Posted on 11/13/2002 11:14:51 AM PST by stainlessbanner
BILOXI - A group of Confederate re-enactors plans to demonstrate against the Ku Klux Klan if the Klan marches through Biloxi on Nov. 30.
Michael D. Kelley, colonel of the 37th Texas Cavalry re-enactors, said Confederate organizations should take a stand against racist groups using Confederate symbols. The re-enactors plan to hold signs opposing the KKK and furl their flags at the approach of any white-robed Klansmen.
"When the Klan comes around, we will turn our backs and drop our flags to show our disapproval," Kelley said.
The KKK has received a permit to march along city sidewalks, but Kelley's group has not. Kelley, who lives in Pascagoula, said he plans to contact city officials to see if his group is required to obtain a permit.
Kelley said he does not consider the KKK to be a Southern organization.
Jeff Davis of Gainesville, Ga., who said he is a "collateral descendant" of the only president of the Confederate States of America, plans to participate in the counterdemonstration. Davis said his great-great-grandfather was Jefferson Davis's first cousin.
"I have been more and more concerned that the symbols of the Confederacy and our ancestors are being totally annihilated by people such as the KKK," Davis said. "When I was notified they were going to be rallying and marching in Biloxi, which is kind of a hallowed place for Jefferson Davis, I said it's time for us to draw a line in the sand and take back our symbols - not in a belligerent way, but in a very civil way - from besmirching the names of our ancestors and to separate the true descendants from the Confederacy from this bunch of rabble-rousers and racists."
Davis is commander of the President Jefferson Davis Chapter of the Military Order of the Stars and Bars and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, 27th Georgia Regiment, he said.
But John French, a spokesman for the local regiment of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said its members will sit out any counterdemonstration.
"Regardless of what your signs say, you're part of the problem," French said. "You lend credence to those things. The best way to keep people like (the Klan) away is to ignore them."
Don't you ever get tired of rehashing that old fable?
He's also a liar to boot. He had his clock cleaned by a poster (handle of something like Who is John Galt) who had actual sourced historical facts to crush his innuendo and opinion. It was fun to watch. I'm sure it will happen again soon, too.
Like you said, though, the best thing to do is ignore the boy.
Right here.
I will add this:
I recently moved from California to central Virginia.
There is far less apparent racism here than there was in California. It is not unusual at all to blacks and whites playing sports together or otherwise socializing with each other.
I think, for the most part anyway, the South simply got over it.
They may have bought it, but they are relics. A-holes exist everywhere. Fortunately, there aren't all that many of them. We can overcome.
Is there supposed to be something significant in that? Klansmen have also often carried the Stars and Stripes. Probably far more often than they carried the Confederate Battle flag.
The thought processes of you Union apologists really baffle me.
Whoa there, Sunshine. I live in Kansas and I am not aware of any Klan activity, any Klan chapter, any Klan sympathy at all in the state. I'll ask you to back up your charges or apologize.
"The Klan first infiltrated Kansas in mid-1921. It claimed to be a reform group promoting Christianity and white supremacy and arguing for limits on foreign immigration. Hostile toward a long list of "undesirable" persons, the Klan's main efforts focused against Catholics. Klansmen kidnaped and assaulted the Catholic mayor of Liberty after he refused them use of a hall he owned. Although many people agreed with the Klan's creed - as many as 200,000 Kansans may have been Klan members - most disliked its tactics. One journalist described the situation:
"Neighborhood after neighborhood, which had been peaceful and friendly . . . split into hostile groups by the Klan's arrival. Although actual violence was rare . . . communities lived in a state of uneasiness amounting to terror; and the Klans did not scruple to threaten even when they were too cowardly to execute." - World's Work, August 1923
Not all Kansans supported the Klan, of course. One University of Kansas student wrote a satirical song, Daddy Stole Our Last Clean Sheet and Joined the Ku Klux Klan, that sold nationally. Newspaper publisher and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist William Allen White called the Klan "an organization of cowards" and mounted an anti-Klan gubernatorial campaign in 1924. Another who openly fought the organization was Henry Allen, also a journalist and Kansas Governor at the time of the Klan's infiltration. To White and Allen the Klan was not comprised of anonymous strangers but of fellow newspaper men, Methodists, and Masonic Lodge brothers.
Concerned that the Klan would disrupt government and cause civil unrest, Governor Allen embarked on a public campaign against the group. When the Klan threatened to parade hooded horsemen through Arkansas City on July 4, 1922, Allen declared it illegal to wear masks on Kansas streets. Although admitting he didn't like the Catholic church either, Allen declared the Klan's tactics "un-American." By reviling the Klan publicly, Allen hoped to create a division within its ranks pitting the moderate majority against the violent minority.
After months of investigating the Klan's activities at Allen's behest, the State Attorney General filed a petition with the Kansas Supreme Court charging that the Klan was a foreign corporation which required a Kansas charter to engage in business.
Under attack by the Attorney General, the Kansas Klan was already near death at the time the case reached the Supreme Court. Allen's efforts had helped create a schism between the terrorist wing and the peaceful but narrowminded majority, and Klan membership had begun to decline. Internal battles also developed over mismanagement of the group's finances. On January 25, 1925, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled for the Attorney General and Kansas became the first state to legally oust the Klan.
Glad to provide a little sunshine for you!
The so-called CSA needs all the apologizing it can get. The Union does not.
Walt
Stove pipe hats, stove pipe hats....care to give a name to your pain? And anything in the record that will support it?
"Viewing the man from the genuine abolishionist ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed cold, tardy, weak and unequal to the task. But, viewing him from the sentiments of his people, which as a statesman he was bound to respect, then his actions were swift, bold, radical and decisive. Taking the man in the whole, balancing the tremendous magnitude of the situation, and the necessary means to ends, Infinite Wisdom has rarely sent a man into the world more perfectly suited to his mission than Abraham Lincoln."
--Frederick Douglass
Walt
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