Military, Politics

Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans Propose License Plate to Honor Civil War General Who Was Once a Member of the Ku Klux Klan

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

The Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans has come up with an idea for celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War—known to some as the “War between the States.” The veterans group has proposed that the state of Mississippi issue a series of specialty license plates commemorating the war. These specialty plates, planned for the years 2011 through 2015, would each have a different design.

What has some people upset is the specialty license plate slated for the year 2014, which would honor General Nathan Bedford Forrest.  Forrest, a native of Tennessee, is considered by some to have been a military genius. Others feel differently about Forrest who is “reviled” by some for allegedly having lead a massacre of Black Union troops at Fort Pillow in his home state in 1864. It should be noted that Forrest also served as the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

According to ABC News, the NAACP is planning to send a letter to Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour requesting “that he publicly denounce the license plate and use his office to prevent it from being issued.” Derrick Jackson, president of the Mississippi state NAACP, said of Forrest: “He should be viewed in the same light that we view Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The state of Mississippi should deny any vanity tags which would highlight racial hatred in this state.”

Although many historians agree that Nathan Bedford Forrest distanced himself from the KKK later in his life, some believe “it was too little too late because the Klan had already turned violent before Forrest left.”

Sources

Yahoo

TPMMuckraker

ABC News

PBS

Think Progress

631 thoughts on “Mississippi Sons of Confederate Veterans Propose License Plate to Honor Civil War General Who Was Once a Member of the Ku Klux Klan”

  1. Weasel words Brent. We live in the United States of America and this is the twenty-first century, not the eighteenth or nineteenth. You are either an American citizen or not–in the year 2011.

  2. Yes, I believe in the govt which was created when my forefathers tossed out the british, not the tyrants who waged a war an won control of a nation of independent states. Take a look around, there are millions of people who have had it with what won the war. May i point out to you that the largest growing groups of milita in this country is in the north, not the south. Who woulda thought so many yankees wouldnt like what they illegally created in 1865 today?

  3. OK, we have one thing clear. You are in favor of treason toward the country in which you live. Thank you for your honesty, anyway. I think.

  5. And one more thing. Do you truly wish the Confederacy had won and the United States of America had lost the war?

  6. “I am a Loyal Confederate Southern in the service of the just and honorable cause of the South, in behalf of the Citizens of the Confederate States of America.
    It is my purpose and mission to reclaim the honor of our forefathers who fought, suffered, bled and died in agony in our nation’s defense.
    Unfurl and raise our Confederate States National Flag to it’s rightful place and glory.
    Duty, responsibility and my own personal honor require of me to do whatever is lawful, peaceful and honorable, in order to restore the Confederate States Constitution to power, reseat the Confederate State Government, and reinstate the Confederate States of America to it’s rightful independence.
    With these words I swear my pledge of loyalty forever!”
    Deo Vindice!

  7. Brent, are you an American citizen?

    Have you said the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States? Did you keep your fingers crossed?

    Do you feel any loyalty to the USA?

  8. Reconstruction politics

    By the time the suit was filed, Republicans in Congress, led by its Radical faction, were opposing President Johnson’s leadership in reconstruction policy. Radicals opposed the creation of provisional state governments, and moderates were frustrated by a number of lawsuits instigated by provisional southern governors attempting to obstruct congressional reconstruction. Increasingly Republicans were abandoning Lincoln’s position that the states had never left the Union, preferring to treat the South as conquered provinces totally subject to Congressional rule. They hoped that the Supreme Court would reject jurisdiction in the case by claiming that there was no legally recognized government in Texas.[9]

    Democrats, on the other hand, wanted the Court to acknowledge the existence of an official state government in Texas. Such a ruling would have the effect of accepting Texas as fully restored to its place in the Union and render the Military Reconstruction Act unconstitutional. Wall Street was also concerned with the case, being opposed to any actions that threatened bondholders and investors.[10]

  9. first u remove the opposition to an illegal invasion an war.

    the geographical reorganization of the circuits in 1866 coincided with the broader effort of the Republican majority in Congress to reduce what it saw as the disproportionate influence of southern states in the federal government before the Civil War. Between 1837 and 1862, five of the nine circuits consisted exclusively of slave states. The tradition of appointing a justice from each circuit allowed Southern slaveowners to dominate the Supreme Court. After taking an initial step to reduce the number of southern circuits in 1862, Congress in 1866 left only two circuits composed entirely of former slave states, and only one was composed solely of former Confederate states.

  11. Brent, are you and American citizen or something else? If the former, you are treading dangerously close to sedition. if the latter, then fine, you can be whatever you want to be, but perhaps you are living in the wrong place. This is the United States of America.

    Have you ever said the Pledge of Allegiance? You know, the one that pledges: “One Nation, indivisible……”

    If you have said the Pledge, did you keep your fingers crossed?

  12. this court case was put on in 1869 4 years after the war by the tyrants who won!!!

    Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869) was a significant case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869.[1] The case involved a claim by the Reconstruction government of Texas that United States bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American Civil War. The state filed suit directly with the United States Supreme Court, which, under the United States Constitution, retains original jurisdiction on cases in which a state is a party.

    In accepting original jurisdiction, the court ruled that Texas had remained a state ever since it first joined the Union, despite its joining the Confederate States of America and its being under military rule at the time of the decision in the case. In deciding the merits of the bond issue, the court further held that the Constitution did not permit states to secede from the United States, and that the ordinances of secession, and all the acts of the legislatures within seceding states intended to give effect to such ordinances, were “absolutely null”.[2]

    for them to have ruled different would have placed the yankee tyrants in jail

  15. The Supreme Court opinion in Texas v White (74 US 700 [1869]) said that the entry of Texas into the United States was its entry into “an indissoluble relation.” The SCOTUS decision makes the rule the Law of the Land no matter what had gone before.

    President Andrew Jackson:

    But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation, and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure.
    Proclamation to the People of South Carolina

    President James Buchanan:

    In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.
    Final State of the Union Speech

    Brent let the mask slip, first withe the “spic” comment and then the claim of Federal “occupation.”

  16. The south never committed treason, The states created the federal goverment an had a right to leave it. In fact the confederacy never surrendered, lee did. We are still an occupied nation! In the beginning the states created a federal gov.There is no law that said the voluntary states cant leave such, the only treason was by lincoln forcing the states to stay, for that john wilks booth sent him to meet his maker. slavery was not the cause of the war, period. thats a worn out lie placed in yankee school books.This whole nation is under occupation from a tyrannical federal govt. the south fired the first shot after negotations over fort sumnter failed.The fort was on soverign south carolina soil. the evils of this tyranny that won the war is being used to conquer the world now. most of your tax dollars are spent by the nwo army for this cause.

  17. I’m glad to see you fellas have been keeping the revisionist in line during my absence today. Good show. FYI, I’m likely to be scarce the next couple of days, but I shall return. Family business.

  18. Tired and can’t seem to spell this evening.

    Tallahatchie County is correct spelling.

  19. You guys don’t really understand how a rural southerner from Mississippi really thinks. Here is a 1956 interview with J. W. Milam, one of the men who killed 14 year old Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman in Bryant’s Store in Money, MS. in 1955.

    Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work ’em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain’t gonna vote where I live. If they did, they’d control the government. They ain’t gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he’s tired o’ livin’. I’m likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. ‘Chicago boy,’ I said, ‘I’m tired of ’em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I’m going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.’
    J. W. Milam, Look magazine, 1956

    Here is a photo of the teenager after J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant got through with him. They were tried for the murder but in September 1955 a Tallahatchee County jury aquitted them.

    http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/the-murder-of-emmett-till/

  20. Gyges:

    So elementary a point that it overrules even manifest historical fact. Now my eyes are opened! Eureka!!

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