Mississippi Governor asked to denounce attempts to honor KKK leader

From [HERE] The Mississippi NAACP has called on Governor Haley Barbour to publicly denounce an attempt by a Confederacy group to honor a Ku Klux Klan leader, the organization said Monday.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has launched the campaign to recognize Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest on a specialty license plate.

Forrest, a popular and controversial figure, is best known as a leader of the KKK, the white supremacist group known for terrorizing blacks in the South after the Civil War.

He is also praised and criticized for an 1864 raid at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, where hundreds of black Union Army members were killed during the war. The controversy over whether Forrest conducted or condoned the massacre is still a matter for heated debate.

Mississippi NAACP leaders feel a state-sanctioned license plate honoring a man with ties to the KKK sends the wrong message to people in the state and across the country.

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

Forrest was a "terrorist" whose acts were "immoral and unconstitutional," Johnson said. Honoring him or anyone who promoted racial hatred or violence would be offensive, he said.

The NAACP isn't alone in its protest against the SCV. More than 1,700 Mississippians have joined a Facebook group called Mississippians Against The Commemoration Of Grand Wizard Nathan Forrest.

The group's website says they "are united in sending a message to the state government of Mississippi that WE WILL NOT STAND for the public glorification of one of the original leaders of the Ku Klux Klan."

The proposal by the Sons of Confederate Veterans seeks to honor Confederate generals.

"If we can't hold him up to where he's supposed to be, then nobody else is gonna do it," group member Greg Stewart said. Forrest is being "unfairly maligned," he told CNN.

Most historians agree that Forrest left the KKK after less than two years because the small pockets of groups were growing rapidly, were unorganized and violent.

Forrest felt "they had the right idea, but went about it the wrong way," said Mike Martinez, a part-time political science instructor at Kennesaw State University. Despite his short stint with the Klan, Martinez said Forrest's affiliation with the organization gave it credibility.

Stewart said Forrest was chosen to be recognized not because of his time with the KKK, but for his spirit and leadership during the Civil War.