“All the stuff about great Georgia statesmen, Confederate generals, the state getting gutted during the Civil War? Gone. Poof.”

That wasn’t a last-minute change or compromise. That language was already stripped from the bill when it passed the Senate Rules Committee on March 5 and when the Senate initially passed it on March 12.

It was then the House that tacked on the ‘Official State Historical Civil Rights Museum’ language from Lester Jackson’s failed bill. And the House didn’t even first read the bill until March 17.

So despite what the insider said, all of the “trumpeting of our Confederate forefathers” was removed at least two weeks before the museum language was added.

And as much as I’d like to believe the bill was struggling to pass the House, its 48-2 victory in the Senate doesn’t indicate much legislative opposition. Well before the museum language was added, Ronald Ramsey and Kasim Reed were the only two Senators to vote against the bill. Its 146-10 passage of the House, with the added museum language, is actually a slightly *higher* opposition percentage.

(I’d like to toot the horn of my Rep, Mike Jacobs, for being the only Republican in either house to vote against the bill.)

I think it’s also worth stressing that the only thing the bill, as passed, does with regard to the museum is to give it a designation. The museum already exists. It is already named for Ralph Mark Gilbert. The bill does not provide new funding for the museum. It merely creates OCGA 50-3-85, designating the museum as “an official Georgia historical civil rights museum.”

And here’s something downright strange: the bill as passed and signed specifically says “an official Georgia…museum.” “An,” not “the.” The failed bill said “the.” So the museum is being given an official status (on par with grits being the official state prepared food, or square dancing the official state folk dance), but not a singular one.

Meanwhile, ‘Confederate Heritage & History Month’ becomes Georgia’s only third official month-long holiday. February is both American History Month and Georgia History Month (neither of which needed an ad hoc ‘tourism’ rationale). And now April is Confederate Heritage & History Month. It’s a fairly unique honor, certainly not on par with the non-official Black History Month, as Senator Bulloch liked to compare it to.

Finally, whatever merit there may be in designating the Savannah museum as ‘an official state civil rights museum,’ that doesn’t at all excuse the simultaneous insertion into state law of a month-long holiday to “honor, observe and celebrate the Confederate States of America” and its cause. Not to study the era and the war, or to reflect on the conflict and the lessons we can take from it, but to specifically honor and celebrate the CSA itself.

Georgia is, sadly, the first state in the Union to actually pass legislation permanently so designating April this way.

It may only be a symbolic matter, but symbols do matter. Georgia now looks to the rest of the nation as a state willing to celebrate its most bold attempt to protect and preserve the institution of slavery. And the thought that potential dissenters may have had their silence purchased at the cost of the designation of merely “an official…museum” doesn’t reflect kindly on anyone other than those who actually stood firm against SB 27.