League of the South demonstration in New Albany Easter weekend

Representatives from the “League of the South,” (LOS) a “neo-Confederate” organization based in Killen, (Muscle Shoals), Alabama, held a demonstration Saturday morning in New Albany.

Carrying Confederate battle flags, displaying small banners, and handing out printed material to those who would take it, the six or so “League of the South” demonstrators mainly confined themselves to the area near the Union County Courthouse.

In its own literature, the League of the South says it is a “Southern nationalist organization…whose ultimate goal is a free and independent Southern Republic…advocating a return to a more conservative Christian-oriented Southern culture.”

The group has bitterly attacked the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) for its 2017 resolution to “decry every form of racism, including alt-right white supremacy, as antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The League of the South’s condemnation of the Southern Baptist resolution said LOS, “A Southern nationalist organization for white gentiles, roundly condemns the SBC for its cowardly anti-white, anti-Southern, and anti-Biblical stance.”

Reaction of New Albany people to the League of the South demonstration Saturday morning appeared to have ranged from amusement to embarrassment to outrage. Some referred to the group as “Ku Klux Klan (KKK),” although there were no white sheets or burning crosses on display.

There was reportedly little direct engagement of local people with the LOS demonstrators, no dramatic clashes and no threats of violence.

The LOS devotees had wrapped up their work in New Albany by noon Saturday. They apparently went elsewhere to recruit allies to their stated goal: “For the South, cultural as well as political secession is the only practical, the only realistic, and the only moral choice.”

The League of the South has been labeled a “racist hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Alabama-based advocacy group which has fought the KKK and racism for several decades.

About 25 years ago Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was asked what one had to do to qualify for membership in the Ku Klux Klan. “Well,” said Dees with his famous, soft Deep South drawl and impish grin, “You have to be able to afford a sheet.”