Posted on 12/09/2001 3:44:54 AM PST by shuckmaster
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- There is an uncivil war brewing within the nation's largest Confederate heritage group -- some might say a war of Southern regression.
In one camp are those who discreetly honor their rebel ancestors while working to assure others that racists have no place in their midst.
The other is represented by Kirk Lyons, a Texas lawyer who has represented members of the Ku Klux Klan, debated the merits of white separatism and taken every opportunity to battle what he calls "Southern ethnic cleansing."
At stake is the future of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a 105-year-old organization that goes by the motto: "Honoring our veterans. Nothing more. Never less."
"Our cause and our colors are being attacked," says Charles Hawks, who is running to oppose Lyons in the race for leadership of one of the organization's three national divisions. "We cannot risk the potential damage to our organization's honor and good name by electing this candidate to a higher office."
Hawks, a 59-year-old retired North Carolina state revenue officer, was among those appalled last year when Lyons was elected councilman for the Army of Northern Virginia, giving him a seat on the SCV's general executive council. Now, the two men are battling for the coveted position of army commander. The winner, in a symbolic sense, would be the heir to Gen. Robert E. Lee.
Lyons agrees that if he wins during August's elections in Memphis, Tenn., it would represent a major change: "It would be the death knell of the bedwetters of the SCV."
From his Southern Legal Resource Center office in Black Mountain, N.C., he says, "They're the people who want to go into a closet, turn the light on once a year and fly their flag in the privacy of a broom closet. And they've never been comfortable with fighting for the flag.
"They'd just as soon polish headstones and meet, eat and retreat."
Founded in 1896 to honor Confederate dead, the SCV has prided itself on being nonprofit and nonpolitical. Lt. Gen. Stephen Dill Lee, then commander of the United Confederate Veterans, charged the successor group with "the vindication of the Cause for which we fought" and "the defense of the Confederate soldier's good name."
But it seems the group spends much of its time arguing with people about whether you can defend the Confederacy without being a racist.
In 1990, the group passed a resolution condemning hate groups. The SCV goes out of its way to point to its black members as proof of inclusiveness.
But as the Southern heritage movement grows and becomes more vocal, the SCV has found it increasingly difficult to stay on the sidelines. Groups such as the League of the South and the Southern Party are openly working toward secession, and members of those organizations have cross-pollinated the SCV.
More strident members such as Lyons are pushing the SCV to join the political fray and do more than just decorate graves and sponsor specialty license plates. The League of the South has already declared the SCV's "old guard" on its way out and the new SCV "ready to work with us as a fellow pro-South group."
Before he's even heard the complaints against him, Lyons begins to recite the "little litany of things that I've supposedly done or said or been." It starts with his 1990 marriage at the Aryan Nations Church in a ceremony performed by neo-Nazi leader Richard Butler.
"Oh! There's a crime," he says. "I fall in love with the most beautiful woman in north Idaho, who's provided me with five children. It's the smartest thing I ever did in my life, and somehow I've committed a crime because I had to marry her at the Aryan Nations Church. That's guilt by association."
Lyons has been quoted as saying that white Americans will soon become "extinct as the dodo bird" if something isn't done to slow immigration and race mixing. He has offered to broker the carving up of the country up into mini-states, each reserved for people of the same heritage.
In a recent issue of its "Intelligence Report" magazine, the Southern Poverty Law Center called Lyons a "white supremacist lawyer whose clients have been a `Who's Who' of the radical right."
Lyons dismisses each of these points as "ancient history," misquotes or comments taken out of context.
The first salvos in the SCV battle over Lyons were fired in 1998, when the group's Georgia chapter voted to send a $1,000 donation to his legal organization. After Leverett Butts and others complained about the appearance the donation created, a compromise was reached in which Lyons supporters substituted private donations.
"We were called grannies," says Butts, a retired suburban Atlanta police chief. "You'd have thought I was a Yankee infiltrator."
Lyons has been a member of the Sons for nearly a quarter century. But he really stepped into the spotlight during last year's unsuccessful battle to keep the Confederate Naval Jack -- the familiar blue Cross of St. Andrew on the red field -- flying atop the South Carolina statehouse.
"I believe that in Columbia, S.C., we gave birth to a Southern civil rights movement, and that child born then is almost two years old now," he says. "We have made great strides, but we have many more to make. And I think the SCV's role in the growth of the Southern civil rights movement is extremely important."
First, Lyons says, the SCV must continue its transformation from what, until recently, he saw as a timid, do-nothing organization.
Lyons says the SCV is where the National Rifle Association was in the 1960s, when Congress passed sweeping gun control laws. The NRA went from being a sport shooting club that focused on education to the staunchest defender of the Second Amendment, he says, and the SCV must undergo a similar metamorphosis.
"We have 31,000 members," Lyons says. "We're the most effective Confederate heritage organization in the world, but it's not enough. ... We're going to have to raise a million members. We're going to have to raise millions of dollars. We're going to have to get where the NRA is today to do this."
In the meantime, Lyons is assailing those who would violate what he sees as Southern civil rights.
His law center has filed dozens of lawsuits and complaints alleging "heritage violations," and is mailing fund-raising letters to SCV camps around the country. He recently hired as his case manager the daughter of an SCV political-action committee leader.
Lyons has filed suit against President Bush's gubernatorial staff in Texas over the removal of two Confederate plaques in the state supreme court building. And in one of the most recent cases, Lyons is seeking to establish Southern national origin status by challenging the U.S. Department of Labor's decision banning a booth for "Confederate-Americans" from a diversity day celebration.
Critics say Lyons has merely glommed on to a political cash cow.
"Guess it doesn't matter that the client is claiming origin from a nation that hasn't existed since 1865," scoffs William "Chip" Pate Jr., an SCV member who works as a marketing specialist from Pittsboro, N.C. "Lyons portrays himself basically as the cavalry coming to rescue the heritage from the heathens."
Now, Lyons has his sights set on saving the SCV from itself.
Hawks had no plans to run for the "thankless job" of commander of the SCV's Army of Northern Virginia, named for one of the three Confederate armies and covering the region from Maryland to South Carolina. But he didn't want to see Lyons win unopposed.
"In my opinion, he is not mainstream SCV," Hawks says. Without calling Lyons a racist, he adds others will see him that way and "people will perceive the SCV as a racist organization."
Lyons has the support of Russell Darden, the current commander.
Darden, a retired data processing manager from Courtland, Va., says Lyons has never expressed any racist or extremist views in his hearing.
"When you're in front leading the battle, you're going to get hit right straight forward," he says. "We just need more people like Kirk."
James Turner, a former commander of the Army of Tennessee, another SCV region, says he was worried about some of the things he'd heard of Lyons and his clientele. But Turner says Lyons sat down with him and addressed every one of those concerns to his satisfaction.
"They paint him with a tar brush, but it doesn't apply," says Turner, a Nashville, Tenn., accountant and architectural software distributor.
Lyons says it's the left-wingers that are stoking the controversy about him. But some of the loudest cries aren't coming from the liberal left -- or from the outside.
"My credentials as a conservative are impeccable," says Gilbert Jones, a Greensboro restaurateur and commander of the SCV's Northern Piedmont Brigade.
Jones says Lyons' election to commander would be a signal that "the radicals would be in control of the SCV." He worries it might already be too late.
At this year's convention of the Military Order of Stars and Bars, a group for descendants of Confederate officers, Jones warned attendees that the SCV needs to clean house.
"I think we ought to take the neo-Nazis, the white supremacists and the skinheads and show them to the door," he told the assembly in Lafayette, La., which included Lyons. The reaction, he says, spoke volumes.
"I'll tell you, about half the room went quiet," Jones says. "I got some good applause, but some color left some faces in the room.
"I don't believe we can defend our ancestors' honor with dishonorable people."
EDITOR'S NOTE: Allen G. Breed is the AP's Southeast regional writer, based in Raleigh.
And why? Because of who their law clients were? Morris Dees once defended a guy whose legal fees were paid by the klan. Do you call Dees a "klan lawyer"?
Mine, or Kirk's either. Who remembers that he represented Black plaintiffs from Waco? This is a Yankee, liberal effort to turn Conservatives against each other. Call one of us a rascist, and watch the support scatter.
The liberals are much better at coallition building. They are less defensive. Kirk is right. Decentralize government, return political power to the local level.
They hate us, but not as much as they hate our ideas.
For Southern Independence
Larry Salley
Return the Constitution to the people. America was founded on the premise that the Federal government was there as an umbrella, providing protection for the several states, not as a steamroller. The several states were to retain sovereignity over local matters, as they should.
PRESS RELEASE Southern Legal Resource Center, Inc. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 6, 2001 Contact: Allison Schaum 864-605-1019
The Southern Legal Resource Center, Inc. takes strong exception to the distorted characterization of its Chief Trial Counsel Kirk D. Lyons in a December 3, 2001 Dallas Morning News article: "Not Surrendering in Civil War Battle."
In an otherwise accurate article about the ongoing Confederate vigil in front of the Texas Supreme Court building, Dallas Morning News reporter Christy Hoppe claimed, "Kirk Lyons, a lawyer who also has represented KKK leaders and white supremacists, filed the suit last June on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans," referring to a lawsuit filed to compel the return of the Confederate Memorial plaques.
Throughout his legal career, Mr. Lyons has represented a varied clientele that over 10 years ago did include some of the groups mentioned by Ms. Hoppe. However worthy their case, Mr. Lyons does not represent such groups in his current work, which is the full time defense of Southern Heritage. For the DMN to use these distant client associations to tar the vigil, the SCV lawsuit and the SLRC's Chief Trial Counsel is unfair, defamatory and not worthy of a Texas Newspaper. To make it worse, the Dallas Morning News did not bother to call the SLRC before writing the article.
The Southern Legal Resource Center, Inc. is a non-profit, tax exempt South Carolina public law firm that specializes in cases involving Southern Heritage violations.
Respectfully submitted, Allison Schaum Case Manager
There is one thing that matters here and that is whether or not Kirk Lyons will do a better job than his opponent and stand up for Confederate heritage against all its enemies. So far, Kirk has stood up to that challenge and he has my unconditional support.
The SCV as it now stands is not only a neutered laughing-stock, it has become a liability to the struggle to preserve Southern heritage through its compromises, its political correctness, and its fear of controversy.
The SCV cannot maintain its current path. It must adopt more of an activist philosophy. The reason our Confederate heritage is being erased in front of our very eyes is because we're constantly on the defensive against the NAACP, liberals, and their willing accomplices in the media. The SCV cannot effectively win this battle as long as it continues to gather behind closed doors, drink donuts and coffee, and talk about the "glory days". There is too much at stake here and passions are too high to be room for a middle ground. No Quarter!
HATE groups such as the Ku Klux Klan have not misused the "Confederate battle flag" as a banner in the cause of White Supremacy, that dubious honor belongs to the Confederate States of America.
Explicitly, the cause of white supremacy was enshrined in the National Flag of the Confederate States of America at the behest of William T. Thompson, editor of the Savannah Morning News.
In his editorial of April 23, 1863, (republished with approval by the Richmond papers), Mr. Thompson wrote " Our idea is simply to combine the present battle-flag with a pure white standard sheet; ..."
"As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical (sic) of our cause."
Thompson then declared in the April 28th issue that "[s]uch a flag would be a suitable emblem of our young confederacy, and, sustained by the brave strong arms of the South, it would soon take rank among ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world WHITE MAN'S FLAG."
In the May 4th issue of the Savannah Morning News, Mr. Thompson exalted the new flag saying "We are pleased to learn by our dispatch from Richmond that Congress has had the good taste to adopt for the flag of the confederacy the battle-flag on a plain white field,... The flag, as adopted, is precisely the same as that suggested by us a short time since, ... As a national emblem, it is significant of our higher cause the cause of a superior race, and a higher civilization contending against ignorance, infidelity, and barbarism."
I discovered these transcripts in the Thunderbolt, Ga.(Library), Savannah Morning Newspapers Microfiche[Flim Records], on July 13, 1998. The Confederate States of America's cause was white supremacy, the American Civil War between the North and South was not about states' rights or Southern independence. That's the WHATS not the WHYS.The whys (reasons) were White Supremacy and the preservation of slavery.
The Confederate cause was declared by Confederate President Jefferson Davis in his Message to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America, April 29, 1861.
The Confederate President stated that "The labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, ... . With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced. "
In his "Cornerstone Speech" delivered March 21, 1861, Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens stated that "Our new Government is founded ... its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro (sic) is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and moral condition.
This, our newer Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. "(The speech was reported on in the March 22, 1861 edition of the Savannah Republican ).
Article I, Section 9, of the constitution of the confederacy explicitly forbade the Confederate Congress from passing any law "denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves. "
Finally an extract from the Declaration of Causes of secession from the the state of Georgia is hardly ambiguous about the central question of slavery to their cause.
According to the document "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave- holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. ...The party of Lincoln, ... is admitted to be an anti- slavery party. ... anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. ... Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation ... The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, ... the equality of the black and white races, ... were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. ... The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization."
It is disturbing that there has been an absolute `black out' in reporting by the major media of any ideological bent of conveying these relevant historical facts to the general public in so-called balanced news coverage over the Confederate Flag controversy.
There is a disturbing racist undertone in the major media coverage of the conflict over the "Stars and Bars". That theme finds expression in variations of the major media commentary that flag opponents see the Confederate emblem as a symbol of hate and slavery, while flag supporters say it is an important symbol of the state's heritage and honors those who fought in the Civil War.
Besides the racist exclusion of those "others" who fought in the Civil War, this `balanced' commentary is in fact racially charged for it labels opponents as motivated by infantile passion and emotion, whereas the supporters are guided by reason and are analytical and historical,.
Such commentary does not go on to say the position of the flag opponents is substantiated by the contemporary documents of the period in question and is consistent with the judgment of most credible historians today.
The position of flag supporters is for the most part, based on faith with little or no facts to sustain it.
The problem is that even the most educated of the battle flag defenders arrive to this debate, morally corrupt, spiritually bankrupt, intellectually retarded, while in a total state of denial.
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