Want to know how far removed racists are from reality? Consider how the League of the South, one of the more notorious white supremacist and neo-Confederate outfits, chose to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. It claims that the marches were a litany of debauched behavior.
People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch noticed that league president Michael Hill touted a billboard that was recently erected in Selma to honor Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. It was erected near the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the scene of the “Bloody Sunday” attacks during the first march. As most of us know, armed policemen launched a brutal and completely unprovoked attack on the marchers when they first attempted to cross the bridge. That attack proved to be the tipping point in turning public opinion in favor of supporting the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But Hill claims that what most people don’t know is that there were other, less savory goings-on during the marches.
“The great untold story by the anti-South media was the orgy of sex, alcohol, and drugs that took place between Selma and Montgomery in the spring of 1965. But to deal honestly with these event and personalities would not have advanced the agenda of the evil South and the righteous left.”
Where is the evidence for said debauchery? The only references I can find to such claims are on white nationalist/supremacist sites. Apparently they borrowed from accounts in area newspapers of the time which claimed that the white women who took part in the march were only there to take part in orgies with black men. As any history student knows, the level of prejudice that flowed from editorial rooms in the Deep South was nauseating by any standard. The saying “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” applies–and Hill doesn’t provide any. It can be safely assumed that there is none. It’s also telling that Hill makes no mention of the brutal beatings that the marchers had to endure, merely saying that the marchers were turned back at first. The most benign interpretation is that he’s missing the switch in his brain that makes him human.
There are numerous other reasons to take this with several truckloads of salt. The League of the South has openly called for the South to secede from the United States, and celebrated the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. While it adamantly denies that it is racist, at the same time Hill is on record as saying that blacks have never built “anything approximating a civilization in the Western sense of the term”–a statement that amounts to blowing a dog whistle into a bullhorn. Small wonder that the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the League of the South a hate group.
If you’re wondering how this kind of virulent racism can still be around even today, this spiel by Hill is your answer.
