Letter written to the Mobile, Alabama churches

Picture of gun and bullets from Dylann Roof's website.

Please see earlier posts with the label "violence". There is agoing to be a series of posts.

I wrote a letter to a great many churches in Mobile, Alabama. This is the general letter which I sent to all the churches. I did additional letters to the LGBT, Unitarians, and synagogues.

If the links suddenly vanish because the Sons of Confederate Veterans have pulled things, I had the Internet Archive archive them.

                                                                                    February 26, 2019

                                                                                    Edward H. Sebesta

                                                                                   

                                                                                    edwardsebesta@gmail.com

Address of church here. 

Dear XXXXX l:

Please find enclosed a commentary about violence and the neo-Confederate movement publish by the Dallas Morning News (DMN) in 2017. It is also online https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2017/08/17/confederate-heritage-root-recent-tragedies-troubles.

I am writing you out of concern for the safety of your church members. I am sure you are aware of the massacre in Charleston in 2015. I am a researcher of the neo-Confederate movement. I have been published by two university presses and peer-reviewed academic journals, the last one at Cambridge Univ. I was also awarded the Spirit of Freedom medal by the African American Civil War Museum in D.C. I have reason to be concerned.

I am bringing this to your attention since the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is having their national convention in Mobile, Alabama July 10-13, 2019. The webpage for the reunion is:  https://www.scvsemmes.org/2019-scv-reunion.html.

In Charleston Dylann Roof wasn’t a member of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), but it was the inflammatory material put out by the CCC that led to his committing the massacre. Similarly, I don’t think it is likely that a member of the SCV is going to commit a massacre, the SCV has not called for violence against any group. However, I think that material, that I think are angry or inflammatory materials, which the SCV has had a hand in making more available could possible led someone to commit a violent act.

Additionally, as Confederate monuments come down across the nation I sense that the neo-Confederates are becoming more enraged as their world is crumbling. I also see increasing radicalization of the SCV year after year.  Black Commentator published in an article by myself, “The Racism and Extremism” of the SCV in 2013. Yet, as extremist  as they were then, I think they have become more extreme.

http://www.blackcommentator.com/526/526_confederacy_sebesta_guest_share.html

The most recent development is the appointment of Walter Donald Kennedy to head of the national “Heritage” defense for the SCV. He, along with his brother, have a web page http://www.kennedytwins.com/ where you can purchase books, such as “Rekilling Lincoln.” He is a former board member of the League of the South.

It could be asked why this particular time period of the reunion should be of concern more than any other time. I think it is a concern because the SCV reunion in Mobile, AL will bring a lot of focus to controversy over the Confederacy to the Mobile area. Further, if some prominent monument goes down, the SCV leadership will be speaking from Mobile, Alabama. If Alabama changes its laws on monuments, the SCV leadership will be speaking from Mobile, Alabama.

In particular I wish to especially alert certain religious groups. African American churches because it was an African American church where a massacre occurred in Charleston. Other groups are Unitarians, Muslims, and Jewish people. The Unitarians have been denounced in neo-Confederate writing for some time. I don’t suppose it should be surprising that Islam has been an object of hostile writing.  I will provide information about their special animosity against these groups online at https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/.

For Jewish people, the SCV offering for sale the book, “The South Under Siege,” is of special concern. The civil rights movement is held to be a Jewish conspiracy in and Northern Jews are called the South’s “deadliest enemy” in this book. The Black Commentator article details some of this.

I don’t want to create the impression because I mention some religious groups, others are safe. Walter Donald Kennedy and other neo-Confederate groups feel betrayed by the Southern Baptist Conference and have expressed anger in their writings. I think it would be wrong to think that those who commit these massacres are predictable.

Now there hasn’t been a massacre at any SCV reunion ever, but there hadn’t been any massacres from people reading the CCC online material until 2015. As to what should be done, I am not a security expert. I strongly suggest that churches contact those who have expertise in this field.  Feel free to contact me by email for more information about the SCV and the neo-Confederate movement. I will be putting information online at https://mobileanticonfederate.blogspot.com/.

Additionally, I will be sending out two more mailings of matters I think are of concern to Mobile churches shortly, but I thought I should start out with the issue of security first.

                                                                                    Sincerely Yours,

                                                                                    Edward H. Sebesta

P.S. Please share this information with other churches. I compiled my list of churches to write to from Google maps and I am sure I must have missed some.