An Alabama state legislator who delivered an invocation at a birthday celebration for Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general who was the first great wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has resigned from the church where he is pastor, officials said Thursday.
Representative Will Dismukes, of Prattville, retired from Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, where he was a bi-vocational pastor, according to Mel Johnson, senior mission strategist for the church association.
Dismukes said on Facebook on Thursday that he resigned “not at the request of the church, but by his own choice” because he did not want Pleasant Hill to be rejected, NBC affiliate WSFA reported. The post did not appear on the Dismukes page on Thursday night.
Dismukes did not respond to requests for comment.
Dismukes has faced withering criticism for her appearance at Saturday’s annual event at “Fort Dixie,” the private home of a Selma woman, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“I had a great time at Fort Dixie speaking and giving the invocation for Nathan Bedford Forrest’s annual birthday celebration,” he wrote in a Facebook post that was later removed, according to WFSA. “It is always a good time and some will surely eat well!”
Dismukes’ appearance occurred the day before the body of civil rights icon Representative John Lewis was transported across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, where he was nearly killed 55 years ago during a voting rights march.
On Monday, Alabama Republican Party Chairman Terry Lathan called Dismukes’ actions “deeply offensive.”
“It is one thing to honor one’s southern heritage, however it is an entirely different matter to specifically commemorate the leader of an organization with an undisputed history of inconceivable actions and atrocities towards African Americans,” he said in a statement.
“Today’s Alabama was in full honorable display as we paid a humble tribute this weekend to the life of Congressman John Lewis,” added Lathan. “That is the Alabama that we are proud of: showing the nation and the world that we are one in the common goals of equality for all of our citizens.”
In an interview with WFSA on Monday, Dismukes blamed the backlash on “anti-southern sentiment.”
“It was not a kind of shot at the death of Representative John Lewis,” Dismukes said. “I mean it didn’t even cross my mind, I was literally just reflecting on the events of the previous day and it was taken in a completely different way that I didn’t exactly see it coming and I took responsibility for that.”
He told the station that he has no plans to resign from the state Legislature.
