Confederates in the courtroom

The Lost Cause myth is as much about entitlement as racism.

Jefferson Griffin dressed in a Confederate uniform at a fraternity party, circa 2001.

A photo has surfaced of Jefferson Griffin wearing a Confederate uniform when he was in college. Like the rebels he admired, Griffin refuses to accept his loss in the North Carolina Supreme Court case he’s contesting. And like those losers, he believes he can change history if he just holds out long enough.

Griffin is a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity, an order that venerates the Myth of the Old South. They consider Confederate General Robert E. Lee to be their spiritual founder. For years, they held Old South balls where members dressed in Confederate regalia and women dressed in period dresses. The photo of Griffin is from one of those events.

Griffin says his cosplay was a mistake and that he recognizes that it was inappropriate. In a statement, he said, “Since then, I have grown, learned, and dedicated myself to values that promote unity, inclusivity, and respect for all people.”

Except voters. Especially Black ones. He still doesn’t seem to respect them. He’s trying to strip their votes away from them. While White voters made up almost 64% of the electorate, they make up only about 34% of the ballots Griffin is trying to disqualify.

People certainly change over time. Their views mature and a lot of people overcome their prejudices and their upbringings. Griffin has not shown any evidence of that maturity until he was confronted with the photo. Instead, he’s joined the effort to make voting more difficult and restrictive by targeting certain people for disenfranchisement, a mainstay tactic of the Jim Crow South.

While reverence for the Confederacy is usually associated with White Supremacy, it’s more than that. It’s a story about power and entitlement without accountability. Jefferson Griffin comes from a tradition deeply ingrained in the South, particularly in rural areas where a landed gentry and the legal community conspired to reverse, as much as possible, the gains for equality and justice won in the Civil War.

After the Civil War, the perpetrators of the rebellion were never held accountable and the victims of the unjust system never received restitution. Thirty-five years after the end of the war, the descendants of secessionists stripped voting rights and power from poor people, both Black and White, while fomenting racial division to maintain control of society. They imposed a reign of terror to suppress African Americans and denied them equal justice under the law. Using legislative strategies and legal maneuvers, they fought off civil rights and voting rights to rule over the South until the 1960s. They never paid a price for their sins.

In the years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, those segregationists insulated themselves from the greater community. They built exclusive networks in neighborhoods, schools, country clubs, and social organizations like fraternities and sororities. They perpetuated the Myth of the Old South and saw themselves as under attack by a government and culture that wanted to take their money to fund public schools, transportation, and parks. Politically, they abandoned the Democratic Party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ for a Republican Party that looked the other way at their racism, but celebrated their anti-tax, anti-government sentiments.

The unreconstructed Neo-Confederates like Jefferson Griffin who still held onto the myths of the Lost Cause into the 21st century saw themselves as rebels. They were pushing back against a broader culture that wanted to expose the sins of the past and condemn the regalia of the Confederacy that they revered. They proudly thumbed their noses by dressing up in Confederate garb and flying the battle flag. The seeds of MAGA resentment found fertile ground among these traditionalists.

Over the next two decades, they lost the battle over their symbols as the country reckoned with the sins of the past. They didn’t lose their sense of entitlement or resistance to accountability. They embraced the illiberal tactics that kept populists in power during the height of Jim Crow to protect the power that they won in the wave election in 2010. They used gerrymandering and voter suppression to ensure electorates favorable to Republicans.

Today, Jefferson Griffin may have abandoned the racism implied in proudly wearing the uniform of the Confederacy. Only he knows for sure, but he clearly has not abandoned the entitlement that accompanied White Supremacy. He’s not only willing to make voting more difficult for people who may share different values, he’s trying to strip votes from people who opposed his candidacy.

Griffin is what happens when people are not held accountable. The strain of illiberalism and autocracy that divided our nation in a bloody civil war still exists today, in part, because almost no leaders of the rebellion were ever punished for their actions. Confederate leaders went on to hold power again in the aftermath of Reconstruction. Their children implemented Jim Crow and held power for almost 75 years by denying certain citizens the unalienable rights endowed by their Creator.

Jefferson Griffin may not wear a Confederate uniform again, but he still holds the beliefs embodied by the ideological descendants of the people who wore it originally.