TRANSCRIPT FROM CBS EVENING NEWS WITH DAN RATHER July 26, 2002 6:30PM EST BROADCAST

NARRATION:

It's not easy being the Son of a Confederate Veteran these days. Battlefield reenactments - their speciality - are fewer and farther apart. State after state has banished the Stars and Bars battle flag. Now....there's a fight on for the very soul of the Sons organization.

Gilbert Jones, Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans: "You've got green beans, mashed potatoes, no gravy."

NARR:

Greensboro, N.C. restaurant manager Gilbert Jones...a prominent member of the Sons...finds himself caught right in the middle.

Gilbert Jones, Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans:  "I joined because it's a historical organization. Most of the guys joined for the same reason I did. They're interested in history, their heritage."

NARR:

So it pained him, Jones said...to discover that the Sons themselves had been invaded.

Gilbert Jones, Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans: "I told them it was time to take the Neo-Nazis and the White Supremists and the Aryan Nation Boys and show their butts to the door. There's just no room in our group for that.

NARR:

Jones remarks are aimed at this man....Kirk Lyons, who is running for a top spot in the Sons organization. Lyons has some long ties to racial extremists...including David Duke...who shared the dias when Lyons had this to say during a recent speech.

Kirk Lyons, Candidate, Sons of Confederate Veterans: "We seek nothing more than a return to a Godly, stable, tradition-based society with no 'Northern-isms' attached to it; a hierarchical society, a majority European-derived country that will make peace and a fair accord with all it's non-European derived neighbors."

NARR:

Lyons declined our request to comment on that comment, or his campaign...while Gilbert Jones called it the code talk of a racist.

Gilbert Jones, Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans: "The lunatic fringe is taking over. It gives us a bad image. I don't want to be associated with that. I can't afford to be associated with that. My children are members."

NARR:

And so are 32,000 other Americans....many in church, education and Congress, including Sens. Trent Lott and Jesse Helms. And that makes this fued more than a fight over just one man's views. It is a fight, some argue, for control of a platform that has enjoyed national legitmacy for 106 years.

Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center: "This is seen very much as a prize by the White Supremists right."

NARR:

Mark Potack and the Southern Poverty Law Center have followed and extensively written about the Neo-Confederate movement and the Sons organization...also known as the SCV.

Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center: "If this faction takes over SCV I think it's a dead certainty that we will see the organization turn into a real political work - to the business of creating and breeding white nationalist quote-unquote "activists."

NARR:

A possibility that astounds Gilbert Jones....who traces his own roots back to his great, great grandfather, who served four years in A.P. Hill's Division.

Gilbert Jones, Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans: "I'm sure a lot of people didn't realize what was happening. As Southeners, we're way too polite."

NARR:

And now stand a chance of seeing an organization dedicated to the memory of their long dead kin....make some unpleaseant history of its own. In Washington, this is Jim Stewart CBS News Washington