The Wrong Argument For the Right Cause

[teaoli]

Moments ago, I watched a follow-up to a CNN story which ran yesterday.

Mississippi's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (please note: Making references to this organization is about the only time it's acceptable to call us "colored") wants Governor Haley Barbour to reject a bid by the Mississippi Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans to make available a specialty license plate in honor of Nathan Bedford Forrest.



While I wholeheartedly support the NAACP's protest of this action, I think that the head of the organization's Mississippi chapter makes the wrong point, entirely, in his argument.

Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi chapter told CNN, "Any individual who was a traitor to our country and our Constitution should be treated as such."

He also said Forrest's acts during the Civil War made the lieutenant general a "terrorist."

Maybe they did; maybe they did not. The meaning of the acts of Confederate soldiers continues to be debated to this day, and Nathan Bedford Forrest asked for a pardon in 1865 (although three years would pass before he would even be granted parole). So that's not the part that really matters to me.

You see, after his service in the Civil War, Forrest went on to become a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He served as the hate group's first Grand Wizard. And that, in my opinion, is why he shouldn't be honored.

Because there's nothing debatable about the nature of the Ku Klux Klan. And that's where I think they should be focusing their protest.

But maybe that's just me.

Comments

[dracutgrl.livejournal.com]

Not just you. The thought that anyone with known KKK ties be honored with anything is horrifying to me.

I second your right cause/wrong argument.

[dearland76.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should write this Derrick Johnson guy and set him on the right path.

Terrorists

[spocklikescats.livejournal.com]

The KKK certainly qualify as terrorists. So I agree; Forrest should not receive any honors based on his "Grand Wizardry."

I have a strong personal aversion to the Stars & Bars, but that's just me.

[spockchick.livejournal.com]

That is unbelievable. If you look on the wikipedia entry his KKK involvement is the first line! More strange is WHY this has not been mentioned in the argument? That seems odd to me.