JACKSON, Miss. — A fight is brewing over a proposed Mississippi specialty license plate that would honor an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans says it wants to sponsor five state-issued license plates to commemorate the 150th anniversary of what it calls the "War Between the States."
The group wants the 2014 plate to feature Civil War Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who's revered by some as a military genius and reviled by others for leading the 1864 massacre of black Union troops at Fort Pillow, Tenn.
Forrest was a Klan grand wizard in his native Tennessee after the war.
State NAACP president Derrick Johnson says Mississippi shouldn't honor a man who was an early leader of a terrorist group.