Sebesta makes a living as an engineer, but for the past 10 years he has devoted his spare time to monitoring the Neo-Confederate movement. He publishes his findings in articles for scholarly journals, and provided research to the Southern Poverty Law Center for its report on racism within the Neo-Confederate groups The League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizens.

  Sebesta describes the Neo-Confederate movement’s principles in this way: "They want to roll the clock back to 1850. They’re against civil rights. Against modern environmentalism and public schools. Against feminism. They want to repeal the 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote." He identifies Pelican Publishing as "the central publishing house of the Neo-Confederate movement. Without new books, a new movement will not go very far. And Pelican places these books all over the country."

  The two books Sebesta focuses on are the Pelican titles The South was Right! and Southern by the Grace of God. "Having these books published by Pelican really facilitated getting the Neo-Confederate movement started," he says. "These are the core books that are used by the leaders of the movement to persuade people to join them. And Pelican is a major publisher. So, now Barnes and Noble has The South Was Right!, which first came out as a self-published book. Before Pelican picked it up and re-issued it, I doubt Barnes and Noble would have it."

  Sebesta finds these Pelican titles troubling because they represent what he calls the new "polite racist." "I like to track the chains of the intellectual groups. They’re not outwardly racist. They’re educated and articulate. And they’re very charming and sweet. They would never spit at the table or anything. So it’s harder to deal with them because they’re always calculating their public image."

  A close reading of the books, however, reveals a far more disturbing agenda, Sebesta says. "You don’t publish a book like Southern by the Grace of God and then come and tell me you’re not racist. Grissom talks about the Klan as a great public interest group, and the necessity of anti-black violence during Reconstruction. The South Was Right castigates the Voting Rights Act as a fraud."

  Garry Boulard warns against making such links between published books and racism. Boulard is a Pelican-published author whose books include Huey Long Invades New Orleans: The Siege of a City, 1934-36, which Pelican published in 1998. He wants to make clear up front where he stands in the political spectrum: "I voted for Gore," he says as a preamble to his comments about Pelican, and it’s an admission that puts him as far away as possible, ideologically speaking, from Milburn Calhoun. "The first time I looked at the Pelican catalogue, I saw the book The South Was Right!," Boulard continues. "Now, I’m from Michigan. I revered Lincoln. So, I thought, No! The South was wrong!"

  Yet, Boulard found that he and his publisher have common ground in their interest in the history of the South. Boulard was delighted that he didn’t have to explain to Calhoun who Huey Long was. By contrast, a New York publisher never got it, Boulard says.

  Boulard sees Calhoun as someone who’s unafraid to express a minority point of view. "He cares more about his ideology than making money, which is very unusual among publishers. It is just so politically incorrect for Pelican to do what it’s doing because it seems we have entered a world where if you’re not politically correct, you’re branded a racist.

  "And Pelican is just so far from that kind of thinking," says Boulard. "People just don’t make those historical distinctions. It is possible to say the Confederacy was right and still be against racism. But I had to live down here for a while in order to learn that."

  Even as he acknowledges that Southerners have a right to honor the Confederacy, Boulard also points out a major problem in Neo-Confederate literature: how to polish up the Confederacy’s reputation without seeming to gloss over the issue of slavery. "There is always that duality of the issue of slavery," he says. "Southerners can say that they have a right to form their own country. And say to the North, ‘You can’t force the yoke of tyranny onto our necks.’ But then you have to look at how the South did exactly that to black people. And I think that duality to this day goes unaddressed."

  Denise McConduit is another writer whose work is published by Pelican. McConduit, who is African American, wrote the children’s book D.J. and the Zulu Parade, about a young boy’s first view of the historically black krewe. McConduit says she was not aware of Pelican’s interest in publishing Neo-Confederate books when she first submitted her manuscript. It was only after Pelican had accepted her work that she took a closer look at the catalogue. "As a black writer, I feel disappointed. Being African American, you learn to cope with a lot of stuff. But I never expected this."

  McConduit adds that she has been very happy with Pelican’s treatment of her and her books. In her limited personal dealings with Calhoun, she found him to be most cordial. However, she adds, she has not read the books in question. "But because of the Confederate flag on the cover, when you see that, you think, ‘I don’t want to read that.’"

In 1955, long before Calhoun bought the company, Pelican Publishing came out with its landmark Neo-Confederate book. Stuart Landry, who founded Pelican in 1926 and ran it for 40 years, wrote The Battle of Liberty Place: The Overthrow of Carpet-bag Rule in New Orleans, a book – still in print – that details the fight that took place in New Orleans between members of the bi-racial Reconstruction government and a white militia composed of former Confederate soldiers.

  Tulane University professor Lawrence Powell, author of Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke’s Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press), calls Landry’s The Battle of Liberty Place "that scandalous book Pelican brought out in the ’50s."

  Continues Powell: "It was propaganda, using history to defend segregation and a racial status quo. … Look, I teach the Civil War and Reconstruction history, and it is true that slavery was the cause of the war. Now, it is not necessarily an anti-black stance for Southerners to see themselves as the underdog, scorned by Yankees, and to be proud of their forefathers who fought in the war. But at the very least that is insensitive to how black people might see this. And insensitive to how black people might look on the symbol of the Confederate flag. Because the people who fought to preserve that symbol, brought on the fighting to save slavery. Of course it’s insulting."

  The Neo-Confederate books pose other challenges – including marketing. Most local independent bookstores don’t carry the titles. When asked why, store owners answer by saying they respect and like Milburn Calhoun, and they do not think he is a racist. But the question remains: Why don’t you carry these books of his? "They’re too partisan, not really a balanced history," says one owner, who asked not to be identified by name. Another owner points to the Confederate flag’s adoption as a symbol for white supremacist groups. For Civil War history, these owners say they go for Shelby Foote’s series, explaining politely that Foote’s books have a national reputation, and their customers never ask for Calhoun’s Neo-Confederate books anyway. When they deal with Pelican, they say, they prefer to stock up on its Cajun Christmas books instead.

  Dave Brewington of DeVille Books does carry Calhoun’s Neo-Confederate books, but he refers to them as "those goofy books" in the "re-writing history category." However, he adds, "that silly stuff sells," so he thinks Calhoun is smart to publish them.

  "Look, I am not knocking the Doc’s views; he’s a good guy, but the books are goofy," Brewington elaborates. "The Doc is a deep Southerner, and to a deep Southerner, the war is still going on. Me? I’m from Brooklyn. ’Nuff said."

  So Calhoun of Louisiana has an ally in Brewington of Brooklyn. Brewington – who also carries other controversial titles, such as The Anarchist’s Handbook, which includes directions for constructing bombs – says that if he turned down Calhoun’s Neo-Confederate books because he doesn’t agree with the content, it would be the equivalent of censorship.

  Calhoun’s reaction to news of his Neo-Confederate books’ lack of popularity among most local bookstore owners is to smile indulgently. "New Orleans has always been a separate country. I’ve been here 15 years, and I still feel like an outsider," he says. "The rise of the bookstore chains helped us. The independent stores won’t carry our books. But I know customers want our books because they sell very well everywhere else."

  Calls to Borders Books and Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Metairie confirm that The South was Right! is on the shelves of both stores.

  Calhoun offers a similarly placid response to his Neo-Confederate books’ lack of popularity among book reviewers – former Pelican editors point out that none of these books have been noticed in established journals such as The New York Review of Books or The New York Times Book Review. "The majority of reviewers are sheep," Calhoun states. "They first want to see what someone else says."

  Of course, it is true that book reviewers often overlook good books. However, it is more rare for a book’s own editor to express a lack of confidence in its integrity.

  "It is not a good book, not well-written. And the quality of the research is shoddy," says Jim Dunn, talking about The Southern Nation: The New Rise of the Old South. Dunn worked as an editor at Pelican Publishing from March 1999 to March 2000. He left Pelican on friendly terms and now works as a business magazine writer in Alabama.

  Dunn describes himself as "a Southern boy, born and bred," and he thinks that Calhoun assigned him as the editor for The Southern Nation on the assumption that he would share the author’s point of view. "Look, I am proud to be a Southerner, but I’m not overly romantic about it," says Dunn. "I get my back up sometimes when I see Southerners portrayed in an offensive way, like in the Jeff Foxworthy TV show and such. So, I’d be more sympathetic than most editors, but this writer lost me. The book was too strident – strictly a partisan viewpoint. I’m a historian by training, and this writer didn’t know his facts."

  "I do not have a professional background in history," acknowledges R. Gordon Thornton, the author of The Southern Nation. His background is in soil science, and he works for a paper products company in Arkansas. Thornton made his way into writing about Southern culture and history through his participation in the Neo-Confederate groups The League of the South and The Sons of Confederate Veterans. He found his way to Pelican through Donald Kennedy, one of the authors of The South Was Right! Thornton says he wrote his book because he noticed "there was a void in the literature on how to defend Southern culture. So I began to explore ways to correct that void."

  "We’re easily run down by the mainstream media," he says. "People move down here from the North and they’re shocked not to see lynching in the streets. The media treats the South as though we ought to be ashamed to be Southern and there is nothing to be ashamed of in the South. We have very few problems that we can’t solve on our own. Even our racism is highly overblown. What we call racism today is not the racism of the 1930s."