J.D.R. Hawkins

Concerned Citizens Need Your Help

I just received an email from Lee Millar, who is the spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Memphis, Tennessee. The ongoing conflict in regard to renaming historical parks in the city, namely Forrest Park, Confederate Park, and Jefferson Davis Park, have been under assault by the Memphis city council. If you can, please support this worthy cause. It is essential that we preserve our heritage. Otherwise, everything is game for political correctness.

April 6, 2014

Dear Fellow Southerners,

We desperately need your support and financial help in our campaign to save our three historic parks in Memphis: Forrest Park, Jefferson Davis Park, and Confederate Park. As you may be aware, we have been in the historical fight with the city of Memphis over their unlawful attack on the history of this city – Southern history, Confederate history, and American history.  The city’s theft of an approved monument commemorating Forrest Park, and the foolish, unwarranted and hateful act of attempting to rename our parks show just how out of touch the city council and the mayor’s office is with the needs and desires of the city’s residents and the patriots of America.  The city spitefully thumbed their noses at the people who attended the council meetings and in an act meant to defy the state of Tennessee and wishes of her own people, passed their vile and illegal resolutions to erase American history.

Yet the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Citizens To Save Our Parks have thus far persevered. We have met the enemy and fought him with the zeal and courage your ancestors would have been proud of.  In the streets, in the halls of government, and in the court of law, in the media and across the globe, we have taken the fight to the unlawful tyrants and brought them to bay. Furthermore, we have done this with honor, integrity, sacrifice, and honesty that are a credit to all Southerners everywhere and especially to your organization.  The SCV camps & heritage preservation groups all across this country and around the world have watched our efforts and are proud of the stand we have taken.  We have a reputation as tenacious fighters!  Fear is not in our vocabulary!  Imagine the talk at city hall when we all said “Enough!  We will not stand by and endure this any longer!  The city has broken its own laws and the government acted as rulers and tyrants!  For our ancestors, for all American fighting men and women and for future generations, we stand in defiance and will not back down!”  They didn’t know what hit them!  They scrambled like burglars caught in the act trying to enact what they knew, or should have known, was illegal to start with, and despicable and unethical in the extreme.  We have won the first two court hearings, but our legal costs have mounted into the tens of thousands of dollars to fight for these parks.

The fight with these thieves and despots is not over, but by our steadfast attention to our duty we have already won!  We can hold our head high and truthfully say that we held true to the charge. When your grandchildren’s children go to Forrest Park, Confederate Park, and Jefferson Davis Park they will ask about how these parks came to be.  And their parents will lift up their heads and say: “Your great grandparents fought to preserve this history for you and your children.  When you see these parks, when you read their names, when you touch the monuments and the weapons they placed here.

REMEMBER THEM!  THEY FOUGHT FOR THE TRUTH!  THEY FOUGHT FOR ALL THAT IS RIGHT IN AMERICA! THEY FOUGHT FOR THE RIGHT TO HOLD COURAGE AND HONOR ABOVE ALL ELSE!

Please join us in this fight of a lifetime to save our history.  Join the Citizens to Save Our Parks (no dues).  And please send a contribution — $100, $500, or $1000, or anything – to our Parks Defense Fund so that we may see this to victory.  You can also easily make a donation through PayPal at the Citizens website.http://www.citizenstosaveourparks.org/

CTSOP, PO Box 241875, Memphis, TN   38124

In the future, when people ask; “Did you fight to keep your Confederate History? ”You can tell them like true Southerners, and proudly, “We have done so!” Thank you.Lee Millar, spokesman, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Memphis