'White Lies Matter' Group Claims Responsibility, Demands Ransom For Stolen Confederate Monument

An "anti racist action group" is claiming responsibility and holding for ransom a stone chair, dedicated to Jefferson Davis, stolen from Old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma last month. 

According to an email from the group, "White Lies Matter," the chair was taken from the cemetery about a month ago. Selma police Chief Kenta Fulford confirmed his department did receive a report of the chair being stolen. 

Instead of cash, however, the group has asked the United Daughters of the Confederacy to hang a banner outside their headquarters in Virginia for 24 hours, beginning April 9 at 1 p.m., with a quote from Assata Shakur. April 9 is the 156th anniversary of Robert E. Lee's surrender in Appomattox, Virginia. 

"The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives," says the banner that the group mailed to the UDC.

Shakur was a former member of the Black Liberation Army, convicted of murder in 1977, escaped prison in 1979 and remains free despite being wanted by the FBI after she was granted political asylum in Cuba. 

In the notice the group sent Monday morning, they wrote about the tension between "our heritage of white supremacy and our underlying belief in 'liberty and justice for all.'"

"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 says. "...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."