“This is about erasing us,” said Jimmy, a representative of the League of the South who refused to give his last name. “This is about our First Amendment rights, our Second Amendment rights — every amendment you’ve got.” [...]

“We’re not racists. We’re not out here fighting for slavery,” said Steve Cook, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member from Atlanta. [...]

Across the parking lot, Allan Croft, a bearded Dalton resident, debated Southern history with a group of young black men.

“Yeah, we didn’t want our daughters to marry you and we didn’t want our children to go to school with you,” he said. “But you’ve got to realize something, your parents didn’t want it, either.”

Croft blamed integration and the civil rights movement on “Communist Jews” and said accused Charleston shooter Dylann Roof “should have went to the synagogue, because that’s the enemy of all of us.”