Stolen Confederate Monument Ransomed By 'White Lies Matter' Group

SELMA, AL — An anti-racism group calling itself "White Lies Matter" took responsibility in a letter to local media for stealing a Confederate monument last month in Selma, Alabama, and won’t return it until its demands are met.

In the Monday letter, the group said it wasn't seeking cash in return for the monument, a stone chair honoring Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Instead, the group said it just wanted a Civil War historic preservation group to display a banner acknowledging "America's original sin" of slavery.

The Montgomery Adviser reports the group sent a banner to the Virginia headquarters of the United Daughters of the Confederacy asking it to be hung for 24 hours beginning April 9 — the 156th anniversary of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender to the United States in Appomattox, Virginia.

The banner contains a quote from Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Liberation Army convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973, which reads, “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

The group said its motivation for stealing the chair and wanting the banner hung was to draw attention to its belief the country's foundation is rooted in white supremacy.

“America’s original sin is that people were kidnapped from their homes and forced to build one of the most prosperous nations in the world, without being allowed to participate in it,” the letter read. “We decided, in the spirit of such ignominious traditions, to kidnap a chair instead. Jefferson Davis doesn’t need it anymore. He’s long dead. To be honest, he never even had the chance to sit in it in the first place.”

The letter included an altered photo of the chair with a hole in its seat and a warning of what might happen if the banner isn’t hung.

“Failure to do so will result in the monument, an ornate stone chair, immediately being turned into a toilet,” the email read. “If they do display the banner, not only will we return the chair intact, but we will clean it to boot.”

The Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair was stolen from Old Live Oak Cemetery in March and is valued at $500,000, according to The Adviser. The chair was presented by the Ladies of Selma in 1893 — 20 years after Jefferson Davis had visited the city and four years after his death in 1889.

White Lies Matter called the monument "a throne for a ghost whose greatest accomplishment was treason," according to the letter.

“They just want it there to remind us what they've done, what they are still willing to do. But the south won't rise again,” the letter read.

A woman who answered the phone at the office of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Virginia told AL.com the theft and ransom of the chair was "fake news" and the organization didn't comment further on the White Lies Matter letter.

Dallas County District Attorney Michael Jackson told AL.com the theft and ransom are being investigated, saying the whole situation has been bizarre.

“This incident is sending Selma back into ‘The Twilight Zone,’ ” he said. “There’s never a dull moment in Selma.”