Mississippi Gov. and possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate Haley Barbour : “I don’t go around denouncing” the KKK. “That’s not going to happen.”
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won’t denounce a Southern heritage group’s proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Barbour is a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate.
Questioned by reporters Tuesday after an energy speech in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn’t think Mississippi legislators will approve the Forrest license plate proposed by the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.
The group wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates over the next few years to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War – or in its words, the “War Between the States.” The Forrest license plate would be slated for 2014.
Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson said it’s “absurd” to honor a “racially divisive figure” such as Forrest. Johnson has also called on Barbour to denounce the license plate idea.
Asked about the NAACP’s stance Tuesday, Barbour replied: “I don’t go around denouncing people. That’s not going to happen. I don’t even denounce the news media.”
Asked to clarify what he thinks is not going to happen, Barbour said he believes lawmakers won’t approve a specialty license plate depicting Forrest.
“I know there’s not a chance it’ll become law,” Barbour said.
Forrest, a Tennessee native, is revered by some as a military genius and reviled by others for leading an 1864 massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn. Forrest was a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard in Tennessee after the war.
Funny, he says he doesn’t denounce people, so he won’t speak out against the KKK guy, but he has no problem denouncing our President at every turn. Let’s see, KKK off limits, our President, not so much. Tell me Mr Barbour, what does that say about you.
I was dumbfounded that he would find the news media on par with the KKK, but then I figure he is a Fox fan.
How can you expect him to say anything, one way or the other, about these license plates when he readily admits he was barely even aware of the civil rights movements in the 60s in his own state!
Now to finish the story… In 1875, Forrest demonstrated that his personal sentiments on the issue of race now differed from that of the Klan, when he was invited to give a speech before an organization of black Southerners advocating racial reconciliation, called the Independent Order of Pole-Bearers Association. At this, his last public appearance, he made what the New York Times described as a “friendly speech” during which, when offered a bouquet of flowers by a black woman, he accepted them as a token of reconciliation between the races and espoused a radically progressive (for the time) agenda of equality and harmony between black and white Americans