Pres '12

Barbour Refuses To Denounce Proposed License Plates Honoring KKK Founder

Eric Kleefeld | February 15, 2011, 10:56PM

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS)

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), a potential presidential candidate, appears to have marked a line in the sand for an expected presidential run sure to be dogged by the politics of race and the legacy of the Civil Rights Era in his state. Asked by reporters today in Jackson, Mississippi, Barbour not only refused to denounce efforts by some to create a license plate honoring Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. He said he was out of the denouncing business altogether.

"I don't go around denouncing people," said Barbour, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports. "That's not going to happen. I don't even denounce the news media."

Barbour also added: "I know there's not a chance it'll become law."

Forrest was a slave trader before the Civil War, who became known during the war for his significant innovations in military strategy -- and also, the paper notes, for leading a massacre of captured black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tennessee. He founded the Ku Klux Klan after the war, but later left the organization.

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Robert Byrd

Bill Clinton: Byrd Spent 'Rest Of His Life' Making Up For KKK Association (VIDEO)

Christina Bellantoni | July 2, 2010, 2:20PM

clinton at byrd's funeral

Former President Bill Clinton referenced the late Sen. Robert Byrd's membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young man during his eulogy for the longtime senator this afternoon in West Virginia. Clinton was the only speaker to reference this dark chapter of Byrd's history, which has been a topic of much discussion over the years.

Many of Byrd's colleagues have said that Byrd learned from the experience and that he championed civil rights later, and took pride in endorsing Barack Obama in his bid to become the nation's first black president.

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