IN THE CHANCERY COURT FOR MAURY COUNTY, TENNESSEE

AT COLUMBIA

Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc.

Plaintiff

DENNE A. SWEENEY, INDIVIDUALLY

AND AS EX-COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF

OF SONS OF CONFEDERATE VETERANS,

INC.

Defendants et al.

AFFIDAVIT OF WILLIAM EARL FAGGERT

State of Mississippi

County of Jasper

Personally appeared before me, the undersigned authority in and for the jurisdiction aforesaid, the within named William Earl Faggert who being by me first duly sworn states on oath as follows:

1. I am Earl Faggert of Heidelberg, Mississippi. I have personal knowledge of the matters and facts set forth in this affidavit.

2. I have been a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (“SCV”) for 35 years. I served as National Commander in-Chief in 1988-1990, and have served as a member of the General Executive Council since 1988. I have also held a number of national staff positions on the SCV staff. In the past I have served as our Mississippi Division Commander and as a Camp Commander. At the present time I am the Heritage Chairman for the Mississippi Division of the SCV.

3. The purposes of the SCV are to honor and perpetuate the memory and exploits of the Confederate soldier, sailors and marines, as set forth in the charge given to us by General Stephen D. Lee. A copy of this charge is attached hereto as Exhibit A. In carrying out our mission our Constitution states that we are to avoid political controversies of any kind, and that we are a non-sectarian, non-racial group.

4. As a past national leader of the SCV, and as an active SCV member, I am aware that one of the biggest obstacles the SCV faces in getting the present public to share the SCV’s appreciation of the Southern Confederacy is the unfortunate fact that certain racist and anti-Semitic groups have appropriated our symbols for their own use, thus creating a public perception that to honor our Confederate ancestors is an indication of racist views. With this in mind, I, along with most of the past leaders of the SCV, have worked hard to make sure the SCV steered clear of all groups with racist or anti-Semitic views.

5. However beginning with the administration of Past Commander-In-Chief Ron Wilson, the officers and leaders of the SCV Mr. Wilson installed began to steer the SCV in a direction that I considered to be disastrous. Mr. Wilson is on the Board of Directors of the Southern Legal Resource Center, whose leader is an attorney name Kirk Lyons. Mr. Wilson’s daughter works for Mr. Lyons. Mr. Wilson promoted using the Southern Legal Resource Center in heritage matters, and making the SCV more dependent upon this group for legal services. While I am alarmed and offended by specific reported attacks on our heritage, especially on our symbols, this was something I was reluctant to do, especially as time passed and I learned more about the true nature of this group. Before Mr. Wilson took office, Kirk Lyons had written a document entitled “The Path Forward.” A copy of this article is attached hereto as Exhibit B. The response of the Long Range Planning Committee is attached hereto as Exhibit C. It should be noted I was a member of that committee. As the Court can see, Mr. Lyons advocated remaking the SCV, turning the SCV into an aggressive political organization along the lines of the National Rifle Association. I helped author a rebuttal to this document, pointing out how it violated both the letter and spirit of our Constitution. In his administration Mr. Wilson publicly advocated the goals Mr. Lyons set forth in the “The Path Forward,” and tried to move the SCV in the direction Mr. Lyons advocated. We opposed Mr. Wilson and he reacted by trying to get the SCV Constitution to take the Past Commanders-in-Chief off the General Executive Council.

6. This trend continues under the administration of the defendant Sweeney, who succeeded Mr. Wilson, and who Mr. Wilson strongly supported for the position. Mr. Sweeney has announced on a number of occasions in my presence that he thinks the SCV should change in the same manner Mr. Wilson and Mr. Lyons had proposed. Along with other Past Commanders-in-Chief, I realized that the survival of the SCV required that we oppose Mr. Sweeney’s efforts, using our position on the governing body of the SCV, the General Executive Council (“GEC”). In addition, Mr. Sweeney continued a practice of expelling members of the SCV who disagreed with him, a procedure Mr. Wilson had started.

7. On October 30, 2004, a meeting of the GEC took place in the normal manner. Mr. Sweeney was not able to get all of his agenda passed over the opposition of the majority of the GEC. He reacted by inserting an article in the next issue of The Confederate Veteran, the magazine of the SCV, a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit D, which he entitled “The GEC: Tammany Hall in Action.” As the Court can see, this article is a virulent, vicious, petulant, personal attack upon certain members of the GEC, who are men who have served the SCV long and well. In all my many years as an SCV member this is the only time I can recall any writer using the magazine to launch a personal attack upon fellow SCV members. I feel this is particularly unfair and damaging to the SCV since there is no way to present the other side of the argument to the membership. Mr. Sweeney was mad after this meeting that he could not get his way on a number of issues, for example in the matter of the publication of minutes of the meeting. The majority of the GEC, including me, insisted that before the minutes of a GEC meeting were published that those minutes would have to be approved by the GEC. We voted this way to insure the minutes were accurate, but this made Mr. Sweeney furious.

8. Mr. Sweeney then tried to call a GEC meeting for December 18, 2004 in North Carolina, knowing that many of his opponents on the GEC would not be able to attend. He did not get enough GEC members at this meeting for a quorum, so Mr. Sweeney, according to the synopsis of the meeting, which is attached hereto as Exhibit E, “suspended” enough of his opponents on the GEC to create a “quorum.” There is no provision in the SCV constitution that I can find that gives the Commander-in-Chief the power to suspend the GEC members. The Court can see that Mr. Kirk Lyons was at the meeting and appears in the synopsis of the meeting.

9. After this meeting Mr. Sweeney once again took to the pages of The Confederate Veteran to lambast his fellow GEC members who do not agree with him. A copy of this article is attached hereto as Exhibit F. As the Court can see, Mr. Sweeney begins this article with a definition of the word “boycott” and accuses five members of the GEC of “colluding in the boycott,” and then purporting to suspend those five members from the GEC for one day. I was one of the five members purportedly “suspended.” Mr. Sweeney never talked to me about attending the meeting, whether I was going to be able to be at the meeting, or why I was not at the meeting. On that day, a week before Christmas, I had a number of personal and business reasons I could not be there, including a wedding of a family member in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The accusation that Mr. Sweeney made about me to the entire SCV membership that I was a member of an organized boycott of his meeting is a patent lie. Mr. Sweeney manufactured a quorum at this GEC meeting by using illegal and unconstitutional tactics in order to get his agenda passed, items he could not have gotten passed at a regular meeting.

10. After this meeting of December 18, 2004, many members of the GEC became convinced that Mr. Sweeney was determined to pursue a goal of one-man rule of the SCV—with the one man being Mr. Sweeney—and that Mr. Sweeney had no regard or respect for the rules or laws of the SCV. Mr. Sweeney and his supporters convinced me that they were determined to take the SCV in the direction outlined by Kirk Lyons in the “The Path Forward,” which is directly in violation of the SCV Constitution. I concluded that Mr. Sweeney continuing to serve in the position of Commander-in-Chief would be fatal for the SCV, as the SCV will not tolerate a tyrant. This is a view that is shared by the majority of the GEC. In this connection I note that in the last year our membership has dropped several thousand members. I attribute this in large part to the controversy Mr. Sweeney and his officers have foisted on the SCV.

11. On February 6, 2005 we attempted to hold a GEC meeting by telephone, using procedure under which each GEC member calling in to participate in the meeting used a code number. The meeting did not take place because at the last minute Mr. Sweeney called the telephone company and changed the access code. This demonstrates the lengths Mr. Sweeney will go to, and the techniques Mr. Sweeney will use to thwart anyone who opposes his attempts to control the SCV.

12. In am asking this Court to continue the TRO is issued in this case on February 18, 2005 in the form of a preliminary or final injunction, to make the TRO relief permanent. This is absolutely necessary to allow the SCV leaders that the GEC has duly and properly installed, following the rules and procedures established by the SCV constitution and applicable law, to take control of the SCV and to assume its direction. Mr. Sweeney and his supporters are actively trying to undermine the new leadership at every turn, and unless the Court continues the relief it has granted, the SCV leaders will not be able to govern the organization.

13. The Court needs to understand that this controversy is not about who will control the SCV; it is about whether the SCV will be run in accordance with its Constitution and the law, or not. While I have disagreed with the direction and philosophy of the defendant Sweeney for some time, I did not feel action was warranted or legally justified until Mr. Sweeney began to blatantly disregard our Constitution and the law in his zeal to eliminate his enemies. The present leadership of the SCV is committed to running the SCV in accordance with the constitution and the law. If the defendant Sweeney and his appointees are placed back in office, the rule of law will once again be ignored and I am firmly convinced it will be the end of the SCV. Thus the SCV will be irreparably harmed unless the Court continues the relief it has already granted.

William Earl Faggert

SWORN TO AND SUBSCRIBED THIS THE 6TH DAY OF March, 2005.

Notary Public

Back to the Home Page