The Mississippi Highway Patrol has witnesses who confirm that a silver car driving at a high speed swerved toward the SUV driven by Black Confederate activist Anthony Hervey, 49, causing his death this past Sunday as the SUV ran off the highway and rolled over multiple times.
Hervey died on U.S. Highway 278 in Lafayette County after returning to Mississippi from a pro-Confederate rally in Birmingham, Alabama. The Ford Explorer belonged to his passenger, Arlene Barnum of Stuart, Oklahoma, also a black Confederate activist, who was letting him take over the driving as they neared his home in Mississippi.
According to the wreck reconstruction by the MHP, the Explorer left the road at the crossover section of U.S. 279 and County Road 285, went into the median south of U.S. 278, reentered U.S. 278, crossed both westbound lanes and continued off the right shoulder of U.S. 278, before crashing into an embankment and concrete ditch and rolling over several times, ending upside down.
Hervey was pronounced dead at the scene, and Barnum was treated for cuts and a broken foot at Baptist Hospital in Oxford.
Witnesses to the crash, including Barnum, said a silver vehicle occupied by five black men was following the Explorer and swerved toward the SUV, but did not make contact. In her interview with The New American, Barnum said that she was in the passenger seat, checking Facebook on her phone, when she suddenly heard Hervey yell. She looked over to see what she described as a silver or gray car driving alongside them on the highway. The Explorer’s windows were not down, but she could see some “angry-looking black guys” yelling at Hervey. Although the windows of the silver car were down, she could not understand what they were saying.
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At this point, Barnum remembered, Hervey accelerated and left the chasing vehicle behind. Then the pursuers sped up and drove around to the passenger side, alongside Barnum. Hervey jerked the Explorer across the road, and the silver vehicle sped on. When Hervey attempted to pull the SUV back onto the highway, he overcorrected, and the vehicle spun out of control.
“It rolled over hard,” Barnum told the New York Times. “With each roll, it felt like, ‘I’m not dead yet. Which one of these rolls is going to kill me?'”
Barnum told The New American that she was coming from Oklahoma to speak at the rally, and had been asked by the event’s organizers to stop by Hervey’s Oxford, Mississippi, home and give him a lift.
At the rally, Barnum publicly burned her NAACP membership card because of its attacks upon Southern heritage. The event was part of an effort to create a network of Southern organizations to counter all such attacks. Intense opposition by about 30 black protesters at the 400-person rally left both Hervey and Barnum with some concern as they made their way back to Mississippi.
Hervey told her about the times he had been physically assaulted for his support of Southern heritage, and had also had bricks thrown through the windows of his home. “He wanted to stop the racism,” she recalled. She told The New American that Hervey feared, as did she, that if the attacks upon Southern heritage continued, the country might eventually become embroiled in a race war.
After Barnum was released from the hospital, units of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) helped escort her safely back to Oklahoma.
SCV National Commander-in-Chief Kelly Barrow called upon U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to direct the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice to open an investigation into the incident. “Mr. Hervey was likely killed because of his color and his beliefs,” Barrow asserted.
Hervey was well known in the Oxford community for his support of the Confederacy. He had written a book, Why I Wave the Confederate Flag, and was the founder of the Black Confederate Soldiers Foundation. Hervey’s great-great uncle was a Confederate soldier who died at the Battle of Shiloh in the Civil War. Barnum also had an ancestor who was in the Confederate army.
Anyone with information about the identification of the silver vehicle that is alleged to have caused the fatal accident is asked to call the Mississippi Highway Patrol at 662-563-6415.
Related articles:
Passenger With Slain Black Confederate Activist Tells Her Story
Black Confederate Flag Activist Dies in Car Crash After Flag Rally
Oklahoman Calls Himself the Black Rebel in Confederate Flag Dispute
