Undeserved honor for Klan founder

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a cotton planter and a trader in horses, cattle and black people. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Forrest, whose business dealings had made him wealthy, [he] raised a cavalry unit to fight for the Confederacy. He is remembered as an instinctive military genius whose daring and unpredictability gave Union forces fits.

He is also remembered for leading a rebel band that overwhelmed a Union stronghold, Fort Pillow, Tenn., massacring 300 mostly black soldiers and civilians, including children, after the soldiers had dropped their weapons. According to official reports, black soldiers were nailed to logs, buried alive, gunned down where they stood.

Finally, Forrest is remembered as a founder and the first "Grand Wizard’’ of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, of course, is America’s preeminent terrorist group; in its various permutations, it has been responsible for countless acts of violence against African Americans and others it deemed inferior, including the notorious 1963 church bombing in which four little black girls were killed.

This is the legacy of Nathan Bedford Forrest. At this writing, the state of Mississippi is considering whether to honor that legacy through the issuance of vanity license plates. And perhaps an observer might be forgiven for wondering what in the world there is to consider.

The request to honor Forrest was made by the Mississippi branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group often found neck deep in attempts to rewrite and sanitize the odious history of the Confederacy.

For what it’s worth, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has said he doesn’t think the state legislature will approve the vanity plate. But he rejected a call by the Mississippi NAACP to denounce the idea. "I don’t go around denouncing people," he said, piously.

Presumably, he would be equally nonjudgmental if his state were to consider similar honors to Osama bin Laden, convicted spy Robert Hanssen or Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Their legacies, after all, are combined in Forrest: terrorist, traitor, mass murderer.

On April 12, it will be 150 years since the Civil War began. That is the distance from telegraph lines to smart phones, from steam engines to space shuttles, from Lincoln to Obama. And yet even after all that time, some of us are still unable to conquer the moral cowardice exemplified by Gov. Barbour and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The South fought in defense of racism and slavery. It was soundly defeated, racism and slavery soundly repudiated. You’d think from that loss the South would have learned signal lessons of human rights and human dignity.

The past exists for one overriding purpose: to prepare us for the future. It is the great and wise teacher, though its lessons are often purchased at monstrous cost. Such was surely the case with the Civil War: 620,000 lives — 2 percent of the population — lost, the South left devastated.

Yet sometimes, you wonder if the South even knows it lost.

Because, instead of learning those costly lessons and moving forward, too much of the South has spent too much of the last century and a half denying them and looking backward. It did so first through the expedient of lynch mob violence and Jim Crow laws. Now it clings to discredited 19th Century symbols like driftwood, obsessively reworks history trying to make the facts other than what they are.

But the facts are immutable.

You wish the South would finally accept that and move on. Instead, too many in that storied region are still absorbed in fighting a war that ended in 1865, seeking to vindicate a cause long ago lost. A man who betrayed this country, founded a terrorist group and committed mass murder is a man unworthy of honor.

It is pathetic that that even needs to be said.

Miami Herald

Thanks to NewsHound for the heads-up

Ex-KKK man ditches 'irrelevant' Griffin

Right-wing friends Nick Griffin and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke have fallen out in the wake of the humiliating Question Time appearance.

The former Grand Wizard blasted Griffin’s shambolic performance on the show as “horrendous”. He revealed on an internet blog that he is “considering legal action” after Griffin implied Duke was still involved with the KKK in 2000. Griffin drew howls of derision from the BBC audience when he said he had shared a platform with the former KKK leader and described the group as “an almost totally non-violent organisation”.

A spokesman for 59-year-old Dr Duke said: “The impression was clearly given that Dr Duke was still a member of the organisation at that time. The truth is, he had left many years earlier and had already served a successful term as a Republican on the Louisiana state senate.”

Four years before his meeting with Griffin, Duke unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the US Senate. His aide added: “Any statement that refers to Dr Duke being a member of the klan at the time is a blatant lie. He is very unhappy with this and is considering what course of action, legal and otherwise, to take.”

The BNP leader was dismissed as “irrelevant” by a KKK recruiter at the race-hate group’s office in Harrison, Arkansas. He said: “This guy is irrelevant to us, but he should think very carefully before bandying the klan’s name around. We can do without the kind of publicity he might attract.”

At its peak in the 1920s, the KKK boasted a membership of more than 4million in America. Today, the KKK, classified as a “hate group” by the US government, has about 8,000 supporters.

Express

Isle of Man KKK burns cross on Facebook

Satirical responses suggest rivers of blood unlikely

Facebook has closed an "Isle of Man KKK" page exhorting locals to stem the tide of unwelcome incomers polluting the racial purity of the Irish Sea island paradise.

According to the Telegraph, the page's Grand Wizard declared: "There are too many comovers* [sic] on the Island. They are taking all of the jobs, houses and most of all they are taking advantage of our fucking Island...join us and help clense [sic] the Isle of Man."

The campaign quickly attracted the attention of kids from the island's secondary schools, with pupils from all six - including the private King William's College - joining the group. One thundered: "Damn blacks and indians [sic], coming over here taking our jobs - who the fuck do they think they are?"

Staff at Ballakermeen High School subsequently alerted Facebook. Deputy head Paul Kane said the school had "talked to each student listed as a member of the group", but declined to say if further action against them was on the cards. In fact, Kane said the pupils implicated in the outrage had actually signed up to have a pop at the group, and that the young 'un responsible for the "damn blacks and indians" jibe was mixed race and "trying to be ironic rather than serious".

He elaborated: "There are one or two ambiguous remarks from our students, but we think these were intended as sarcasm. I'm pleased that the vast majority disagree with the sentiments of this group and want nothing to do with it. We are very strongly against any racist attitudes in this school and people are left in no doubt about that."

A spokesman for the Manx Department of Education said: "The department finds the sentiment behind this site deplorable and cannot condone racist comments and viewpoints."

The Department of Education's opinion on the deplorable state of its pupils' spelling is not noted. ®

* ="comeover", an immigrant, in local parlance.

The Register