May 28, 2000: Kirk Lyons, CAUSE veterans prominent in South Carolina Confederate flag controversy:

Former CAUSE Foundation (Canada, Australia, United States, South African, Europe, a law firm for "white racialists" around the world) incorporators and now with the Southern Legal Resource Center (SLRC), Kirk Lyons and Neil Payne have been prominent in the South Carolina controversy over flying the Confederate flag over the S.C. Statehouse.

In a January 9, 2000 Associated Press photograph of the rally to keep the Confederate flag flying, Kirk Lyons and Neil Payne can be seen on the speakers podium behind S.C. Senator Arthur Ravenel who is speaking. (Note: In the AP photo, SLRC "Chairman" H.K. Edgerton is holding the flag on the podium behind Senator Ravenel. Behind Edgerton's left shoulder is Kirk Lyons in the boller hat; behind Edgerton's right should is Lyons' brother-in-law and CAUSE Incorporator Neill Payne in the cowboy hat.)

Lyons and Payne have also been associated with SLRC demonstrations to protest the NAACP boycott of S.C. at NAACP offices in Asheville, NC, Atlanta, GA, Greensboro, NC, and Columbia, SC. Those demonstrations have featured SLRC "Chairman" H.K. Edgerton.

The association of Kirk Lyons with the Confederate flag proponents in South Carolina raises serious questions about the "heritage not hate" theme proponents have put forward for keeping the Confederate flag flying. Kirk Lyons was named in 1991 one of the top ten leaders in the national white supremacy movement by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

(Note: In May 2000, the S.C. legislature passed and the Governor signed a law removing the Confederate flag from the Statehouse dome July 1, 2000 and moving it to a new Confederate monument on the Statehouse grounds. The NAACP has stated that the flag is still too prominent and the boycott of S.C. tourism will remain in effect.)