PART II -  MORRIS DEES SAID WHAT?

Nearly four weeks ago on August 29, Brag Bowling, SCV Virginia Division commander, reported to the Dixie Daily News on a speech that Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center gave at Roanoke College. Bowling said, "One interesting note was an admission by Dees himself that the Save the SCV contingent was in communication with him and also sent him money. He actually said that during his lecture."

Save the SCV began investigating the incident and published our initial findings on this website which refuted Bowling’s allegations ("Morris Dees Said What?") along with our challenge to Bowling to prove his accusation. Since our initial response there have been several other developments:

1.) Ms. Alicia Dean of WSLS (the second television station that carried the Dees speech as a news story) has told Save the SCV that their station’s video tape of the speech fails to confirm Bowling’s allegations concerning Save the SCV;

2.) Save the SCV has learned that Roanoke College has a DVD of the Dees speech. We have made arrangements to view it;

3.) Commander Bowling failed to respond to our challenge and instead kicked it "up-stairs" to CIC Wilson and Kirk Lyons; and

4.) CIC Wilson publicized his own version of the Dees comments.

It took CIC Wilson and Kirk Lyons nearly three weeks to twist the truth and devise a new version of the Roanoke College incident. We apparently now have the SCV leadership’s official version of who said what and when. Wilson’s rendition of the incident varies significantly from Bowling’s account.

CIC Wilson publicized his report in an email message that was sent to approximately three thousand SCV members. Wilson says that Dees made no mention of Save the SCV either during his speech or afterward, that Dees said "certain members of the SCV were financially supporting the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center;" and that one SCV member had given the SPLC a "generous check." Wilson also does not confirm Bowling’s accusation that Save the SCV had been "in communication" with Dees.

Wilson states that after the lecture was over he and some unidentified members of the audience approached Dees to ask questions. When asked who sent the "generous check," Dees supposedly answered, "Charles....", and then said that he could not "recall the last name," according to Wilson. Curiously, Bowling never mentioned the name "Charles" in his version of the incident. CIC Wilson’s statement carefully avoids civil court action by only implying that "Charles" is Charles Hawks.

So now, three weeks after Bowling’s supposed eye-witness account of the Roanoke speech we are presented a significantly different version being reported by CIC Wilson: a version in which many of Dees’ remarks were supposedly made directly to Wilson, after the lecture, with unnamed others present. (Attorney Kirk Lyons must have been troubled that Bowling’s version of the incident included five-hundred Roanoke College students as witnesses.) We are left to conclude that either Bowling is lying, Wilson is lying, or they both are.

We at Save the SCV have no doubt that Wilson’s toned-down version of the Roanoke incident will replace Bowling’s ill-conceived attempt to smear Save the SCV with the much dreaded "you support the SPLC" paint-brush. In refuting Bowling’s version of the incident, Wilson and Lyons are obviously willing to publicly sacrifice Division Commander Bowling’s credibility.

CIC Wilson and his faction are now using the revised version of the incident to imply that Save the SCV and Charles Hawks support the Southern Poverty Law Center in its supposed efforts to destroy the SCV. That implied allegation is a lie. If there are any SCV members sending money to the SPLC, Save the SCV‘s advice to them is the same as to those who are sending money to Kirk Lyons: Your money would be better spent in educating today’s youth about the Confederate soldier and the world in which he lived.

Beyond the irreconcilable contradictions between the Bowling and the Wilson/Lyons accounts are the factual considerations of these allegations:

1.) Charles Hawks has said that he never sent any money to the SPLC or to Morris Dees.

2.) Save the SCV has never sent any money to the SPLC or to Morris Dees.

3.) If a "generous check" was written to the SPLC by an SCV member there are financial records that would prove it. (Again, we challenge anyone to prove that Save the SCV has donated money to the Southern Poverty Law Center.) But finding the truth in this controversy is not the CIC’s goal. Ron Wilson’s goal has always been to intensify SPLC-related finger-pointing and conflict within the SCV while he and Kirk Lyons deliver the SCV’s membership and assets to the neo-secessionist movement.

The "supporters of the SPLC" witch-hunt that the Wilson/Lyons faction and their partners at the League of the South have endlessly promoted is nothing more than an attempt to destroy their opposition. These extremists are modern political hacks who are quietly working to take-over the SCV from the top down. They keep the SCV membership occupied in disemboweling itself, looking for SPLC "moles" and accusing each other of disloyalty. Remember, "divide and conquer" is the oldest trick in the book.

Wilson’s smear strategy will only keep working as long as the rank-and-file of the SCV believe that hating the media, the SPLC, liberals, and whoever else Wilson points them at is more important than defending the history of the Confederate soldier. We, the SCV membership, must choose. Which is more important: Honoring our ancestors for their service in their time or using their brave history to promote the LoS/Kirk Lyons’ agenda? The focal-point of this controversy is not the Southern Poverty Law Center. This fight is not even about the SCV. It’s about the Confederate soldier.

Our current leadership is not fulfilling the SCV’s promise to the Confederate veterans. We promised to protect and defend their image, their story, and their record. We promised to tell the truth about what they did in their time.

Confederate veterans did not bequeath their record to us to use as we see fit for our own modern political purposes. They did not entrust their flags to us only to have them stolen by the KKK and NAACP; nor to be recycled as sweat-bands, dog collars, and beach towels; nor even to be used as League of the South recruiting posters.

Mr. Wilson, let's discuss the real issues:

1.) How you have run rough-shod over the SCV constitution;

2.) How you have indefinitely suspended long-time honorable SCV members and officers for merely opposing your regime, without specific charges or evidence;

3.) How you have failed to discharge your own duties under the SCV constitution;

4.) How you have refused to give a full accounting of the Heritage Defense monies;

5.) How you have encouraged your thugs to intimidate your opposition and threaten them with physical violence;

6.) How you have lied and misled the membership in order to deliver the SCV into the hands of modern-day secessionists; and

7.) How you have tried to conceal your plans and actions from the membership and the public through secret meetings, purges, and gag orders.

CIC Wilson, return the SCV to its constitutional mission of honoring the Confederate soldier and defending his record.