Because of their Southern roots, Lynyrd Skynyrd were said to have been racist by some critics. Is this accusation regarding the band members really true?

Probably not -- And I quote: This is one of the best, if not THE best, Southern Rock songs of all time. Certainly, at face value, the song Sweet Home Alabama can be taken as racist, but dig a little deaper, and you'll see that Lynyrd Skynyrd was NOT a racist band. As other bloggers point out, the song "The Ballad of Curtis Lowe" is a tribute to a black blues musician. In my view, the message of "SHA" is thus...."Yes, America, the South has a history of racism, but we still love our home and we don't appreciate you guys up North preaching to us. All people down here are not racist, just as all Northerners are not racism-free. You fix your problems, and we'll fix ours, so mind your own business, (Mr. Young).

http://www.thrasherswheat.org/2005/05/american-idol-drops-neil-young-verse.html

This is a loaded question, and a speculative one at best.

Here is one opinion on the subject (there are many more).

It is referring to Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering The Free Birds Of Southern Rock, penned by lifelong Skynyrd associate and former security manager Gene Odom.

"Odom manages to report with just the right amount of empathy and objectivity. Never so much as when he debunks the urban legend surrounding Lynyrd Skynyrd’s so-called “racist” underpinnings—“Sweet Home Alabama,” then-governor George Wallace, “I hope Neil Young will remember/‘Southern Man’ don’t need him around anyhow” and all that.

Sure, the band members came from blue-collar, other-side-of-the-tracks backgrounds, and they definitely liked to party harder than anyone else in the room. But more than anything, their love of rock ‘n’ roll and its resident blues and country components helped bestow a generally open-minded outlook. Van Zant especially, who’d just as soon sit down and write a song in tribute to an old black musician from his hometown, or go onstage wearing one of several Neil Young T-shirts that he owned in order to fuck with any yahoos in the crowd who missed the humor and irony of the “Sweet Home Alabama” lyrics".

Believe what you wish.

http://thrasherswheat.org/jammin/lynyrd.htm