Tyrone N. Butts
APE Reporter
5
Confederate sons hit town headed in new direction
The Civil War ended in April 1865 at a courthouse in Appomattox, Va., when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
A century and forty years later, another kind of civil war --a protracted dispute among male descendants of the men and boys who fought for the South --also appears to be coming to a close.
When the Sons of Confederate Veterans holds its 110th reunion this week at the Music City Sheraton in Nashville, representatives of about 800 "camps," as the local units are called, are expected to approve measures that will cement a new direction for the 30,000-member organization, which is headquartered in Columbia, Tenn.
With a former reputation often cha
racterized as a gathering of stodgy history buffs
, the new SCV is decidedly different: proactive and confrontational. The shift began in earnest about 10 years ago but has accelerated to warp speed since 2002, yielding a fracture in the fraternal organization.
This has been a dispute between the "grannies" and the "radicals,'' the names each side has given to their opponent. Grannies are members who would like for the SCV to remain a history-based organization. They accuse the radicals of flirting with political extremism, which they say is a disservice to their ancestors who wore Confederate gray.
Radicals are those who want the organization to be more forceful in promoting and protecting Confederate symbols, particularly the battle flag. They accuse the grannies of forfeiting the group's First Amendment rights by kowtowing to political correctness.
A cause for alarm, some traditionalists say, are SCV me
mber
s with ties or former ties to organizations such as the League of the South, which esp
ouses a new secession by Southern states, or the Council of Conservative Citizens, which advocates white supremacy and a reversal of immigration laws. At least six past or current members of the SCV's General Executive Council have belonged to one of these organizations.
Traditionalists fear that the SCV's coffers, which have more than $5 million, will be raided by one of these organizations in a silent merger.
The new direction has alarmed traditionalists such as William Earl Faggert, headmaster of a private school in Heidelberg, Miss. He is a longtime SCV member and former holder of the group's highest office, Commander in Chief.
"Over a period of time these extremists have infiltrated the organization, philosophically and ideologically. I've done what I could to stop it but have been unsuccessful at this time," said Faggert, who for the first tim
e in 35
years will not attend the annual reunion.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based organization tha
t monitors hate groups, also is alarmed.
"It appears that the good guys lost,'' said Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the center.
Commander in Chief Denne Sweeney, a West Point graduate and retired software engineer who lives near Dallas, rebuffed the concerns. He said the organization does not tolerate racism and is not in line to be taken over by an outside force, and he said the SCV troubles of late are nothing more than a power struggle.
"One side's going to lose and sit on the sidelines and scream foul for a while. That's basically what's happening,'' Sweeney said.
"â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢
The SCV was chartered in 1896, 31 years after Appomattox. In 1906, Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee laid out his goals for the group. To the Sons of Confederate Veterans "will be given
the defense
of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his values," the general admonished.
For much of the past century, the SCV carried out that mandate by
preserving Confederate cemeteries, restoring Confederate battle flags and offering interpretative education programs from a Southern perspective via speeches and re-enactments.
However, toward the end of the 1980s, a shift occurred that put the SCV on the defensive. Members point to resolutions by the NAACP against the Confederate flag and the flag wars in Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi as the causes of a deeper activism that some believe has led to extremism.
No one in the SCV is more of a lightning rod for controversy than Kirk Lyons, an attorney with the Southern Legal Resource Center in Black Mountain, N.C. The law firm takes on heritage battles across the country.
Lyons has been an SCV member since 1977 a
nd for much of
that time has pushed for change to make the organization less averse to confrontation.
Raised in Texas, Lyons said, he was steeped in his family's Confederate lore, where "damn Yankee" was considered one word.
Lyons h
as been associated with neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and Klansmen over the years. In the early 1990s when the Ku Klux Klan marched in Pulaski every January, Lyons was there.
He said the "old guard" in the SCV fight has described him as "the chief boogeyman," a man with an ulterior motive: to encourage more donations to the Southern Legal Resource Center. In the past two years, the group has given "tens of thousands" to support Lyons' heritage defense work.
But he said his only interest is to see the SCV thrive.
"I want people to defer to us with the same respect on a question concerning our community as they would to the NRA (National Rifle Association) concerning the Second Amendm
ent."
Sweeney supports Lyons.
"I've never known him to say or do anything that I would consider racist or supremacist or anything like that. If there was any fire to that smoke way back when, I think it's long since gone out," the commander-in-chief said.
Allen Sullivant, an SCV member from Brentwood,
called Lyons an exemplary member.
"I think in today's climate you'd almost have to be the second or third son of God if you were associated with a Confederate organization not to catch some crap," Sullivant said.
But others remain unconvinced Lyons is good for the SCV. Among them is Dr. Anthony Hodges, a Chattanooga dentist who, until he was stripped of his office in April, was lieutenant commander-in-chief of the SCV.
"Kirk may have had a change of heart, but only he and God know that; but the bottom line is that his baggage is too heavy for me as an individual or the SCV as
an organization,"
; Hodges said.
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The battleground between the grannies and the radicals has mostly been a cyber war, fought in endless salvoes of e-mails.
"Some good men have said some foolish things. E-mail is a detriment,'' said the Rev. Charles E. Baker, a longtime Birmingham SCV member who proudly notes he does not use a computer nor a cell phone.
According to the S
outhern Poverty Law Center's Beirich, many of the e-mails zipping back and forth were forwarded to her.
The center exposed the Echo, a Web chat forum that was not endorsed by the SCV but was aimed at its membership. The Echo was started by Sullivant, who served as Chief of Heritage Defense on the national level.
Posts from the now-defunct site frequently featured jokes containing the "N" word and exploitative caricatures of African-Americans. The forum was not moderated so posts were not censored.
"Tha
t's the kind of stuff that has been happening behind the scenes,'' she said.
Sullivant discounted the criticism.
"I'm sure somewhere along the line there were some things that people shouldn't have said, that were crude and tasteless, but then that's what you get when you have an un-moderated electronic forum,'' Sullivant said.
Hodges said the extremism is a knee-jerk reaction.
"They feel like the Confederate heritage has been stomped into the ground, and theyre ticked off. Confrontation, it seems to me, is their first order of business. It should be the last resort,'' he said.
But others believe confrontation is good.
"I think they do want to take a more aggressive stance, and I think it's needed,'' said Baker, a three-time national SCV chaplain.
"I do not want the rising generation to be taught lies about the Confederate soldier and wha
t they were standing for, what
they were fighting for, because those are principles that don't change,'' Baker said.
Allen Trapp Jr., a lawyer from Carrollton, Ga., rose through the ranks during the 1990s to serve as Georgia Division Commander. In recent years he's noticed a fundamental change in the national organization.
"Giving books to a library or marching in a parade, cleaning 500 headstones and identifying 200 new Confederate graves was no longer enough. Rather it was more about have you had any political success and are you fighting?'' said Trapp, who resigned from the SCV earlier th
is year in reaction to the "extremist takeover."
Even so, Trapp said, the desire to honor the valor and courage of Confederate kindred remains an honorable pursuit.
"Once upon a time we didn't need much protection or preserving,'' said Trapp, noting that in 1949 and 1951 the United States Postal Service issued stamps honoring the last r
espective meetings of Union and Co
nfederate veterans.
"There was no question that both sides were honored. That all changed in the last 25 years,'' Trapp said.
And the movement for change was spawned in the SCV, a movement that is out of hand, he believes.
The watershed year for that movement came in 2002 with the election of Ron Wilson of Easley, S.C., as commander-in-chief. Wilson quickly inserted others looking for change into leadership positions.
Last summer, they confirmed their grip on the organization with the election of Sweeney.
The SCV "hit critical mass,'' said Hodges, who was elected to national office along with Sweeney.
Last w
inter, Hodges and others led what essentially was a takeover of the organization, employing a little-known provision of the Mississippi law under which the SCV is chartered. Although headquartered in Columbia, the organization is chartered, for now, in Mississippi. One of the items the membership will
vote on this week is moving the group&
#39;s charter to Texas.
The Mississippi law allowed a majority of the General Executive Council, the group's board of directors, to remove officers. Sweeney and others were removed from their posts by a coalition that included Hodges, but that decision was reversed by a Maury County judge.
"I think the majority of us feel it's over. At some point the SCV will become, if it's not already there, a fringe group. In essence, its opinion won't matter anymore because they're so far out there,'' said Hodges, who was stripped of his office after the failed ouster. The dentist said he plans to resign his membership this week.
Added Faggert of Mississippi:
"Some of these extremists, they don't know any history and they don't care. We're dealing with a different crowd now."
***************
Memo to Dr. Anthony Hodges: Wake up you fool, we are in a war&#
33;
T.N.B.
Confederate sons hit town headed in new direction
The Civil War ended in April 1865 at a courthouse in Appomattox, Va., when Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
A century and forty years later, another kind of civil war --a protracted dispute among male descendants of the men and boys who fought for the South --also appears to be coming to a close.
When the Sons of Confederate Veterans holds its 110th reunion this week at the Music City Sheraton in Nashville, representatives of about 800 "camps," as the local units are called, are expected to approve measures that will cement a new direction for the 30,000-member organization, which is headquartered in Columbia, Tenn.
With a former reputation often cha
racterized as a gathering of stodgy history buffs
, the new SCV is decidedly different: proactive and confrontational. The shift began in earnest about 10 years ago but has accelerated to warp speed since 2002, yielding a fracture in the fraternal organization.
This has been a dispute between the "grannies" and the "radicals,'' the names each side has given to their opponent. Grannies are members who would like for the SCV to remain a history-based organization. They accuse the radicals of flirting with political extremism, which they say is a disservice to their ancestors who wore Confederate gray.
Radicals are those who want the organization to be more forceful in promoting and protecting Confederate symbols, particularly the battle flag. They accuse the grannies of forfeiting the group's First Amendment rights by kowtowing to political correctness.
A cause for alarm, some traditionalists say, are SCV me
mber
s with ties or former ties to organizations such as the League of the South, which esp
ouses a new secession by Southern states, or the Council of Conservative Citizens, which advocates white supremacy and a reversal of immigration laws. At least six past or current members of the SCV's General Executive Council have belonged to one of these organizations.
Traditionalists fear that the SCV's coffers, which have more than $5 million, will be raided by one of these organizations in a silent merger.
The new direction has alarmed traditionalists such as William Earl Faggert, headmaster of a private school in Heidelberg, Miss. He is a longtime SCV member and former holder of the group's highest office, Commander in Chief.
"Over a period of time these extremists have infiltrated the organization, philosophically and ideologically. I've done what I could to stop it but have been unsuccessful at this time," said Faggert, who for the first tim
e in 35
years will not attend the annual reunion.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based organization tha
t monitors hate groups, also is alarmed.
"It appears that the good guys lost,'' said Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the center.
Commander in Chief Denne Sweeney, a West Point graduate and retired software engineer who lives near Dallas, rebuffed the concerns. He said the organization does not tolerate racism and is not in line to be taken over by an outside force, and he said the SCV troubles of late are nothing more than a power struggle.
"One side's going to lose and sit on the sidelines and scream foul for a while. That's basically what's happening,'' Sweeney said.
"â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢
The SCV was chartered in 1896, 31 years after Appomattox. In 1906, Confederate Lt. Gen. Stephen D. Lee laid out his goals for the group. To the Sons of Confederate Veterans "will be given
the defense
of the Confederate soldier's good name, the guardianship of his history, the emulation of his values," the general admonished.
For much of the past century, the SCV carried out that mandate by
preserving Confederate cemeteries, restoring Confederate battle flags and offering interpretative education programs from a Southern perspective via speeches and re-enactments.
However, toward the end of the 1980s, a shift occurred that put the SCV on the defensive. Members point to resolutions by the NAACP against the Confederate flag and the flag wars in Georgia, South Carolina and Mississippi as the causes of a deeper activism that some believe has led to extremism.
No one in the SCV is more of a lightning rod for controversy than Kirk Lyons, an attorney with the Southern Legal Resource Center in Black Mountain, N.C. The law firm takes on heritage battles across the country.
Lyons has been an SCV member since 1977 a
nd for much of
that time has pushed for change to make the organization less averse to confrontation.
Raised in Texas, Lyons said, he was steeped in his family's Confederate lore, where "damn Yankee" was considered one word.
Lyons h
as been associated with neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers and Klansmen over the years. In the early 1990s when the Ku Klux Klan marched in Pulaski every January, Lyons was there.
He said the "old guard" in the SCV fight has described him as "the chief boogeyman," a man with an ulterior motive: to encourage more donations to the Southern Legal Resource Center. In the past two years, the group has given "tens of thousands" to support Lyons' heritage defense work.
But he said his only interest is to see the SCV thrive.
"I want people to defer to us with the same respect on a question concerning our community as they would to the NRA (National Rifle Association) concerning the Second Amendm
ent."
Sweeney supports Lyons.
"I've never known him to say or do anything that I would consider racist or supremacist or anything like that. If there was any fire to that smoke way back when, I think it's long since gone out," the commander-in-chief said.
Allen Sullivant, an SCV member from Brentwood,
called Lyons an exemplary member.
"I think in today's climate you'd almost have to be the second or third son of God if you were associated with a Confederate organization not to catch some crap," Sullivant said.
But others remain unconvinced Lyons is good for the SCV. Among them is Dr. Anthony Hodges, a Chattanooga dentist who, until he was stripped of his office in April, was lieutenant commander-in-chief of the SCV.
"Kirk may have had a change of heart, but only he and God know that; but the bottom line is that his baggage is too heavy for me as an individual or the SCV as
an organization,"
; Hodges said.
"â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢ "â┚¬Ã…¡ÃƒÆ’”�šÃ”š¢
The battleground between the grannies and the radicals has mostly been a cyber war, fought in endless salvoes of e-mails.
"Some good men have said some foolish things. E-mail is a detriment,'' said the Rev. Charles E. Baker, a longtime Birmingham SCV member who proudly notes he does not use a computer nor a cell phone.
According to the S
outhern Poverty Law Center's Beirich, many of the e-mails zipping back and forth were forwarded to her.
The center exposed the Echo, a Web chat forum that was not endorsed by the SCV but was aimed at its membership. The Echo was started by Sullivant, who served as Chief of Heritage Defense on the national level.
Posts from the now-defunct site frequently featured jokes containing the "N" word and exploitative caricatures of African-Americans. The forum was not moderated so posts were not censored.
"Tha
t's the kind of stuff that has been happening behind the scenes,'' she said.
Sullivant discounted the criticism.
"I'm sure somewhere along the line there were some things that people shouldn't have said, that were crude and tasteless, but then that's what you get when you have an un-moderated electronic forum,'' Sullivant said.
Hodges said the extremism is a knee-jerk reaction.
"They feel like the Confederate heritage has been stomped into the ground, and theyre ticked off. Confrontation, it seems to me, is their first order of business. It should be the last resort,'' he said.
But others believe confrontation is good.
"I think they do want to take a more aggressive stance, and I think it's needed,'' said Baker, a three-time national SCV chaplain.
"I do not want the rising generation to be taught lies about the Confederate soldier and wha
t they were standing for, what
they were fighting for, because those are principles that don't change,'' Baker said.
Allen Trapp Jr., a lawyer from Carrollton, Ga., rose through the ranks during the 1990s to serve as Georgia Division Commander. In recent years he's noticed a fundamental change in the national organization.
"Giving books to a library or marching in a parade, cleaning 500 headstones and identifying 200 new Confederate graves was no longer enough. Rather it was more about have you had any political success and are you fighting?'' said Trapp, who resigned from the SCV earlier th
is year in reaction to the "extremist takeover."
Even so, Trapp said, the desire to honor the valor and courage of Confederate kindred remains an honorable pursuit.
"Once upon a time we didn't need much protection or preserving,'' said Trapp, noting that in 1949 and 1951 the United States Postal Service issued stamps honoring the last r
espective meetings of Union and Co
nfederate veterans.
"There was no question that both sides were honored. That all changed in the last 25 years,'' Trapp said.
And the movement for change was spawned in the SCV, a movement that is out of hand, he believes.
The watershed year for that movement came in 2002 with the election of Ron Wilson of Easley, S.C., as commander-in-chief. Wilson quickly inserted others looking for change into leadership positions.
Last summer, they confirmed their grip on the organization with the election of Sweeney.
The SCV "hit critical mass,'' said Hodges, who was elected to national office along with Sweeney.
Last w
inter, Hodges and others led what essentially was a takeover of the organization, employing a little-known provision of the Mississippi law under which the SCV is chartered. Although headquartered in Columbia, the organization is chartered, for now, in Mississippi. One of the items the membership will
vote on this week is moving the group&
#39;s charter to Texas.
The Mississippi law allowed a majority of the General Executive Council, the group's board of directors, to remove officers. Sweeney and others were removed from their posts by a coalition that included Hodges, but that decision was reversed by a Maury County judge.
"I think the majority of us feel it's over. At some point the SCV will become, if it's not already there, a fringe group. In essence, its opinion won't matter anymore because they're so far out there,'' said Hodges, who was stripped of his office after the failed ouster. The dentist said he plans to resign his membership this week.
Added Faggert of Mississippi:
"Some of these extremists, they don't know any history and they don't care. We're dealing with a different crowd now."
***************
Memo to Dr. Anthony Hodges: Wake up you fool, we are in a war&#
33;
T.N.B.