GUARDIANS OF TRUTH

        The day after the last monument honoring the long dead soldiers who once fought for the Confederate States of America came down, one of the founding members of the Guardians of Truth was laid to rest in Cumberland Cemetery in Cumberland, Georgia, which was the county seat of Cumberland County. The name of the deceased was Latisha Ann Latham. The year was 2042, and she was a hundred years old.

On the day before her death, Latisha Ann was visited by her daughter Lily May, her granddaughter Loretta Jane, and her great granddaughter Layla Rose. All three of these descendants had joined their mother in the work of the Guardians of Truth. They gathered around Latisha Ann’s bedside keeping vigil. Her great granddaughter Layla Rose had been given the honor of delivering the important news to Momma Tish as she was known. Layla Rose leaned over and whispered in her right ear the news the removal of the last Confederate monument in a public space in the United States of America would soon take place in Cumberland. It would be removed to the Smithsonian and become part of a truthful permanent exhibit of the history of slavery, oppression, Jim Crow, and the consequences of the resultant caste system in American history. 

Momma Tish opened her eyes, nodded, and smiled saying, “Finally, our work is done. I know Mother will be happy when I see her over there.”

“Yes, she will,” all three Latham women answered in unison.

The next day, the three descendants of Momma Tish again gathered at her bedside. She was sleeping. Suddenly, she opened her eyes, called each one of the women by name, and then whispered, “It’s time for me to go. Please, sing me out.”

As her Light of Life blinked out, three generations of Latham women, all Guardians of Truth, sang together the song Momma Tish had requested months ago as her life-exit song. They all knew it was a grace to be there with her and sing her out, so they lifted their voices and shared the experience of being by her side when she gracefully exited life and flew away like a bird on the wing. The last notes of Amazing Grace hung in the air.

Latisha Ann Latham was born in 1942 in Cumberland, Georgia in the same house where her mother and grandmother had been born. Her country, the USA, had rallied together to fight against Germany, Japan, and Italy who were bonded by their goal to reign supreme over the world. These enemies overtly threatened the freedom cherished by Latisha’s home country, and thus simmering internal strife was damped down to fight the external enemy.

Latisha Ann’s mother, Laurel Lee Latham, knew that freedom was not truly available to all in her country, because of the existence of the poisonous white supremacy caste system rooted in slavery, oppression, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow laws born of grievances of the conquered South. Laurel Lee was born in 1921 in Cumberland and thus had witnessed the white supremacist poison throughout her life. Her response to seeing the signs that declared “Whites Only” and other visual public symbols and “rules” she had to live under sickened her. Being a white child, these feelings were not shared by anyone she knew in Cumberland. She did not know what she could do about this poison, except to flee Georgia as soon as possible and do her best to do no harm by personally spreading that poison elsewhere. In December before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, she married her boyfriend, an adventuresome fellow who also wanted to escape the South and explore the world. The day after Pearl Harbor, he signed up to serve in WWII and together they left Georgia and the family’s legacy of poison in the dust.

In 1942, Laurel Lee returned to her mother’s home in Georgia to give birth to her child. She did so because her husband was going to be flying airplanes all over the world in the War effort and neither of them wanted their first child born without family aid available should Laurel Lee need it. As it turned out, the birth wasn’t easy, but both mother and child survived and thrived. Laurel Lee stayed in Georgia for three months with Tish, as Latisha was nicknamed. Then, Laurel Lee flew with Tish to meet her flyboy husband in Hawaii where he was stationed.

Meanwhile, events that would affect both Laurel Lee and Tish were afoot in Atlanta, Georgia, which was once center of the war effort of the Confederate States of America. In the months prior to the attack by the Japanese on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, a meeting of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) had been held in Atlanta, Georgia. They were planning a state-wide celebration of the by-gone days of the antebellum South, because to all members of the UDC the only war that mattered was what they called the War Between the States, and they considered the loss of that war a threat to the Southern way of life, which was based on maintaining white supremacy and privilege in all aspects of society.

Laurel Lee’s mother, Laila Jean Latham was born in 1900. She was a member in good standing with the UDC and attended that meeting. In fact, Laila Jean was in charge of organizing the celebration that would take place in Cumberland. This celebration was scheduled for July 5, 1942 to commemorate the erection of the center piece of Cumberland, the monument to Confederate soldiers erected outside the County Courthouse on July 5, 1909. Laila Jean spoke at that event. Only Laurel Lee’s advanced pregnancy excused her from going to hear her mother extoll the virtues of the Confederacy, a speech she had heard her mother give before. However, the day before Laurel Lee escaped Georgia with her infant child to join her flyboy husband in Hawaii, Laila Jean insisted Laurel Lee and her infant daughter stand in front of that monument for a photograph. Laurel Lee did not smile.

Silently while standing in front of that poisonous monument, Laurel Lee vowed to herself and her infant daughter that she would fight against those who carried on the myth of the “Lost Cause” whenever and wherever she could. She had been inducted into the UDC by Laila Jean when she was three years old, and though not an active member, she was still on their membership list. The last letter she mailed from Georgia before leaving was to the UDC withdrawing her membership and forbidding them to induct her daughter under threat of a civil suit. That was her first official act of resistance. She did it to protect her infant daughter Tish from the UDC’s white supremacy poison, and to at least do no harm through further UDC membership. Laurel Lee told her mother of her decision just before stepping onto the train that would take her to Dallas where a United States Army Air Force plane would pick them up and fly her and Tish to San Francisco where another such plane would then fly her to Hawaii to be reunited with her husband. She missed him and the richness of the human palette in Hawaii.

Upon hearing of that decision, Laila Jean was aghast and angrily spluttered, “Your great grandmother Latheria Sue is turn’ in her grave.”

With Tish tucked against her breast, Laurel Lee calmly responded, “Let her turn, Mother.” Then, she stepped onto the train, turned, and blew her mother a kiss as the train pulled out of the station.

The Latham family had a long history in Cumberland County, and a long history of being a matriarchal powered family. According to the family Bible, Tish’s great great grandmother Lucy Ann was born in 1850 on the family plantation established in 1832 by Hiram Latham and his wife Lila June, when President Jackson’s Indian Removal Act opened up Georgia lands to increased settlement by Whites. Hiram and Lila June arrived a young married couple with money and some slaves from Hiram’s inheritance after his father’s death in Tennessee. They had heard about rich lands down south that bordered the Etowah River becoming available in Georgia. Acquiring the land along the Etowah River because Indian people had been dispossessed and removed did not bother their consciences. They saw it as an opportunity and a righteous one. Thus, their purchase of the land and making a new life in Georgia was one more act that perpetuated the American notion long held by many Americans that Whites were more deserving than anyone else. Hiram died from a fever shortly after Lucy Ann, his only child, was born in 1850. Lila June was the first matriarch of the Latham clan. She never married again. She died just before the surrender at Appomattox in 1865, leaving Lucy Ann in charge of the family.

When Lucy Ann was seventeen, she married a confederate soldier who had survived the War and returned to Georgia as a broken man. Shortly after the birth of Lucy Ann’s daughter fathered by that broken Confederate soldier, the soldier also died of a fever. Lucy Ann declared herself a Latham and left it in her will that all daughters of her line maintain that family name no matter whom they married. Thus, she established the Lathams as a matriarchal family.

Lucy Ann had birthed her only child when she was 20 years old, a daughter named Latheria Sue born in 1870 in the once grand Big House. Yankee troops had spared the house when Sherman destroyed so much in the final days of The War because it made a good regional headquarters, but its glory days were only a memory. It had fallen into disrepair. In fact, by 1869 during Reconstruction, the family had already lost the land surrounding the Big House to a Yankee speculator. Every generation up to then had nursed those losses as grievances. Lucy Ann died in the Big House in 1895 when she was 45 years old, but she lived long enough to see Latheria Sue married in 1886 at the tender age of sixteen.

After her mother’s death, Latheria Sue sold the Big House and settled in a new home in the small but growing town of Cumberland where she gave birth in 1900 to Laila Jean, Tish’s grandmother. Latheria Sue died in 1920 when she was 50 years old. She was buried in the family plot in in the Cumberland Cemetery. She was a founding member of the Cumberland County UDC. In 1909, She oversaw the installation of the monument honoring Cumberland County’s deceased Confederate soldiers. This was personal to her since her own deceased father had served in the Confederate Army.

Laila Jean, daughter of Latheria Sue, also served in various capacities in the Cumberland County UDC until she was too ill to do so. She died in 1980 in the same house where she was born in Cumberland. In the last years of her life, she was cared for by an African American caretaker named Angela Watkins hired by Laurel Lee. Angela’s family had been employed as cooks and child care providers by Latham women since Latheria Sue’s marriage in 1886. Angela, not the doctor, called Laurel Lee who lived in California to let her know that her mother was failing fast, and she should come to Cumberland soon if she wanted to see her mother alive one more time. Laurel Lee was hesitant, but booked a flight. As it turned out, she arrived the day before her mother died. She sat by her bedside, held her hand, and prayed silently that her mother would be given a chance in another life to work on the side of harmony against the forces of white supremacy. In her travels, Laurel Lee had been introduced to and accepted Buddhism as her belief system, and it was from her study of the teachings of Buddha that the words of her prayer sprang from her heart. Her mother never spoke or acknowledged Laurel Lee’s presence in any way.

Angela came into the room carrying a tray with tea for Laurel Lee.

She spoke quietly, “Don’t worry, honey, she so close to her Maker now she’s not aware of anything from anyone here on Earth.”

“I know, Angela, and it’s alright. Thank you for calling me so I could be here. I know Mother was just so caught up in the past, she could never accept changes in the present,” Laurel Lee paused and then continued softly, “I am sorry for any harm she ever did to you or your family.”

Angela set the tea tray down and placed her hand on top of Laurel Lee’s saying quietly, “She treated us just fine, just fine. Anything she did outside of this house, well, there was so many doin’ worse. Besides, she brought you into this world and that’s been a gift to all of us. No more regrets. Apology not necessary between you and me, but accepted all the same.”

Laurel Lee, looked into Angela’s eyes and murmured, “Thank you. Will you stay the night, please?”

“Yes,” Angela answered and left the room.

The next day her mother, Laila Jean Latham breathed her last breath. Laurel Lee called Tish, who had become estranged from her grandmother Laila Jean because Laila Jean had been quite vocal about how Tish’s activism for equal justice was a betrayal of her White heritage. Tish had marched during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s-mid 1960s leading up to the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She had also testified before Congress when the Voting Rights Act was expanded in 1975. She and her grandmother had not spoken in decades.

So, when she got the call from Laurel Lee, she asked, “Mama, if you want me to come to the funeral, I will for you, but honestly, I’m glad she’s gone so no more of that disgusting Confederacy poison can come from her mouth or pen.”

Laurel Lee listened and said, “Yes, honey, I want you and other Guardians of Truth that wish to support us to come too. Will you let them know? I share your feelings about burying the “Lost Cause” poison with her. As you know, I hated it all my life, but your grandmother was caught in a trap laid by the past, a trap of hate, and only love can heal that, so let’s begin by burying her together and speaking truth as long as we are breathing on this Earth.”

And so, in 1980, Tish stood by her mother Laurel Lee’s side as her grandmother was lowered into her grave in the Cumberland Cemetery. They were flanked by ten members of the Guardians of Truth who also came. Tish gave the benediction at the graveside service. Her words were reflective of her Buddhist beliefs. She prayed, “Divine Ones, my grandmother needs a balm of awakening and forgiveness. I surrender her healing to you and pray that your Amazing Grace will open her heart and eyes to see before she reincarnates once again to Earth, and in her next life may she find and bond with Guardians of Truth to continue to bring about equal justice for all.”

Quietly at first and then swelling with passion as the other Guardians joined her, Tish began singing Amazing Grace, while silently praying in the language of her heart for compassion, understanding, and awakening in the hearts of all humans. As was traditional, the ending came with repetition of the first stanza.

The last words sung that day were: “I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”

“Amen,” the gathering of women said together and dispersed to continue their life journeys.

The next day at the house in Cumberland, Laurel Lee and Tish began looking through boxes of old pictures. Tish found the photo taken in front of the Cumberland Memorial in 1942 of Laurel Lee and herself as an infant. She had never seen the photo, so she asked Laurel Lee to tell her the story behind the photo.

Laurel Lee nodded and sighed, “I wondered whatever happened to that photo. Mother insisted on it. She took it the day I left Cumberland with you to join your father in Hawaii. I mailed the letter to the UDC withdrawing my membership and banning them from grandfathering you in with the threat of a lawsuit. I told Mother so at the train station just before boarding the train and blew her a kiss. As it turned out, that was the last time I was in Georgia.”

Tears rolled down Tish’s cheeks, knowing that action drove an irreparable wedge over the years between her mother and her grandmother.

“You never told me, Mother, but I thank you,” murmured Tish.

“I wanted to give you an escape without obligations to choose your own way, and you have beyond any dreams I may have held for you. I have often thought of that letter as the best act as a mother I ever did,” Laurel Lee replied.

“It was,” Tish said simply.

That photo was treasured and preserved. Until her death in 2005, Laurel Lee worked alongside Tish establishing the Guardians of Truth as a “behind the scenes” group whose sole mission was to eliminate symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces in the USA. During these years, the group was small. Tish’s daughter Lily May joined in the work in 1980 when she was eighteen years old, Tish’s granddaughter Loretta Jane joined in the work in 2000 when she turned eighteen, and Tish’s great granddaughter Layla Rose joined the work in 2020 when she was eighteen. Layla Rose had mounted and maintained the campaign to remove the statue seen in the old family photo. 

All three surviving Latham women sang out that statue’s removal leading the Guardians of Truth in Amazing Grace.