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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   27892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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But even still, the Beacon's reporting didn't actually reveal the story as fictitious, they just couldn't confirm it. And I don't know how they would be able to confirm it.

Because according to the article, the ancestor wasn't a random preacher, he was an ordained Episcopalian so all the church records are there. And the records say great-grandpappy wasn't run out of town by the KKK, he was offered a job back in Jamaica (where he was born and raised) when the minister in a church there unexpectedly died, so he happily went back home:

Moore's great-grandfather on his mother's side, the Rev. Josiah Johnson Thomas, did preach in the 1920s at a church in Pineville, S.C., about 65 miles north of Charleston. But historical records housed at the archives of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina undercut the three main elements of Moore's story—that Thomas suddenly fled the country in secret, that he was targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, and that he was a prominent preacher who spoke from the pulpit against racism.

Detailed church archival records, as well as contemporary newspaper coverage, indicate that Thomas, a Jamaica native, on Dec. 13, 1924, made an orderly and public transfer from South Carolina to the island of his birth, where he was appointed to succeed a prominent Jamaican pastor who had died unexpectedly a week earlier, on Dec. 6, 1924. Amid the copious documentation of the life and career of Moore's great-grandfather, there is no mention of trouble with the Klan, which operated openly in 1920s South Carolina but never had a chapter operating out of Pineville, according to Virginia Commonwealth University's Mapping of the Second Ku Klux Klan.

...During an appearance on Andrew Yang's podcast in 2020, Moore said the Ku Klux Klan ran his grandfather and "the rest of my family out of this country, not just out of Charleston, South Carolina." Time added to the narrative in 2023, reporting that Moore's great-grandfather was "targeted for lynching," making the governor "well acquainted with the case against America." Moore said in a May commencement speech at Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania, that his grandfather was "chased away by the Ku Klux Klan" because "my great-grandfather was a vocal minister in the community."

"Being Black and outspoken was a crime—even if it wasn't on the books," Moore said. "So, in the middle of the night, they fled. My grandfather may have been just a boy… but he never forgot what happened that night."

Episcopal Church archival records tell a different story. They show that Moore's great-grandfather was "transferred" from the church he worked at in Pineville, S.C., to Jamaica—then a British colony—on Dec. 13, 1924, to take over for a Jamaican priest who had died. There is no suggestion that the move was hurried or secret, as Moore has stated.

...Evenson said the national Episcopal archives don't have any records showing why Thomas was transferred to Jamaica. Reporting by the Daily Gleaner—then and now the paper of record in Kingston—shows, however, that Thomas returned to Jamaica to take over for a prominent pastor who had died a week earlier.

The Rev. George Lewis Young died unexpectedly in his home on Dec. 6, 1924, the Daily Gleaner reported. Young's funeral was attended by 3,000 dignitaries from across the island, and he received tributes from officials at the highest levels of Jamaican politics, including the then-colony's governor and members of its Legislative Council.

A few months later, on May 18, 1925, the conference of the African Methodist Episcopal Church of Jamaica appointed Thomas to serve as Young's successor, the Daily Gleaner reported. Moore's great-grandfather made no mention of the Ku Klux Klan or any sort of dramatic escape from America when he spoke to the newspaper about his return to Jamaica. The paper reported that Thomas "laboured in the States for a number of years, and like many other Jamaicans he has returned to his native land to work among his people."

Now, it could be true that the Klan made threats against him, but it could equally be true that he just left to take up a position back home and Governor Moore has been embellishing his family history. We don't know for sure.

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