His grandfather was a slave. Now he’s a champion for Confederate monuments.

Winbush is also black, and so was his grandfather.

“When I joined, it wasn’t any kind of rebellion,” Winbush said of his membership with the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He voted to install a Confederate monument in a veterans park near his home, where a tribute to Union soldiers already stood. “I wanted to set the record straight. A lot of people thought blacks fled, but blacks fought in every state.”

Winbush said he learned of his grandfather’s devotion to the Confederacy during horse and buggy rides that he took with the veteran when he was a child.