A Black Mountain attorney who has become a flashpoint for the Confederate flag controversy in Haywood County has a long association with well-known hate groups.

Kirk Lyons, chief trial counsel for the Southern Legal Resource Center in Black Mountain, said the issue in Haywood County first came to his attention when a local member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans informed him about the removal flags placed at the Confederate monument on the courthouse lawn.

That issue has prompted a number of demonstrations at the courthouse since early August.

Most known for representing members of the Aryan Nations and Ku Klux Klan in cases in the 1980s, Lyons now focuses much of his attention on defending cases dealing with the Confederate flag. This is a group Lyons considers "the most persecuted ...