Recently, in an August 1, 2010 article in the "Selma Times-Journal" it was reported that
Williamson made this claim about his former membership in the League of the South.
"Williamson said he was a member when the group organized about two decades ago."
"It was organized more as an academic exercise by people who were professors, primarily," Williamson said. "They were men who taught at The University of Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, and at first it seemed to be academic exercise about Southern independence, and they wrote a series of articles about Southern independence now, not about the 1860s. I was a member of the League of the South for about eight years, and then when I started law school in 2001, ..." "I have not belonged to the League of the South since 2001. And, of course, there was a split in the League of the South between those who wanted to make it more political, those who seemed to want to make it more radical, certainly more than I wanted it to be."
From these statements Williamson was involved from the time the League of the South organized in 1994, the beginning, to the time he quit in 2001, which would be about eight years.
Williamson's statements and claims about the League of the South are greatly at variance with the facts about the League of the South and he misrepresents what the League of the South was. The only thing that is true in his statement was that the League of the South had a lot of professors involved, which should warn African Americans about what they might run into at the universities.
I emailed Leesha Faulkner about the League of the South as a subject matter expert in the field. I am one of the editors of "Neo-Confederacy: A Critical Introduction," pub. Univ. of Texas Press, 2008, excerpts , and "The Confederate and Neo-Confederate Reader: The 'Great Truth' about the 'Lost Cause,'" I told them that I was going to inform people about the true record of the League of the South and what Williamson had said was not true. However, the "Selma Times-Journal" doesn't seem to be interested.
The League of the South was a racist organization from the beginning dedicated to a program of secession and rolling back the civil rights movement and establishing a hierarchal society where people would be subordinated to where the League of the South thought they should be. It had academic support, but was by no means merely a theoretical exploration of an issue, but was an organization with a plan to change society in the former Confederate states.
I think the best way to give the reader an understanding of what the League of the South was about, would be to quote members of the League of the South themselves. Also, I am going to give examples at length. The reason for this is that if I don't give numerous and different examples, I think Williamson will come up with new excuses to evade responsibility for his actions.
If I give just a few examples, Williamson will say that they were a few rogue articles that slipped in the newsletter or website, or that he missed them. If I refer to web pages, Williamson might say he just read the newsletter and vice versa. I won't bother with material from the year 2000, since Williamson will say that is why he quit. I am going to document a lot of material so that no one can reasonably think that Williamson didn't know what the group was about.
The League of the South published the "Southern Patriot," a newsletter when they first started out till 2006 at least. The first issue was Vol. 1 No.1, dated Sept.-Oct. 1994 and is fairly indicative of what type of organization is. The League of the South used to have some of the contents, but not all, of the "Southern Patriot," online, but some of them are still online at the internet archive. Vol. 1 No. 1, online version, is at the internet archive at this URL
Note: Sometimes the Internet Archives servers face heavy demand and struggle, so wait or go back later.
DixieNet archives
The first article in the issue is the president's message, and the first paragraph is the following:
When Attorney-General Janet Reno dispatched "negotiators" from the Justice Department to the sleepy hamlet of Ovett, Mississippi, last year, she sent a message to traditional Southerners; you have no right to protect your community from unwanted intrusions by federally protected "victim" groups. In this case the victim group was the cadre of Camp Sister Spirit, a pig farm cum lesbian retreat in the rural southeastern portion of the state. Big Sister Reno informed the good citizens of Jones County that further resistance to the deviants would bring forth the federal hordes. Unfortunately, this is not the first message sent Southerners by Reno's thugs; an earlier one came at Waco and decreed that we may not voluntarily separate ourselves from society and hold unorthodox religious (or social or political) beliefs. To drive home their point, the BATF and FBI murdered almost a hundred men, women, and children in this invasion of Southern soil. Will the good people of Wedowee in Randolph County, Alabama, who wish merely to educate their children without interference from the justice or education departments, be the next target of the Reno storm troopers? It would appear that after more than a century since the First Reconstruction the South is still occupied territory held within the Union by brute force, impoverishment, and bribery.
For those who don't remember the controversy of Camp Sister Spirit was, it was reported that the camp was the subject of violent physical attacks. Regardless of what one might think of Camp Sister Spirit, most people, except extremists, don't endorse violence as a means of expressing dislike. However, Dr. Michael Hill does in this article, the attackers are "traditional southerners" "protecting their community." Also, this paragraph is hardly a discussion of academic discussion of secession, rather than a rant of a militia or extremist group.
Hill does bring up the issue of secession in his article, but it is offered as a solution to Hill's lengthy complaint about the government, the "New World Order," and secular society. Secession is offered, from the beginning in the League of the South, as a means to establish an extreme right-wing regime that "would better reflect the natural conservatism and God-fearing world-view of the South," with for example, "church-state relations would without question be different." In short, as you read the entire article, you realize that Hill would like to make the whole south a right wing compound of some sort.
Hill's article makes it quite clear that the purpose of the League of the South is not some theoretical, hypothetical discussion of secession but the program of a extreme right wing group wanting to break up the United States to form their right wing nation.
The
third article by Jeffrey Tucker, of Auburn, Alabama, is a defense of Hulon Humphries, the Randolph County High School principal who was reported as saying that a mixed race student was a mistake, and the article is an attack on anyone who opposed Hulon Humphries racism complaining about outsiders and the media.
Some quotes where Tucker complains about the Federal government
But why is the FBI involved in the first place? Probably not a day passes in America where an arsonist somewhere does not burn a building. And if you are searching for racial conflict, any Northern city provides more than most Southerners could imagine in their worst nightmares. A Wedowee citizen penned a sign that summarizes the lop-sided attention his community was receiving: "Clinton and Reno dictate Wedowee media coverage."
And:
The U.S. Justice Department, which has taken to "investigating" every minor social disturbance in the South, demanded that Mr. Humphries be fired. Clint Bolick of the Institute of Justice agreed, calling Mr. Humphries "fair game." Under duress, the school board complied. But surely, even "South Haters" can agree that allowing the central state to tell a tiny community whom it can hire as its high school principal stretches statism too far.
The Vol. Nol. 1 lists the organization of the founding members into five working committees. The names are worth reviewing.
For the Political Action team there is Ron Kennedy and Donnie Kennedy, the neo-Confederate twins who have written a series of neo-Confederate books, like "The South Was Right!" in which the Voting Rights Act is denounced as a fraud. They have a Website and Walter Donald Kennedy is an author that has proposed that the Republican Party of Lincoln was some type of communist conspiracy.
For the Correspondence Committee is Michael Andrew Grissom, author of "Southern by the Grace of God," a book that praises the KKK of both Reconstruction and the 1920s, and portrays a lynching in Oklahoma as a heroic act. Thomas Fleming is also a member of this committee, you can read Fleming's writing at Chronicles Magazine
On the Finance Committee is J. Steven Wilkens, co-author of a book, "Southern Slavery As It Was," which defends slavery.
In Vol. 1 No. 2 J. Steven Wilkens' explains how the Civil War was really a religious war, in his article, "Theology of the South." Wilkens' quotes R. L. Dabney to explain the real meaning of the Civil War as follows:
The theological disagreement lay at the bottom of the political conflict. To many Southerners, the defence of the Southern Cause became equivalent to a defense of Christendom itself. The Southern preacher, professor, and theologian James H. Thornwell gave this analysis of the controversy in his Fast Day Sermon of 1860: "The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and slave holders, they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake."
The article is archived
here
This view of the Civil War is widely held by neo-Confederates. Professor Euan Hague and I had and article published on the topic at the University of Toronto, which you can read online here
The book, "The South Was Right," which complains about Reconstruction and denounces the Voting Rights Act is promoted on page 15. This book by the way has sold over 100,000 copies and is still widely sold in mainstream bookstores today.
In the same issue President Hill lauds southerners who refuse "to genuflect each January to the memory of "Dr." King. In another article Clyde Wilson in discussing the south states that southerners didn't make a "fetish" of democracy and equality. Hostility to civil rights isn't just in articles that directly address the topic, but exist in numerous small comments in the "Southern Patriot."
Vol. 2 No. 1 issue has more on civil rights. Michael Hill explains how civil rights is used to attack the South.
... the New Deal began six decades of tyranny by federal judges and other social meddlers who ransacked the Constitution in the name of civil rights.
And:
The next step, once sufficient numbers were dependent upon the federal government, was for Washington to demand compliance with its dictates. The "Second Reconstruction" began with the use of civil rights to emasculate the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's doctrine of incorporation.
Michael Hill, further explains to the readers that civil rights is a destruction of the Federal system of government explaining.
The latest stage in the nationalization of government and the destruction of our original confederal system occurred in the 1950's and 1960's. During these decades the government moved into the South under judicial decree and destroyed the social fabric of communities in the name of civil rights. By taking control of school and voting districts and by making private property (lunch counters and other so-called "public accommodations") subject to federal regulation, Washington forced the retreat of many Southerners from their public duties and responsibilities. These "old Southerners" took shelter in the safety of family, church, and other privatea ssociations. having lost control and influence in the public sphere, they dedicated themselves to the private one, a sphere that was only to shrink further, in scope as the latest stage of tyranny played itself out in the following decades. We now have witnessed government encroachment into strictly private associations--families, churches, privates chools, clubs, etc. The consequent immoral and unlawful meddling by federal judges and the atrocities committed by renegade law enforcement agencies serve to emphasize the fact that no inner sanctum remains.
More ominously Hill sees the future as filled with racial conflict explaining:
Competition among cultural groups seeking the resources to survive and prosper is natural and proper. To deny this by asserting the silly slogan, "the brotherhood of man," is cultural suicide; it will not eliminate the competition, but will lull us into acquiescing in our own destruction. Our forefathers would be appalled at our hesitation to defend our birthright.
Archived here
In the same issue Thomas Woods, the now famous author, denounces the 14th amendment and its use to support civil rights. This same issue in the section, "Noteworthy publication," promotes Michael Andrew Grissom's books, "Southern by the Grace of God," "The Last Rebel Yell," and "When the South Was Southern." The first book as I have stated before praises the KKK and endorses lynching as a heroic act of Ada, Oklahoma. The Black Commentator, an online publication, has an article detailing the contents of "Southern by the Grace of God"
The "Last Rebel Yell" attacks civil rights and defends slavery. One section of the book claims that African American slaves,when their children were sold away with the breakup of a plantation, really weren't all that upset by their children being sold, and instead were mostly upset at the breakup of the plantation. Also, promoted is Sprinkle Publications, the publishers of books of pro-slavery theologians.
archived here
to be continued.
