When reached by WSFA, Dismukes reiterated that he had not been thinking about Lewis’s death at the time or the connection between Forrest and the KKK. But the lawmaker — who is a chaplain for the Prattville Dragoons, a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans — attributed the intense blowback he’s facing to “anti-Southern sentiment” amid the country’s ongoing racial reckoning.
“I guess, with the anti-Southern sentiment and all, and the things that we have going on in the world today, there’s a lot of people that are seeming to be more and more offended,” he
told the news station. “We live in a time where we literally are going through cancel culture from all different areas and people are even more sensitive on different issues and different subjects. This was just one of those times that it didn’t quite go the way I expected, and I never intended to bring hurt to anyone, especially my own family with everything that’s been said.”