The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), well-known for their continuous fight against ignorance and racism, has announced that this coming Saturday, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is holding a major event to honor the sesquicentennial, or 150th anniversary, of the beginning of the Civil War.
The SPLC is reporting that the festivities will “commemorate†events that most Americans see as a terribly dark period in American history: “the founding of the Confederate States of America, the inauguration of Jefferson Davis and the raising of the first Confederate Flag.†Little mention is made by the SCV, which calls the Civil War a “Second American Revolution,†of the widespread devastation and death that accompanied the war the Confederate States of America (CSA) fought to defend slavery. It is doubtful that any mention of this will be made, as the SCV’s mission seems to be to capitalize on the efforts of its forefathers, rather than on what the Civil War was really about.
The march is set to take the end of the same route as that taken by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and thousands of others who participated in the Selma-to-Montgomery Voting Rights March in 1965. The celebrations will include a march up Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue to the Capitol, with participants festooned in hoop skirts, battle flags and other period dress.
On the steps of the Capitol, the group is expected to reenact the swearing in of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the CSA. The march begins at 11 a.m. Saturday.
The SPLC says that the SCV will be joined by members of local hate groups active in the neo-Confederate movement, in particular members of the racist League of the South, which believes that slavery is “God-ordained†and that “Anglo-Celts†should be put in charge of an independent South, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that argues that black people are “a retrograde species of humanity.†The SCV will visit Montgomery again in July, when it plans to hold its “Confederate Sesquicentennial SCV Reunion†at the downtown Embassy Suites hotel.
For more information on the Southern Poverty Law Center and how you can join in their fight against prejudice, please visit www.splc.org.
