The Red Shirts
|
The Red Shirts
|
|
|
-Honoring
the Confederacy
Tom Parker, Republican candidate for the Supreme Court of Alabama, isn't shy about touting his conservative credentials. He despises "liberal judges" who are "trying to take God out of public life." He is an "ardent opponent" of gay marriage, and "a national leader in the fight against Political Correctness." He underlines his close ties to Christian Right leaders like Phyllis Schlafly and James Dobson. Most importantly, of course, Parker is running as the protégé of Roy Moore, the Alabama chief justice ejected from his job after defying a federal court order to remove his two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court rotunda. But Tom Parker has some other friends, too. It's just that he doesn't spend much time bragging publicly about this batch of colleagues and supporters. In July, Parker made his way to the Selma home of Pat and Butch Godwin, who were holding a birthday party to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy slave trader who became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. (Forrest also presided over the massacre of some 250 black prisoners of war at Ft. Pillow, Tenn.) The Godwins run Friends of Forrest Inc., which owns a Forrest statue the Godwins spent two years unsuccessfully trying to place on public property. Standing on his friends' Confederate battle flag-bedecked front porch, Parker rallied the crowd. Later, one listener lauded him as "a man not afraid of the flag." The Godwins are tried and true neo-Confederates. Pat Godwin's latest crusade is to block any acknowledgement on the Capitol grounds of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march — a goal of the Alabama Historical Commission. In a July E-mail, Godwin railed at "the trash that came here in 1965," complaining that those who honor the civil rights movement "are aiding and abetting the ultimate goal of the ONE WORLD ORDER — to BROWN AmeriKa and annihilate Anglo-Celtic-European culture!" Pat Godwin and her close friend Ellen Williams recently put together a packet of documents that they say proves that the march was the "Mother of All Orgies" and the marchers were motivated by "money, sex and alcohol." A month earlier, in June, Parker showed up at the Elba, Ala., funeral of Alberta Stewart Martin, believed to have been the last living widow of a Confederate veteran. He made himself a quick favorite by giving away hundreds of miniature Confederate battle flags to the 300 people, many in period dress, who gathered for this major neo-Confederate event. And, in a photo widely circulated in the neo-Confederate world, he is seen with what were apparently two friends of his: Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the League of the South hate group, and Leonard Wilson, a longtime segregationist who is on the national board of the Council of Conservative Citizens (see also Communing with the Council), a hate group that has described black people as "a retrograde species of humanity." Parker, who was Moore's spokesman and legal adviser but lost that job when Moore was fired, did not return repeated telephone calls requesting comment. Pat and Butch Godwin also declined to return messages left at their home, which is known fondly in neo-Confederate circles as "Fort Dixie."
Hate group protests Center at Civil Rights Memorial
Oct. 25, 2004 | MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- About 50 demonstrators, in town for a national meeting of the League of the South, lined up last week here in front of the Civil Rights Memorial to protest the Southern Poverty Law Center. Its office is directly across the street from the Memorial. Men, women and children brandished Confederate and southern state flags and held up signs denouncing the Center and its founder Morris Dees. One man held placards in each hand, one declaring "The SPLC is a hate group" and the other "Morris Dees is a scalawag." "Scalawag" is the derogatory term for white Southerners who supported the reconstruction governments after the American Civil War. A teenaged girl holding a pair of Confederate flags raced up and down the sidewalk in front of the Memorial's solemn black wall. On a street corner, League supporters placed a pink toilet with jeans-clad legs protruding from its bowl. An adjacent sign read, "Flush the SPLC." Among the protestors was Michael Tubbs, a former Green Beret demolitions expert who served time for stealing military weapons. He is an avowed Aryan revolutionary who officials say had drawn up lists targeting newspapers, television stations and businesses owned by blacks and Jews.
Four years ago, the Center's Intelligence Report exposed the League as increasingly rife with white supremacists and racist ideology. Since then, the magazine has continued to report on the neo-Confederate movement's growing influence. The Report's current issue links many Southern politicians to hate groups like the League and the Council of Conservative Citizens.
League of the South
Red Shirts stages
demonstration At SPLC Headquarters in Montgomery Alabama October 23 2004 Anissa Jackson, 14, of Houma, La., runs past the Civil Rights Memorial with two Confederate flags Friday as members of the League of the South protest at the Southern Poverty Law Center. -- Photos by Julie Bennett Advertiser
Driving past the Southern Poverty Law Center, motorists honked, hooted and hollered Friday afternoon at a group of Southerners protesting the center's perceived attitude toward the South. About 30 protesters, in Montgomery for the National League of the South's annual meeting, waved Confederate and state flags and held up signs calling center director Morris Dees a "scalawag." At the corner of Washington Avenue and South Hull Street sat a toilet with jeans-clad legs protruding from the bowl. A sign said "Flush the SPLC." Dees, whose mother died Friday, could not be reached for comment. Robert B. Hayes, director of the South Carolina League of the South, said the group was there to protest the center, which he called a "hate institution." "They hate everything that has to do with the South and with Southern culture," Hayes said. "They hate Christianity."
About 30 League of the South supporters rally Friday outside the Southern Poverty Law Center. Hayes and Ray McBerry, chairman of the group's Georgia chapter, blasted the center for its attempts to keep a controversial Ten Commandments monument out of the Alabama Judicial Building. "There is no constitutional requirement for states not to support religion," Hayes said. "You will not find separation of church and state anywhere in the Constitution." McBerry said his group is in the process of having copies of the Commandments put in all Georgia county courthouses. He accused Dees and the center of "bypassing the will of the people" by going to the judiciary to stop the religious display. McBerry said Dees also has misrepresented the League of the South by calling it a hate group. "They said we are a racist organization, when in truth we have several black members and members of other races," McBerry said. "They also portrayed us as a domestic terrorist group when we fully and wholeheartedly embrace the Constitution." "I think they're a group of race hustlers," said Jim Walters of Lewisville, Texas. "They are anti-Christian, anti-Southern and anti-American." Walters said all the Southern group wants is to give power back to the people of America. "All we want is fairness," he said. "We don't want power. We want to devolve it."
|
|
Send mail to
webmaster@redshirts.org with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
-
-
-
