About thirty miles east of Cincinnati, Louie Jones, Jr. lives with his daddy in a house that would disturb pretty much any person of color, and most white people. The front porch is positively saturated in creepy black statues and Confederate flags. Despite complaints from fellow residents of Lindale and New Richmond, Louie and his friend Tammy want the world to know that it’s just “antique art.”
Most of the statues appear to be from the same set, and have been modified with cheap black wigs, but Tammy, who offers no surname, claims they’re simply “baseball players,” even though they’re holding lanterns and dressed in ceramic button down shirts and slacks, rather than uniforms one would associate with America’s pastime.
While they may be antiques, they’re not home run hitters–they’re actually known as “lawn jockeys,” and plenty of people insist they’re not racist. Most (but not all) of those people are white.
Other statues include a watermelon-munching child; another weather-beaten piece is waving its very own Rebel flag. Additionally, a more modern black store mannequin, dressed for a late ‘90s prom, has dramatically oversized lips drawn on, and looks over the brood of bigotry.
Jones seems content to let Tammy do most of the talking, and she’s happy to explain the meaning of the collection.
When (reporter Maytal) Levi asked about the meaning of each figure on the porch, Tammy replied, "All the baseball players on there are actually from the first blacks that played the baseball game."
Levi asked, “What’s the black mannequin supposed to represent?”
Tammy replied: “Like, the mom of the baseball players, basically.”
Oh. That clears it right up, Tamster! The statues with Rick James wigs are a tribute to Jackie Robinson, see?
Jones and Tammy, who apparently have declared themselves the arbiters of both good taste and what people are allowed to be offended by, talk over each other to insist that “In no way, shape, or form should anybody think that it’s racist."
When pressed about the Confederate flags, Jones gets a bit confused, while Tammy gets more insistent.
"They went up a few of them at one time and then a couple more were added, but the flags have always flown, that's for our country," she said.
[...]
“The rebel flag, it's not racist," Jones said. "It's for the war that we won, you know?"
"Which war? The Civil War?" questioned Levi.
Jones looks away to the road when asked if “we” means the North or the South.
“We, as in the north.”
"So, that would be the wrong flag to fly," Levi says.
"In some people's eyes," said Tammy.
Ohio, for those who don’t know, stayed in the Union during the Civil War, and Clermont County, where this KKKollection collection can be found, is home to 33 Freedom Trail sites, “19 of which are approved to the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.” The county website claims that’s the largest network in the nation.
Looks like Louie and Tammy missed the memo.
Levi asked Jones: "What would you say to someone driving by this saying that family hates black people?"
“Everybody hates everybody, ya know?" Jones said. "It just depends on what you hate and what you like. It ain’t got nothing to do with race, we ain’t racial.”
”Thank you!” Tammy exclaimed.
You can watch the full interview here, but be warned: it’s ridiculously offensive.