrusive Civil War symbols because “everybody’s too sensitive and/or everybody is offended by something.” Black men and women have a bona fide, objective, fact-based, historically grounded reason to find Confederate glorification offensive, and almost all of them do in fact take offense ...
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"Finally, I think it’s important to mention my Southern roots and my pride in this region. I’m proud to live in Patrick County, proud to live in the South. I celebrate William Faulkner, Larry Brown and Eudora Welty. I listen to The Allman Brothers and miss B.B. King. I made it a point to meet Dale Earnhardt and get his autograph, I grew up next door to Leonard Wood, and my mother was a Young from Ararat—raised dirt-poor a stone’s throw away from Jeb’s birthplace—who became a magnificent teacher. I caught my first fish in Kibler Valley almost fifty years ago. I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with Jerry Baliles, Turner Foddrell, Sammy Shelor, John D. Hooker, Ann Belcher and Annie Hylton, Rev. R. J. Mann, Buddy Dollarhite and John Grisham. I’ve witnessed bake sales and fundraisers and pinto-bean suppers bring in five-figure help for Patrick County friends who happened to catch a bad break. My dad and uncle told me stories about leaving these mountains and volunteering to serve in World War II. That’s the South I want to showcase. I’m proud of our music, our food, our literature, our accomplishments in every possible field, our manners and traditions, our sense of connection with our neighbors, our quiet sacrifices, our grit and courage throughout generations, our savvy and intelligence, and the rhythms, feel and strength of this slice of the world. That’s my Southern heritage, and it’s far, far distant from the battlefields of the 1860s."
