Mississippi May Honor Early KKK Leader On Commemorative License Plate
Controversies over honoring Confederate heritage are not uncommon in the South, but some activists in Mississippi are pushing the envelope even further. The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans is proposing a license plate that honors Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was also an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Following the Civil War, Forrest was involved with the very first incarnation of the KKK. He was so closely associated with the group’s formation that he is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the KKK’s founder — though he was quickly elected Grand Wizard, and began centralizing disparate KKK groups under his authority. He believed that while blacks were now free, they had to continue to toil quietly for white landowners. “I am not an enemy of the negro,” Forrest said. “We want him here among us; he is the only laboring class we have.”
Perhaps even more disturbing, however, were Forrest’s violent actions during the Civil War, specifically a massacre of black soldiers at Fort Pillow, TN in April 1864. When Forrest died in 1877, his obituary in the New York Times described how Forrest would forever be known for slaughtering black troops that already dropped their guns:
It is in connection with one of the most atrocious and cold-blooded massacres that ever disgraced civilized warfare that his name will for ever be inseparably associated. “Fort Pillow Forrest” was the title which the deed conferred upon him, and by this he will be remembered by the present generation, and by it he will pass into history. [...]
Late in March he passed into that State, and the route of his advance was marked by outrages and brutalities of the most cold-blooded character….On the 12th of April he appeared before Fort Pillow. This fort was garrisoned by 500 troops, about half of them colored. Forrest’s force numbered about 5,000 or 6,000….The garrison was seized with a panic: the men threw down their arms and sought safety in flight toward the river, in the neighboring ravine, behind logs, bushes, trees, and in fact everywhere where there was a chance for concealment. It was in vain. The captured fort and its vicinity became a human shambles….The news of the massacre aroused the whole country to a paroxysm of horror and fury.
Some white southern conservatives continue to celebrate the treason and racism of a failed rebellion against the United States of America. While certainly not all conservative Republicans are racists it is troubling that leaders of conservatism do not renounce in the strongest possible language the sick allegiance many conservatives have to the confederacy and slavery.
Breitbart's Pigford Report: Distortions And Shady Sourcing
In December, Andrew Breitbart published a report, "The Pigford Shakedown," that purported to reveal the "massive fraud" and "widespread corruption" supposedly tainting a settlement intended to compensate to black farmers who had faced discrimination from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Breitbart's report, which is intended to form the basis for a congressional investigation, is laden with distortions, questionable sourcing, and sloppy errors.
In Fact, Documents Show That Sherrod Was Fired Because Of The Deceptively Edited Videos ( by Breitbart). The Los Angeles Times reported that it had received "hundreds of pages of e-mails" about Sherrod's firing released to the paper under the Freedom of Information Act. But the Times article reports that the emails show that Sherrod was fired because of concerns about what she said in the deceptively-edited video. The emails reported on by the Times do not even mention Pigford. From the LA Times article:
The first sign of trouble arrived about 2 p.m. on July 19, in an e-mail from USDA communications staffer Wayne Maloney.
Maloney informed Chris Mather, the department's director of communications, that a video had popped up online and that a conservative website soon would publicize it.
"It speaks for itself and you need to watch it right away," Maloney writes.
Mather's response was blunt. "THIS IS HORRIBLE," she wrote as she sent notice -- subject line "Super Urgent" -- up the chain of command to Karen Ross, Vilsack's chief of staff, and her deputy, Carole Jett.
It took just an hour and a half to get a directive from Vilsack. "The S [Secretary Vilsack] is absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue. He wants her immediately on adm leave," wrote Krysta Harden, assistant secretary of congressional relations.
Cook responded simply, "Done."
Five minutes later, Cook reached Sherrod on a cellphone. Sherrod gave her side of the story, according to a timeline assembled by Cook.
Cook and Dallas Tonsager, undersecretary of rural development, said in an e-mail sent to Vilsack a few minutes later that the subject of the speech was blacks and whites working together.
"She said there is a copy of the entire speech, and Cheryl asked her to provide it as quickly as possible," the e-mails said.
But Vilsack did not wait. An hour later, Cook called Sherrod, who was driving in Georgia, to ask her to resign. Another hour later, Cook called Sherrod again to ask her to resign by the end of the day.
"I called her a fourth time at 6:35 to ask whether she'd be willing to pull over to the side of the road and submit a resignation by email," Cook writes in the account. [Los Angeles Times, 10/8/10 via Nexis]
Sherrod Received Payout From Pigford Because An Arbitrator Found That Sherrod And Her Partners Had Been Subject To An "Outrageous Act" And Likened It To The Way A "Feudal Baron" Treated His Serfs. An arbitrator appointed to review the claims by Sherrod, her partners, and her organization New Communities, Inc., found that the claimants had provided numerous instances in which they had been treated differently from white farmers following a major drought in the early 1980s and that the USDA "offered no nondiscriminatory reason for its conduct." Specifically, with regard to a demand by the Farmers Home Administration that New Communities pay $50,000 from the sale of timber in order to secure an emergency loan, the arbitrator found...
