Clergy decry Tancredo appearance
M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News
Published September 15, 2006 at midnight
Minority religious leaders denounced Rep. Tom Tancredo on Thursday for his appearance last weekend before a group in South Carolina that included neo-Confederates.
The Greater Metro Denver Ministerial Alliance and the Latino clergy group Confianza said they were outraged that Tancredo spoke at an event Saturday at the South Carolina State Museum where the Confederate flag reportedly was on the podium and Tancredo joined the crowd in singing the Southern anthem Dixie.
The controversy began when an anti-racism group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, posted an online article calling the gathering a "hate-group event."
The law center claimed the gathering was "hosted" by the South Carolina chapter of the League of the South, a Southern nationalist group.
Although the league had posted an invitation to its members saying Tancredo was "our guest" at the event, it was officially sponsored by an unrelated conservative group, Americans Have Had Enough, which shares the Colorado congressman's views on illegal immigration.
Tancredo spokesman Carlos Espinosa has accused the law center of intentionally fabricating facts to discredit the congressman. He acknowledged that there were Confederate flags in the room and said Tancredo joined in singing Dixie.
But, Espinosa said earlier this week, "These aren't racist people who spew out hate. These are just people remembering and cherishing their past."
That comment angered the Rev. Steven Dewberry of New Horizon Christian Community Ministries in Denver.
"To join in singing Dixie, (and) to walk into a room that has a huge Confederate flag in it, that should have been his notice to walk out," Dewberry said Thursday.
"Their past is our anguish, our slavery, our lynchings. It breaks our heart to think we still have some white brothers and sisters in (Tancredo's) district that agree with this wild behavior of his."
Dewberry said the coalition does not plan to let the issue go away and he said he has spoken to the Rev. Jesse Jackson about the issue.
Espinosa said Tancredo had no comment Thursday.
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