Georgia Flagger Sets the Record Straight
(A resident of Carrollton, Georgia, Billy Bearden is an original Georgia Flagger, dating back to the King Roy Rat Barnes and Sonny Lied eras. As an advocate and mentor of the Virginia Flaggers, he was instrumental in their start-up and has continued his support of them. In response to Brooks Simpson’s relentless persecution of the Virginia Flaggers, particularly his attempt to smear them with a fabricated association with Matthew Heimbach, Bearden has injected some much needed reality into the subject. In this short essay, edited from a Facebook post, he zeroes in on a recently surfaced photo, multi-posted at Crossroads, and adds pertinent dates that are totally ignored by Simpson and other floggers. ~Ed.
Let us look closely at this photo. We see myself, Karen, Tripp, Susan and Mr Heimbach. This photo was taken on March 31, 2012 at the opening of the Museum of the Confederacy, Appomattox.
REMEMBER THAT DATE!
The Flaggers were present at the location because Waite Rawls had LIED to 7 Camps of the SCV and 1 Chapter of the UDC. He had placed a cardboard standup of RuPaul in a CBF dress inside, but refused to allow a CBF to fly on the grounds outside.
The call went out to anyone who agreed with the Flaggers and disagreed with Rawls. LOTS of SCV, Flaggers, and various people showed up to protest. Obviously, not all are/were Flaggers.
Most of the people in the photo did not know Mr. Heimbach. As we were walking from our spot on the opposite side of the road along the driveway to an adjacent parking lot (when this picture was taken) there were many in front of us, and many behind us. When we lined up in the parking lot at a distance of 100 feet away from the ceremonies, someone pointed out that a person had a sign that was questionable.
I walked over to the person (now known to be Matthew Heimbach) who was standing with the SCV Mechanized Cavalry group, and asked him to not display the sign, as it was not who we were or what we were about. Mr Heimbach complied with the request, and did not display the sign again.
Almost immediately after that, the banner plane arrived, and buzzed the ceremony for about an hour.
History shows that the only other time Mr Heimbach attended an event in which the Virginia Flaggers were participants, was the SCV National Sesquicentennial Heritage Rally in Richmond in February 2012 – just a month prior to Appomattox. The leftists and Flagger haters are failing miserably but constantly attempting to link the Virginia Flaggers to whatever evils Mr Heimbach may have committed.
Well, look again at the dates — February and March 2012. At that moment in history, the only thing Mr Heimbach had done to my knowledge was to create the Towson University White Student Union, something that was far removed from Georgia and Virginia, and not on my radar.
For those who read the SPLC and ADL websites, they clearly show that Mr Heimbach "crossed over the Rubicon" in 2013, long after the two events in early 2012.
(Many thanks to Billy for caring enough about truth — obviously something the floggers do not care about when their mission is to smear and persecute somebody, in this case, people who have never done anything to them — to speak out. I would just add that while few if any heritage folks even care about the fabricated Heimbach issue, since they know the VaFlaggers are not "white supremacists," some of us do care about the attempted smears, as they have the potential to goad some wacko floggerette to attempt injury or damage to the VaFlaggers. That’s one reason I am determined to counter these lies. ~cw)