Attorney for Lexington teacher denies allegation of hate group affiliation
A lawyer for a Lexington County middle school teacher strongly denied allegations made on social media that the teacher is affiliated with an extreme alt-right hate group or its social media account.
The social media accusations, which surfaced Wednesday, prompted school district officials to issue a statement saying a Pleasant Hill Middle School social studies teacher is on leave “while the district thoroughly investigates the allegations.”
The statement from Lexington District One did not name the teacher. “The district takes any incident like this seriously and is thoroughly investigating.”
An attorney for Timothy Manning, a Pleasant Hill Middle School teacher who was named in the social media posts, issued a statement saying he and his wife “have absolutely nothing to do with the repugnant Twitter account referenced in recent blog articles and on social media.
“They are not members of, nor do they sympathize in any way with, fringe or otherwise prejudicial groups or associations. . . . The Mannings are good, hardworking public servants,” attorney Elizabeth Millender said in a statement.
The accusations against the teacher came from a group called Identify Dixie, which runs a Twitter account that, in part, attempts to identify white supremacists who use online pseudonyms to hide their identities.
In a separate Facebook post, an account belonging to Tim Manning said his son was once an assistant editor of the magazine Southern Partisan.
Southern Partisan magazine is a controversial and long-running publication that has published pieces using Bible passages to justify slavery. It used to sell shirts with the quote John Wilkes Booth supposedly said after he shot Abraham Lincoln.
The magazine is no longer in print but is online.
Millender said Manning worked for Southern Partisan for a period after college but called the title of assistant editor “a misnomer.” Her client was a copy writer and typesetter for the magazine, she said.
He has not been associated with publication for more than a decade, Millender said.
“He does not condone, and in fact explicitly condemns, any racist content published in the Southern Partisan,” she said.
