Thread by @michaelharriot

If you were taught that "states' rights" caused a Civil War...
Or wondered why people shed white tears over monuments of mustachioed un-American traitors...
Or seen a Confederate flag at an insurrection

Well, you can thank one family of white supremacist nepo babies

A thread

America was settled by real estate developers for the Virginia Company of London. Instead of saying "We steal land," the company's mission statement said they wanted to civilize the ignorant savages & teach them about Jesus.

But who was gonna do this?

Well, they had a guy:

Well, they had a guy.

On June 11, 1607, Chaplain Robert Hunt gathered his about 100 church members together for service. The all-white choir was probably trash, but Hunt still led the Lord's Supper.

It was the 1st Holy communion in what would become the United States of America

Hunt's sermon probably didn't have any scriptures about the dangers of feces in drinking water and, apparently, the body of Christ doesn't have enough calories. So most of those Jamestown settlers died from starvation & dysentery.

So did Hunt. science.org/content/articl…

England basically sent its executives out to build its overseas headquarters. Most didn't know how to build things or grow their own food, so they resorted to cannibalism to survive the "starving time."

But Hunt didn't eat anyone, so he died.

smithsonianmag.com/history/starvi…

Hunt had a sister back home named Angelica Cobbs, who was smart enough to stay her ass in England. Angelica's son Ambrose grew up hearing all about his thirsty uncle & when he turned 30, he sold everything & bought tickets for Jamestown

But this cruise was REALLY all-inclusive!

In 1618, Virginia began offering 50 free acres of land for every ticket purchased to Jamestown to encourage ppl to bring indentured servants, artisans, & people who knew how to do things. After 7 years, they'd wipe out the debt.

It was the first credit repair scam.

No seriously.

The Virginia Company of London's CEO created an English-language remake of a popular book franchise. When he dropped the "King James Version" in 1604, 7 yrs became the standard for debt relief & indentured servitude. It's also the basis for the US bankruptcy code

In 1638, George Menefie found a headrights loophole. Instead of bringing family or servants to VA, he got 3,000 acres for 60 enslaved Africans

When people realized the 7-year "Lord's Release" rule didn't apply to property purchased from human traffickers, headrights exploded

Yep.

Contrary to that BS about rugged individualists building a country from scratch, the hard-working settlers who came to America didn't have to work hard or even "settle" on the land.

A year later, on June 25, 1639, Ambrose Cobbs received 350 acres of headrights.

On July 30, 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led an insurrection against the Virginia government for refusing to drive natives off of their land so white people could get more welfare.

He burned Jamestown to the ground

Ambrose's son Robert Cobbs became justice and sheriff of York County.

Under the Cobbs family, York County became the center of the early American slave trade. They kicked it with the founders and fought in the Revolutionary War.

After the Revolution, Ambrose's descendants were broke. They had inherited enslaved humans & stolen land, but 1 spent time in a debtor's prison. To save himself some embarrassment, John Adison Cobbs dropped the S from his name & moved to a tiny settlement in GA with nothing...

Well, except for 200 enslaved Africans, 6,000 acres and land left over from the 80 OTHER lots where he built a subdivision

By 1822, John was the richest man in town. His sons Tom & Howell sons enrolled at the local college in the town he basically owned

Athens Ga

At the University of Ga, the sons met their wives. Amazingly they both found life partners who shared their family values and passion for one subject:

Slavery

Tom met Mary, whose dad was Supreme Court Justice Joseph Lumpkin. Lumpkin was VERY religious. He didn't drink or smoke

Lumpkin had a religious conversion relatively late in life because, apparently, God spoke to him and told him to fight for one thing:

Slavery

Tom & his father-in-law bonded over their love for slavery that even though Tom's dad was rich AF, he left town and moved in with Joe!

Tom founded the UGA Law School, became a big-time politician & lived next door to Joe the Slavery Judge for the rest of his life.

No seriously, he wrote GA's criminal codes
based on his premise that ALL Black ppl are slaves until proven otherwise.

Here's my favorite quote:

The racist citizens arrest law that killed Ahmaud Arbery?

Cobb wrote that.

One day, he read an anonymous op-Ed from about the need to educate young white girls on the values of white supremacy. So he built an all-girls school teaching those principals & put his sister in charge

What's crazy is, Tom had no idea that the letter was written by HIS RACIST SISTER!

Yep, Laura Cobb had married a UGA professor named Rutherford before her brother created the White Girl School of Racism Arts & Science*

*Not the real name

** I hope the mascot was the "Karens"

Meanwhile, Tom & Laura's little brother Howell also supported Jesus-based racism. He advocated for insurrection so much, he made Kevin McCarthy look patriotic

But he was rich & powerful so, on Dec 22, 1849, 34-year-old Howell Cobb became Speaker of the House...

After 63 ballots

He served as Gov of Ga and Buchanan appointed him to Sec. of the Treasury. But Howie & other members of the cabinet were part of a secret society of insurrectionist white supremacists called the Knights of the Golden Circle.

Their Jan 6 plot was kinda different:

After that failed, Howie resigned from the cabinet position attended a meeting of the most powerful racists and insurrectionists in America. At that meeting, he was appointed to another high-ranking government position:

President of the Confederate Congress.

Some people think Howell would've been PRESIDENT of the Confederacy if he hadn't taken the position. But, even though his name has been forgotten, at the time, he was the #2 ranked insurrectionist in America.

But there is a good reason he isn't a well-known traitor.

When Howell and Thomas' sister Laura retired after the civil war, Laura's daughter Mildred was in charge of the Becky Technical Institute for Racism. After the Civil War, Mildred was living on the Cobb plantation wondering how she'd contribute to the family's rich racism legacy.

She couldn't own slaves. She couldn't join the Knights of the Golden Circle. All she had was her fellow racist Karens, so Mildred got them to elect her as their chief historian. But the Racist Becky Alumni Association had a new name:

The United Daughters of the Confederacy.

Mildred wrote a book called "A Measuring Rod" that basically outlined the plan for what's now called the "Lost Cause movement."

@HenryLouisGates wrote a really good article last week about it:

If you don't have a Times password, read it here

nytimes.com/2023/02/17/opi…

Anyway, after Howell did all of that, he returned back to his 2,436-acre estate in Milledgeville, Ga and stayed quiet until he received his pardon for treason.

Then he went full racist. He hated the 14th amendment so much he literally died of a Heart attack.

Sometimes he'd go see racist cousin Tommy (not his brother) who lived right outside of Atlanta, who also married a woman named Mary. They were so wealthy that their land is still named after them...

In MARIETTA, Cobb County Ga.

You can visit all of the Cobb's houses...

Kinda

See, a church bought Tom's house, who lived beside his pro-slavery judge. They were gonna tear it down, but someone stopped them.

Who wanted the racism house?

Remember those United Daughters of the Klansgirls that created lost cause? They LOVED to fund confederate monuments.

One of the charter members, Helen Plane, came up with the idea to build the largest monument to racism in the world. And when they heard a church was gonna tear down the home of one of America's greatest racists, they stepped in and MOVED it to the monument to racism

Why?

Well aside from all those racist laws, TRR Cobb wrote this thing called the Confederate Constitution.

Why is this family so important, now?

Well, if you grew up around a family this important, in a community that honors these racist traitors as heroes...

You think you're consuming a real version of history, especially if you LIVE ON THE SITE OF THIS HISTORY, You don't think you're racist. You don't even think you live in a racist country.

You don't understand that what you've consumed has been whitewashed

If you were born in the town where the Confederacy was created, attended college in the hometown of the most powerful white supremacists in history, and work for the home of white supremacy, you might think never contradict their beliefs

See, Howell, Tom and Laura didn't see themselves as insurrectionist traitors. They didn't think they were racists. They didn't even use the term "secede" or call it a "civil war." And because they were powerful, people rarely contradicted them.

Except one guy.

One dude used to call the Cobbs out when they whitewashed history WITH RACISM.

When Tom was writing those racist laws, he would use a euphemism that all of the Cobbs used. I hadn't heard it used like that in a LONG time until recently, when a woman recently brought it up.

She's not a historian.

She's a Karen..
Who literally represents Cobb County
who attended college in Athens
who was born in Milledgeville Ga, home of the Confederate Constitution,
Who was raised in an all-white racist town.

But she probably doesn't know that the Cobbs LOVED to use the term she uses for secession and insurrection. But when they did it, at least someone IN THEIR OWN PARTY called them for the stupidity of the phrase:

Because you gotta be dumb AF to call it a "national divorce."