S.C. official sues NAACP, white-pride group over rest-stop protests

By The Associated Press

03.19.02

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon filed a lawsuit yesterday against the NAACP and a white-pride group over their use of state rest stops and welcome centers for competing demonstrations.

"We are asking the court to declare that the activities these two groups are now engaged in violates state and federal law regulating permissible activities at interstate rest stops and welcome centers," Condon said.

Condon also is asking the state court to order the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the European-American Unity Rights Organization to pick up the costs for state police placed at visitors' centers the past three weekends.

Since the first weekend this month, the NAACP has staged "border patrol" protests at welcome centers on South Carolina's borders to discourage motorists from spending money while traveling through the state. It is the latest tactic in the group's 2-year-old boycott of the state over its display of the Confederate flag on Statehouse grounds.

A week after the NAACP began the border patrols, a New Orleans-based white-rights group called EURO held what organizers described as "welcome patrols" in opposition to the NAACP protests. EURO is affiliated with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

Dwight James, state executive director for the NAACP, said he had not been served with court papers and would not respond to the lawsuit's specifics.

"Clearly we disagree with the attorney general," James said.

He said the NAACP maintains that "our activities are permissible under the law and protected by the right to free speech. And we have every intention of continuing our activities, peaceful protests, to convey our message to those visiting South Carolina."

EURO national director Vincent Breeding said yesterday that his group wasn't protesting anything during its March 9 rallies and there are no plans for more events. "It was just a display of Southern hospitality," he said.

Condon had warned both groups that the demonstrations were illegal and threatened to sue if they went ahead with their plans.

Yesterday, the attorney general cited federal rules limiting activities at federally funded welcome centers.

Signs posted at the centers say they are "for the convenience of motorists" and "not to be used for camping, overnight parking, sports, meetings or other group activities"

Condon, who is running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, blamed Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges for the controversy. Condon said Hodges should have done more to stop the demonstrations that could open the state's rest areas to a variety of protests.

While the governor "strongly disagrees with the NAACP" on the boycott, Condon is capitalizing on those efforts and fanning media attention, said Hodges' spokesman Jay Reiff. If Condon would "stop picking at this scab, it would go away," Reiff said.

Condon said the state costs for police at the rest areas has "got to be hundreds of thousands of dollars." But Reiff said Condon is wasting more money with the lawsuit than would ever be repaid.

Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Sherri Iacobelli would not disclose detailed costs but said they were far less than hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Iacobelli also noted that DPS officials had checked into the legality of the demonstrations and came up with a different answer. "There is nothing that we see that would restrict them from being there," she said.

This past weekend, NAACP supporters marched and picketed at the NCAA basketball tournament regionals in Greenville. They also planned to picket at the women's basketball NCAA regionals in Columbia last night.

The NAACP launched a boycott of the state in January 2000 to pressure the state to remove Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome and the Legislature's chambers. The flag was removed in July 2000 then raised in front of the Statehouse at a nearby monument to Confederate dead. The NAACP wants the banner off the grounds and in a museum.

Update

S.C. to drop lawsuit over rest-stop protests
State attorney general says suit against NAACP, white-pride group would cost the state money on litigation that no longer is necessary.  09.06.02

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