That would be George Wallace, Jr., Alabama state Public Service Commissioner, and the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the current name of the group that became notorious as the White Citizens Council. Same anti-democracy, white supermacist, anti-Semitic noxious bigotry, new name.
And that would be last week that Wallace's speech took place: George Wallace Jr. gives major speech to hate group Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Project 06/06/05. It sounds like it was quite a shindig for the good ole white boys:
The CCC was created from the mailing lists of the old White Citizens Councils, which were set up in the 1950s and 1960s to resist efforts to desegregate Southern schools, and which Thurgood Marshall once described as "the uptown Klan." Recently, it has embraced Holocaust deniers and published anti-Semitic articles on its website.
In the audience listening to Wallace were a number of leading white supremacists. They included Don Black, former Alabama grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and proprietor of Stormfront.org, the most influential hate site on the internet; Jamie Kelso, right-hand man and Louisiana roommate of former Klan leader David Duke; Jared Taylor, editor of the neo-eugenicist American Renaissance magazine; Ed Fields, an aging white supremacist leader from Georgia; Alabama CCC leader Leonard "Flagpole" Wilson, who got his name shouting "Keep Bama white!" from atop a flagpole during University of Alabama race riots in 1956; and the CCC's national leader, St. Louis personal injury lawyer Gordon Baum.
The White Citizens Council has a Web site. Don't miss the Confederate flag displayed there. (It's pretty hard to miss, actually.) They have an early report of their conference:
We will have many more pictures, reports, and maby some video from the conference posted shortly. It was a triumphant weekend. Speakers included Alabama Public Service Commisioner George Wallace Jr., Hollywood actor/stuntman Sonny Landham, Memphis radio talk show host James Edwards, prominant Alabama lawyer Col. John Eidsmoe, Alabama Division SCV leader Leonard Wilson, Jared Taylor, Sam Dickson Esq., Baptist minister Charles Baker, Presbyterian minister Col. Robert Slimp and many more! During the course of both days, we had over 200 people attend.
Many members of the CofCC also participated in a Jeff Davis memorial ceremony and a traditional Southern ball. All held at the original capital building of the Confederacy just two blocks from the hotel!
And a good time was had by all, I'm sure. Although personally, I can't think of anything much creepier than hanging out with a bunch of blowhard white bigots for a couple of days. And going to a "traditional Southern ball" with a crowd like that must be something like crawling through a sewage pipe full of water moccasins.
Here's an AP article on Wallace's appearance: George Wallace Jr. addresses Council of Conservative Citizens by Phillip Rawls (AP) 06/06/05.
Wallace said the 50 people at the meeting in Montgomery struck him "as good, patriotic people."
The Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center classifies the Council of Conservative Citizens as a hate group. During the group's national conference in Montgomery, members protested outside the law center's headquarters Saturday, with some waving the Confederate battle flag.
Waving that flag to promote "heritage not hate," no doubt.
"There is nothing hateful about those people that I've seen," Wallace said Monday. ...
Leonard Wilson of Townley, a member of the council's national board and state commander for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the council has been mislabeled by its critics as racist.
"There's nothing wrong with people being proud of their race, whether it is black, white or yellow," Wilson said Monday.
Yes, I can picture it now. After their memorial service for Jefferson Davis - who had nothing to do with slavery, you understand, nothing at all! - they had their "traditional Southern ball" and all joined hands and sang the Christians children song:
Red and yellow black and white
They are precious in his site
Jesus loves the little children of the world
Yeah, I'm sure that's what they did.
The Decatur Daily carried the same AP story, only with this headline: Wallace addresses alleged hate group 06/07/05. "Alleged"? That would be like in "Tom DeLay is alleged to be a Republican." Or, "Richard Nixon was alleged to be a crook."
You know, thinking about that whole scene at the White Citizens Council hullaballoo, I've changed my mind. Crawling through the culvert with the water moccasins would be definitely preferable to a "traditional Southern ball" with the likes of David Duke, Jared Taylor and the good ole white boys from Stormfront and the KKK.
I wonder if Chuckie was there?
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