Reported in Lawmaker apologizes after saying leaders ‘should be LYNCHED’ for removing Confederate statues. (Washington Post, 5/22/2017)
The post, of course, has since been deleted. In fact, he seems to no longer have a presence on Facebook. In a Facebook post published Saturday night, Mississippi state Rep. Karl Oliver went on a diatribe about the controversial statues in his neighboring state, which have been taken down in recent weeks.
Related reading:
Rep. Karl Oliver’s Winona: Divided long before he proposed lynching. (Mississippi Today, 5/24/2017)
Forrest doesn’t know Oliver personally, but he knows of his family, as do many in Winona. In fact, the Oliver Funeral Home, which has been owned by four generations of Olivers, is just a three-minute walk down the train tracks from Forrest’s front porch.
Still, Forrest, who is African American, said he never has considered using the funeral home’s services for his own family.
“It’s a segregated funeral home,” Forrest said. “He deals with the white race.”
Forrest was quick to clarify that this is not an official policy of Oliver Funeral Home, but a byproduct of a town where the local high school only integrated its prom within the last decade. And although Winona is over 50 percent African American, none of the 29 deceased listed on the funeral home’s website this week are black.
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