Larry Darby is a practicing attorney

Lawyer

A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...

 in Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery, Alabama

Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...

. He was runner-up candidate for Alabama

Alabama

Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...

 Attorney-General in the 2006 Democratic Party

Democratic Party (United States)

The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 Primary. Darby's campaign ran into controversy and gained momentum when he questioned the veracity and scale of the Holocaust.

Background and education

Larry Darby was born in 1957 in Conecuh County, Alabama

Conecuh County, Alabama

-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*51.3% White*46.5% Black*0.3% Native American*0.1% Asian*0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*1.0% Two or more races*1.2% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...

. Darby's ancestors have been in Alabama since the early 19th century. He earned his BS degree at the University of Alabama

University of Alabama

The University of Alabama is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, United States....

, his MBA degree at Auburn University

Auburn University

Auburn University is a public university located in Auburn, Alabama, United States. With more than 25,000 students and 1,200 faculty members, it is one of the largest universities in the state. Auburn was chartered on February 7, 1856, as the East Alabama Male College, a private liberal arts...

 and Doctor of Jurisprudence degree at Faulkner University

Faulkner University

Faulkner University is a private Christian university, located in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, and affiliated with the Church of Christ. The University was founded in 1942 as Montgomery Bible School. In 1953 the school's name was changed to Alabama Christian College . In 1965, the college was moved to...

's Thomas Goode Jones School of Law.

Darby is the Chairman of the Alabama Capital Region Chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens

Council of Conservative Citizens

The Council of Conservative Citizens is an American political organization that supports a large variety of conservative and paleoconservative causes in addition to white nationalism, and white separatism...

.

Darby is Commander of the Confederate Constitution Camp 2143 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans

Sons of Confederate Veterans

Sons of Confederate Veterans is an American national heritage organization with members in all fifty states and in almost a dozen countries in Europe, Australia and South America...

.

Politics

Larry Darby, in his first run for public office, was the runner-up candidate for Alabama Attorney-General in the 2006 Democratic Primary. Darby garnered 43% of the vote, carrying 33 of 67 Alabama counties.

The Darby campaign attracted attention when he questioned the number of Jews who died during the Third Reich, placing the number around 140,000 suggesting that many of those succumbed to typhus

Typhus

Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...

. The Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 quoted him as saying, "I am what the propagandists call a Holocaust denier, but I do not deny mass deaths that included some Jews," and "there was no systematic extermination of Jews. There's no evidence of that at all."Convenience link: Washington Post Ala. Candidate's Views Startle Democrats Visited: 1/30/2007 Darby attributed the claims of millions of deaths in the Holocaust to the "Holocaust Industry." He also spoke positively of David Irving

David Irving

David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...

 and attended a meeting of the group National Vanguard

National Vanguard (American organization)

National Vanguard is an American National Socialist organization based in Charlottesville, Virginia, founded in 2005 by Kevin Alfred Strom and former members of the National Alliance.-History:...

. Darby also expressed anti-immigration views, declaring that the United States was undergoing a "Mexican invasion" and compared the current immigration to the 1960s civil rights movement, seeing them both as events which have hurt the South.

During the Alabama Ten Commandments dispute

Roy Moore

Roy Stewart Moore is an American jurist and Republican politician noted for his refusal, as the elected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the state courthouse despite orders to do so from a federal judge...

 Darby promoted the constitutional principle of separation between religion and government. Darby also supported Judge Moore's early argument that the federal government had no jurisdiction over this matter. He opposed the placement of a monument to Jewish law in a government building and saw it as an attempt to send the message that "Jewish Supremacism is the law" despite some Jewish organizations coming out against the placement of the commandments.

Darby is a former atheist and the founder of the Atheist Law Center as well as being the former state director of American Atheists

American Atheists

American Atheists is an organization in the United States dedicated to defending the civil liberties of atheists and advocating for the complete separation of church and state. It provides speakers for colleges, universities, clubs and the news media. It also publishes books and the monthly...

. Larry Darby is also an advocate for the decriminalization of marijuana.