The disgusting posts of State Representative Karl Oliver of Winona, asking that leaders responsible for removing four statues of Confederates in New Orleans “should be lynched” are simply horrible and cannot be tolerated by a decent society.

Oliver obviously has no knowledge of our southern heritage. The Civil War was fought to preserve slavery and we cannot fool ourselves to think otherwise. If one remains ill-informed about the reason for that war, you must simply read the secession papers of, at least, Alabama and Mississippi. Those documents are clear and concise: Confederate states fought the war to preserve the right to own slaves!

I do not want to honor that heritage. (Mississippi secession letter: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp).

Additionally, if Oliver really understood our southern history he would acknowledge the several thousand Black citizens who were lynched without due process as part of the white supremacy movement that continues today. Oliver denigrates all southerners with insane, mean, spiteful and ignorant posts.

I call for his resignation from the Mississippi Legislature.

Ann Phillippi

Oxford