The organization was formed in 1994 by Michael Hill and others, including attorney Jack Kershaw. The League of the South was named in reference to the League of United Southerners, a group organized in 1858 to shape Southern public opinion and the Lega Nord, a very successful populist movement in Northern Italy from which the group took inspiration. The LOS' first meeting was represented with a group of 40 men, 28 of whom formed an organization then known as The Southern League. The name was changed to The League of the South in 1996 in order to avoid confusion with the Southern League of Minor League Baseball. Among the early members were Southern professors, including president Michael Hill. Hill was a British history professor and specialist in Celtic history at Stillman College, a historically black school in Tuscaloosa. However, Hill has since left his teaching position. In 2000, the group supported Pat Buchanan and the Reform Party. In the course of time, the group's views became more extreme and founding members Grady McWhiney and Forrest McDonald had denounced Michael Hill's leadership and left the organization by 2004. Since 2007, The League's main publication has been The Free Magnolia, a quarterly tabloid.
Views
The League has been described as using "Celtic" mythology "belligerently against what is perceived as a politically correct celebration of multicultural Southern diversity". The group believes that the Southern United States should be an independent country ruled by white men. In 2001 they asked US congress to pay $5 billion in reparations for "property" which was taken or destroyed by Union forces during the Civil War. The group's legal counsel Jack Kershaw said their proposal included paying reparations to African-Americans due to the supposed negative effect the end of slavery had on their ancestors: "Blacks were better off in antebellum times in the South than they were anywhere else. They lost a lot too when that lifestyle was destroyed."
Culture
The League defines Southern culture as profoundly Christian and anti-abortion. The League describes Southern Culture as being inherently Anglo-Celtic in nature, and they believe the South's core Anglo-Celtic culture should be preserved. According to the League, the South has had a Marxist and egalitarian society "impressed upon it". The League's Core Beliefs Statement advocates the stigmatization of "perversity and all that seeks to undermine marriage and the family."
Politics
The League believes that what it calls "the Southern people" have the right to secede from the United States, and that they "must throw off the yoke of imperial oppression". The League promotes a Southern Confederation of sovereign, independent States. The League favors strictly limited immigration, opposes standing armies and any regulation whatsoever of firearms. This proposed independent nation is described by League publications as part of a process to convince "the Southern people" that they have a unique identity. The League focuses on recruiting and encouraging "cultural secession". In November 2006 its representatives attended the First North American Secessionist Convention of secessionists from a different parts of the country. In October 2007 it co-hosted the Second North American Secessionist Convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In 2015, the group announced it would be holding an event celebrating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, while honoring John Wilkes Booth as a hero. On April 11, 2015, it was organized by the vice chairman of the Maryland-Virginia chapter of the League, Shane Long. The LOS's main Facebook page put it bluntly: "Join us in April to celebrate the great accomplishment of John Wilkes Booth. He knew a man who needed killing when he saw him!" The League has attempted to form paramilitary groups on more than one occasion. The League of the South is opposed to fiat currency, personal income taxation, central banking, property taxes and most state regulation of business. The League supports sales taxes and user fees.
Designation as hate group
In the summer of 2000, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the League of the South as a hate group, citing the group's "academic veneer" of revisionist history and calls for succession. Hill dismissed the designation as politically motivated. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the League of the South is a white supremacist group which promotes racism and anti-Semitism through events held with other white supremacist groups. The League of the South joined the Nationalist Front, a loose coalition of neo-Nazis and other white supremacists, in 2017.
