Wilson’s Actions Once Again Fail To Back His Words
Once again actions have spoken louder than words. Sons of Confederate Veterans Commander-in-Chief Ron Wilson has publicly prided himself on opposing racism within the SCV. He even claimed at the NC Division Executive Council meeting in Roxboro, NC, in February of this year that he had recently expelled two members for their ties to the Ku Klux Klan. CIC Wilson has obviously overlooked Dr. Neill Payne. Payne posted his "100%" support for CIC Wilson on the www.scvleadership.org website and signed as Commander of the Isaac Newton Giffen Camp, Black Mountain, NC.
Who is Dr. Neill H. Payne?
Dr. Neill Payne is a chiropractor and executive director of Kirk Lyons' Southern Legal Resource Center. While Payne seeks attention at SCV meetings dressed in his oversize 10-gallon cowboy hat, full length leather overcoat, and Confederate uniform vest and trousers, he doesn't want to draw attention to his militant racist past. Payne is brother-in-law to the controversial attorney, Kirk Lyons, but his own connections to extremists pre-date his associations with Lyons
Payne was arrested in 1987 for harboring one of the FBl's most wanted fugitives, Louis Beam, former Grand Dragon of the Texas KKK. Beam operated the Texas Emergency Reserve in the early 1980s, the military arm of the Texas Klan that was training 2,500 paramilitary soldiers in five secret camps. The TER harassed Vietnamese fishermen until the courts halted their terrorism. In 1987, Beam was charged with sedition for being part of a plot to overthrow the federal government. He fled to Mexico and was put on the FBI's "Ten Most Wanted List." After a gun battle with Mexican police, he returned to the U.S. and was acquitted in 1988.
Payne's wife Laura Beth is the sister of Kirk Lyon's wife Brenna. The two women are the daughters of Charles Tate, a leader of the Aryan Nations white power group. In September 1990, Payne and Lyons married the Tate sisters in a double wedding ceremony at the Christian Identity church on the Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho. Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler officiated. Lyons' best man was Louis Beam, former Grand Dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan and the same Louis Beam whom Payne had harbored as a fugitive in flight from federal prosecution.
Since his marriage in 1990 Dr. Neill Payne has been closely involved with his brother-in-law Kirk Lyons. Payne, Lyons and Dave Hollaway incorporated the Patriots Defense Fund, which evolved into the CAUSE Foundation. Payne was an original incorporator of the CAUSE Foundation with Lyons and David Duke lawyer Sam Dickson. The CAUSE Foundation was "a clearinghouse for civil rights concerns for European derived people." The acronym stood for Canada/Australia/United States/South Africa/Europe. In 1996, brother-in-law Kirk Lyons launched his current vehicle for litigation: the Southern Legal Resource Center (SLRC). Lyons is chief trial counsel at SLRC and Neill Payne is executive director.
In spite of his widely known past and connections, Payne continues to serve as an officer in the SCV, both at the local camp level and on the National SCV Resolutions Committee.
Payne's Racist Letter to Reenactors
The italicized letter that follows was written by Payne as an SCV camp officer in 1997 to a Texas reenactment group and was posted on the Internet at that time. Payne's letter is printed in its entirety as it appears on the website http://37thtexas.org/html/racists.html. Payne's words reveal his overt racism. The language and opinions may be offensive to the reader but the true impact and intent of the message requires that the letter be displayed verbatim. The editorial notes are those of the 37th Texas website editor.
Words from the Executive Director
Southern Legal Resource Center
(Editor's note - Neill Payne is the Executive Director of the "Southern Legal Resource Center" [SLRC] and the referenced Bill Rolen is a notoriously open racist from Tennessee - this unsolicited message appears exactly as it was received except for bold text and notation of Payne's derogatory terms for Black and Native Southerners)
Subject: Rolen and the "Southern"
RingDate: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 12:57:59 –0400
From: SLRC <slrc@cheta.net>
Organization: Southern Legal Resource Center
To: mkelley@gcip.net, scvecho@dixie-net.com
To Mike Kelly;
It has been some time since I have witnessed a more pretentious person in action. Your attack on the Tennessee Division for their honorable support of a REAL Southerner, viz. Bill Rolen, is as stunning a display of frozen effrontery as I have ever seen. Who are you to presume so much?
You, what ever you are, are in thought and deed exactly like the sanctimonious Yankee bastards from whom "our" ancestors sought to seceed. We just can't seem to get shed of you people.
Oh now, don't start telling me what a Southerner you are and trotting out your pedigree again. I've seen it. I only need to see the fruit to know what kind of tree I am looking at.
Speaking of trees, I think of woods and speaking of woods makes me think of woodpiles. Speaking of woodpiles makes me think what might be in them. I've often suspected multi-culti maniacs like you of harboring an Aborigine in the arborage. In your case it is a red wood instead of a black gum. No matter. The fact is that (to mix the metaphore also) you have a little horse manure in the ice cream and you want us to pretend it's just chocolate chips.
You also want us to pretend that our ancestors liked horse manure in the ice cream too. Those whom you find don't have quite your taste, you accuse them of food-purity-ism and of being a-historical vestiges of anachronistic, gastronomical imperialism.
But, if you know anything about the old South, you know how much store they set by "who your people were." You know Cuffy (Payne's term for Blacks) and Squanto (Payne's term for Native Americans) were not welcome in the parlor unless they were serving drinks. The majority of the Old South had nothing to do with anyone who sought out the society of inferiors or "heaven forbid" had them in their pedigree.
I've met a few misfits like you in the resurgent Pro-Confederate movement who, like you, are "Desperately Seeking Negroes." They, like you, see the South rising again to reclaim its place among the civilizations of the earth. They, like you, become possessed with this demon-inspired, Hell-spawned mania to remake the South in their own image. Ultimately, they, like you, will never rest until they have clapped their iron-bound idiocy on everyone else. They, as their Puritan intellectual forefathers, are never having more fun than when they are purging the heretics or hunting witches.
Southern gentility, which your purport to admire, would make some allowance for cranks and eccentrics like you people. But, forbearance is never enough for. You are not content for us to allow you to huddle in a corner babbling about what a proto-Multiculturalist Gen. Forrest was. No, you're a carbon copy DamnYankee. You're damned and determined to force-feed your garbage down every unwilling throat and will threaten to shoot anyone who has the temerity to utter a burp.
We Southerners perfected the idea of free speach, the free and unfettered exchange of ideas and opinions. So, I would not seek to stop you from propounding your twaddle. No. I amuse myself by occasionally giving audience to rantings like yours. I am intrigued to find out each time what outer limits of insanity you will have reached.
Be my guest. Go on and frolic in your candy-coated, M & M colored, fantasy land, but leave true Southerners out of your spiteful and vindictive machinations.
In the fond memory or Ft. Pillow,
I am truly,
Dr. Neill H. Payne,
Adjutant, I.N. Giffen Camp #758 SCV
"God damn you old horse! Now I shall have to shoot you. How dare you fight against your master?"
From testimony given in the Congressional investigation into the Incident at Ft. Pillow. These were the last words said to a belligerent Negro by an angry "sesech" just prior to his releasing a fusilade at the miscreant. Fortunately, the shot hit Cuffy in the head. Otherwise, the Confederate could have killed him.
Through his association with radicals like Neill Payne, Kirk Lyons and others, CIC Wilson has delivered the leadership of our SCV into the hands of extremists.