⒈ The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age

Namespaces Article Talk. The committee adjourned without action, and the Klan benefited from all the publicity. There were riots in Chicago after a white police officer shot a year-old black boy who was running away from the The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age of a robbery. The city had been controlled by The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age entrenched king of the fairies in a midsummer nights dream elite that was mostly German American. The Straight Dope. The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age, only the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists still claim any historical authenticity for the movie. On the night of Sunday, March 7,Americans received a close-up view of the harsh methods employed by Southern law enforcement officers against civil The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age activists. May 31,

Inside the New Ku Klux Klan

In , Byrd told C-SPAN that the death of his teenage grandson in a traffic accident had radically changed his views. The profound grief he felt made him realize that African-Americans loved their children as much as he loved his own. While some of his fellow conservative Democrats opposed the bill creating the Martin Luther King Jr. In opposing the confirmation of Marshall, Byrd cited his suspicion that Marshall had ties to communists.

National Memorial in Washington, D. Share Flipboard Email. Issues The U. Legal System U. Foreign Policy U. Liberal Politics U. Robert Longley. History and Government Expert. Robert Longley is a U. Facebook Facebook. Updated October 30, The law worked right away. Within a few months, , new black voters had signed up to vote. By , most African Americans were registered to vote in 9 of the 13 states in the South. Politics in the South were completely changed by African Americans having the power to vote.

White politicians could no longer make laws about African Americans without blacks having a say. In many parts of the South, black people outnumbered whites. This meant that they could vote in black politicians, and vote out racist whites. Also, black people who were registered to vote could be on juries. Before this, any time an African American was charged with a crime, the jury that decided whether they were guilty would be all-white. President Johnson , Dr. From to , the civil rights movement focused a lot on fair housing. Even outside the South, fair housing was a problem.

For example, in , California passed a Fair Housing Act which made segregation in housing illegal. White voters and real estate lobbyists got the law reversed the next year. This helped cause the Watts Riots. Activists, including Martin Luther King, led a movement for fair housing in Chicago in Activists in both cities got attacked physically by white homeowners, and legally by politicians who supported segregation. This meant black people would be allowed to move into white neighborhoods. As Senator Walter Mondale said: "This was civil rights getting personal. There, most Senators - Northern and Southern - were against the bill.

In March of , the Senate sent a weaker version to the House of Representatives. The House was expected to make changes that would make the bill even weaker. That did not happen. On April 4, , Martin Luther King was murdered. This made many members of Congress feel like they needed to do something about civil rights quickly. King's murder, Senator Mondale stood in front of the Senate and said:. President Johnson signed the law the next day. Part of the law is called the "Fair Housing Act. Failure of California's fair housing law helped cause the Watts Riots. People of all races took part in the movement. The movement's goal was to decrease poverty for people of all races.

As part of his work against poverty, Dr. King argued that poor people in Vietnam were being killed, and that the War would only make them poorer. He also argued that the United States was spending more and more money and time on the War, and less on programs to help poor Americans. In March , Dr. King was invited to Memphis, Tennessee to support garbage workers that were on strike. These workers were paid very little, and two workers had been killed doing their jobs. They wanted to be members of a labor union. King thought this strike was a perfect fit for his Poor People's Campaign. The day before he was murdered, King gave a sermon called " I've Been to the Mountaintop.

After King was killed, people rioted in more than cities across the United States. About 3, activists camped out on the National Mall in Washington, D. The day before Dr. King's funeral, his wife, Coretta Scott King , and three of their children led 20, marchers through Memphis. Soldiers protected the marchers. On April 9, Mrs. King led another , people through Atlanta during Dr. King's funeral. King's casket. The wagon was a symbol of Dr. King's Poor People's Campaign.

Statues of sanitation workers on strike. The motel where King was murdered now a museum. The wreath marks the spot where King was shot. Garment workers listen to Dr. King's funeral by radio. Many people were killed during the Civil Rights Movement. Some were killed because they supported civil rights. No one knows just how many people were killed during the Civil Rights Movement. People whose names are highlighted in blue were children or teenagers when they were killed. An unknown number of other people died or were killed during the Civil Rights Movement. From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Redirected from United States civil rights movement. See also: Reconstruction of the United States.

Main article: Brown v. Board of Education. Main article: Montgomery Bus Boycott. The bus Rosa Parks was riding when she refused to give up her seat. Main article: Little Rock Nine. Under the new law, segregated buses or bus stations, like this one, were illegal. Army trucks drive across the University of Mississippi campus on October 3, President Kennedy had to send the U. Army to stop the riots at the University. Activists march in Washington, D. The rifle used to murder Evers. King with Robert Kennedy after a meeting with civil rights leaders on June 22, Main article: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

After the March on Washington, President Kennedy meets with civil rights leaders. Main article: Civil Rights Act of King behind him. Play media. See also: Martin Luther King, Jr. Police get ready to attack marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge. See also: Voting Rights Act of Last page of the Voting Rights Act, with Johnson's signature at the bottom. Damage to a store from riots in Washington, D. This suggested law is called a bill. However, the President cannot make laws. Both houses of Congress - the House of Representatives and the Senate - get to look at the bill. They can change it, vote for it, or vote against it. If more than half of the House, and more than half of the Senate, vote for the bill, it "passes" and becomes a law.

If the President wants to show his support for the law, he can sign it, but he does not have to sign it to make it a law. The Guardian Online. Guardian News and Media Limited. Retrieved March 2, Oryx Press. University of Illinois Press. ISBN The Charters of Freedom. Cengage Learning. Oxford University Press. Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, — University of North Carolina Press. Morgan Yale University Press.

Board of Education Decision, ". The Betrayal of the Negro from Rutherford B. Hayes to Woodrow Wilson. Da Capo Press. Vann The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Archived from the original on Retrieved University of California Press. July 26, Basic Civitas Books. Retrieved July 4, Penguin Books. Browder, U. The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture. Simon Pulse. Howard Journal of Communications. January 18, Retrieved March 6, History Learning Site. March 27, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Civil Rights Movement Veterans.

Tougaloo College. Freedom Riders: and the Struggle for Racial Justice. Oxford Press. Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement. University of North Carolina. Archived from the original on September 21, Public Law " PDF. Office of the Clerk — U. House of Representatives. United States Congress. July 2, August 6, Journal of Mississippi History. ISSN Archived from the original PDF on June 18, Retrieved February 2, October 12, Archived from the original on October 14, Robert Kennedy and His Times.

New York: First Mariner Books. BBC News — On this day. October 1, Encyclopedia of African American History, Volume 1. Southern Miss NOW. American Sociological Review. American Sociological Association. JSTOR Bates College. Dictionary of American Biography Supplement 9: — ed. Charles Scribner's Sons. May 10, Archived from the original on August 17, Newsweek : April 15, Jonathan Newsweek : 28, April 22, May 13, Bantam Books.

The Washington Post. Bull Connor. University of Alabama Press. The New York Times. The African-American Odyssey. The Bystander: John F. Kennedy and the Struggle for Black Equality. Basic Books. The Journal of American History. Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The Dispatch. Lexington, North Carolina. December 28, Maryland State Archives. Culpepper Houghton Mifflin. Kennedy June 11, Washington, D. Archived from the original on February 5, Abbeville Press. Bayard Rustin Papers: John F. Kennedy Library. National Archives and Records Administration. August 28, Retrieved March 1, Smithsonian Magazine Online. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved February 29, The Fiscal Times.

The Life and Work of Malcolm X. Indianapolis: Alpha Books. Cleveland: World Publishing. OCLC Richardson okeys Malcolm X sic ". Baltimore Afro-American. Baltimore, Maryland. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Malcolm X Speaks. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. Freedom Summer. Education and Democracy. Harvard University Press. United States Government. Retrieved March 7, President Kennedy: Profile of Power. He maintained his alliance with the national Socialist party and held joint meetings with other white supremacists in North Carolina.

His group engaged in paramilitary training, which he publicized in order to attract more young male recruits. He published descriptions of the training in his newspaper, complete with photos of armed and camouflaged Klansmen, as if he had nothing to hide. But in fact, he did. For Glenn Miller, the weapon training was much more than a clever recruitment tool. It was part of a long-range plan for a total white revolution. In , Glenn Miller changed the name of the Carolina Knights to the Confederate Knights and preached the need to secure the Southern United States for a white homeland.

As the group adopted a more militant image, Miller delighted in issuing wildly provocative statements. But the public front was mild compared to the covert preparations for violence that had preoccupied him for years. Not only was Miller conducting the training he wrote about in his newspaper, he authorized his second-in-command to purchase a whole array of weapons that had been stolen from military bases. They included dynamite, claymore mines, grenades, plastic explosives, AR rifles, gas masks, night scopes, chemical warfare items and light-weight anti-tank weapons capable of piercing up to 11 inches of armor. Miller also hired a military weapons expert to train his men in small teams at night, sometimes as often as twice a week. In late , Miller hooked the Carolina Knights into the Aryan Nations Liberty Net, a computer bulletin board which listed activities of various radical white supremacists around the country.

In , Miller, his lieutenant Stephen Miller no relation , and their organization, now renamed the white patriot party, were found guilty of violating the order that banned them from conducting paramilitary training. But while they were out on bond waiting for their appeal to be heard, they took their radical strategy to its extreme. Several months after his conviction, Stephen Miller and four other white patriots were arrested after they plotted to rob a Fayetteville, North Carolina, restaurant, buy stolen military explosives, blow up the Southern poverty Law Center and kill Law Center Director Morris Dees.

Two of the conspirators pleaded guilty; Stephen Miller and another were convicted and sentenced to prison. The fifth man was acquitted. In his declaration, Miller assigned a point system for the assassination of key minority, government and civil rights leaders, with Dees heading the list. Ten days later, Miller was captured in Missouri along with three other White Patriots and a cache of weapons that included grenades, pipe bombs, automatic rifles, shotguns, pistols and crossbows. Miller, who had become a hero in the eyes of the most militant white supremacists for his bold lawlessness, was suddenly in serious trouble. Already saddled with the contempt of court conviction, he now faced bond, weapons, and potential civil rights violations.

In a move that shocked his former allies, Miller agreed to plead guilty to one count of illegal weapons possession and testify against his former colleagues in the white supremacist movement. He has since served as a government witness against white supremacists in several trials, including the seditious conspiracy trial against 10 top leaders of the extremist movement. The former white patriot party members believed that their targets were gay. In seven years, Glenn Miller had taken a small band of Klansmen, turned them into an underground paramilitary army, educated them in the ideology of revolution, and inspired their crimes of intimidation, threats, thefts and murder.

Although they were numerically a tiny group, the white patriots demonstrated the primary lesson of recent white supremacist history. The danger lies not in the length of the membership roll but in the zeal of the members. In her dream, there was a steel gray casket in her living room. Who was the dead man laid out in a gray suit? The first thing she did, she later said, was to look in the other bedroom, where her youngest child slept.

Though Michael watched television with his cousins in the evening, he had left before midnight. Donald drank two cups of coffee and moved to her couch, where she waited for the new day. To keep busy, she went outside to rake her small yard. As she worked, a woman delivering insurance policies came by. Shortly before 7 a. Donald brightened — Michael was alive, she thought. Around his neck was a perfectly tied noose with 13 loops. On a front porch across the street, watching police gather evidence, were members of the United Klans of America, once the largest and, according to civil rights lawyers, the most violent of the Ku Klux Klans.

Lawmen learned only much later, however, what Bennie Jack Hays, the year-old Titan of the United Klans, was saying as he stood on the porch that morning. That week, a jury had been struggling to reach a verdict in the case of a black man accused of murdering a white policeman. The killing had occurred in Birmingham, but the trial had been moved to Mobile. To Hays — the second-highest Klan official in Alabama — and his fellow members of Unit of the United Klans, the presence of blacks on the jury meant that a guilty man would go free.

Michael Donald was alone, walking home, when Knowles and Hays spotted him. They pulled over, asked him for directions to a night club, then pointed the gun at him and ordered him to get in. They drove to the next county. When they stopped, Michael begged them not to kill him, and then tried to escape. Henry Hays and Knowles chased him, caught him, hit him with a tree limb more than a hundred times, and when he was no longer moving, wrapped the rope around his neck.

For good measure, they cut his throat. Around the time Mrs. Hays, who received the death sentence, is that rarest of Southern killers: a white man slated to die for the murder of a black. At that point, a grieving mother might have been expected to issue a brief statement of gratitude and regret and then return to her mourning. Beulah Mae Donald would not settle for that. Donald file a civil suit against the members of Unit and the United Klans of America.

Donald and her attorney, State Senator Michael A. In February , after 18 months of work by Dees and his investigators, the case went to trial. Although Mrs. And she cried silently when Knowles stepped off the witness stand to demonstrate how he helped kill her son. Donald was more composed when former Klansmen testified that they had been directed by Klan leaders to harass, intimidate and kill blacks. Just four days after the trial had started; it was time for the closing arguments. At the lunch break on that day, Knowles called Dees to his cell. He wanted, he said, to speak in court. When court resumed, the judge nodded to Knowles. Everything I said is true I was acting as a Klansman when I done this. And I hope that people learn from my mistake I do hope you decide a judgment against me and everyone else involved.

Then Knowles turned to Beulah Mae Donald, and, as they locked eyes for the first time, he begged for her forgiveness. Whatever it takes — I have nothing. But I will have to do it. And if it takes me the rest of my life to pay it, any comfort it may bring, I will. The judge wiped away a tear. Donald said. In May , the Klan turned over to Mrs. And on the strength of the evidence presented at the civil trial, the Mobile district attorney was able to indict Bennie Hays and his son-in-law, Frank Cox, for murder. By the late s, the Klan was once again in decline. The resurgence of a decade earlier had fizzled, and the Klan was down to around 5, members — much smaller than during the Civil Rights era and a mere fraction of its size during its heyday in the s.

The ebb in Klan fortunes continued into the s, and observers of the Invisible Empire began to question whether the organization would play any significant role in the extremist movement in the 21st century. The fear of litigation made Klan groups leery of organizing into chapters, naming officers and expanding across state lines. The Klan also reeled under the weight of internal squabbles over money and power. The Klan had always been rife with petty infighting and jealousy among its leaders, and this natural inclination toward discord was exacerbated during the lean years of the s and s.

Further dividing the movement was a disagreement over tactics: Some factions favored a cleaned-up organization that emphasized public relations, while rivals sought to revive the more militant tactics of earlier Klan incarnations. But competition from other extremist groups was the real drag on Klan membership and influence. Racism and bigotry still existed in the United States in the latter part of the 20th century; the Klan just no longer seemed a relevant vehicle for expressing it.

In the s, many extremists, who once would have gravitated to the Klan, joined the anti-government Patriot movement, especially its militia wing. The philosophy of the Patriot movement, as well as its commitment to armed paramilitary training, had more appeal than the worn-out rhetoric of the Klan. This legacy of hate was a testament to the power of the Klan and its enduring influence for over a century. Civil lawsuits had a chilling effect on the activity of many Klan groups.

Klan outfits toned down their rhetoric and propaganda, altered their recruiting tactics, and banned weapons, alcohol and drugs from their rallies and meetings. The Southern Poverty Law center, which filed the suit on behalf of Mrs. Donald, used this legal strategy against another Klan group with an equally sordid history of violence. Over the years, the members of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had been convicted of crimes ranging from cross burnings and bombings to assaults and murder.

By the summer of , the Invisible Empire was defunct as a consequence of settling the lawsuit. The century-old Macedonia Baptist church, located near Bloomville, South Carolina, burned to the ground on June 21, , the night after another black church, Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in nearby Greeleyville, was destroyed by fire. The arsons were among a string of over 30 suspicious fires at black or predominantly black churches from While lawsuits have a proven history of disrupting and even disbanding white supremacist organizations, they also deliver a powerful warning to others in the movement — hate violence can be expensive.

A series of internal disagreements over leadership and tactics further decimated the Klan in the closing decades of the 20th century. Klan groups historically were rife with infighting and jealousy, but strong figures usually emerged to bridge the chasms and provide direction. In the early s, Robb won invaluable publicity by appearing on nationwide television talk shows and in a Time magazine article on the hate movement. Aside from Duke, no modern Klan leader was more adept at exploiting television than Robb. In , the irreverent television series, TV Nation , aired a segment that lampooned Robb and his followers. Later that year, the Knights splintered, and Robb found himself scrambling desperately for members.

The schism gave birth to a militant offshoot with strong neo-Nazi leanings called the federation of Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Novak said his group would be more militant than the Knights and would avoid the limelight Robb so avidly sought. After the split, Novak operated quietly behind the scenes, organizing rallies on private property and recruiting. But the militant Klan umbrella organization Novak hoped the federation would become never materialized. As Klan influence faded in the s and s, the white supremacist movement began to chart a new course. The Order, a terrorist group that committed murder, armed robbery and counterfeiting in the early s, became the new standard for bold action on behalf of white supremacy.

The Klan in contrast looked plodding, cowardly, and even foolish. The old-line, traditional Klan came to be viewed as outdated and out-of-touch, all talk and no action. Militants left the Ku Klux Klan in droves. To that end, they aggressively pursued the young, ruthless, neo-Nazi Skinheads and recruited heavily on high school and college campuses. Eager to prove their courage as radical racists, Skinheads quickly became the most violent of all white supremacists.

Prominent white supremacists also sought to manipulate and exploit the anti-government fervor of the militias that sprang up across the nation and became the most visible of the extremist organizations in the s. Some of these groups had ties to racist groups or leaders, or had expressed racist or anti-Semitic beliefs. Camouflaged fatigues may have replaced the Klan robes, but hatred of Jews, blacks, immigrants and other minorities continued to infect the American body politic. As the end of the century neared, there was no single, monolithic Klan, if indeed there ever was one. The organization was in tatters, its decreasing membership scattered in scores of squabbling factions across the country, some with no more than a handful of adherents.

The once powerful Invisible Empire was gone. The most militant activists, such as Louis Beam see accompanying article , Robert Miles now deceased and Tom Metzger, left the Klan years before and assumed leadership roles in other white supremacist groups. These periods of growth have one common characteristic: they were eras of great social upheaval when the dominant white population felt threatened. In each of these eras, as the perceived attack receded, the Klan faded. And yet it has never completely disappeared. History would suggest a continued role for the Klan. For over a century, the Klan has always appeared on the stage whenever white Americans felt threatened by people different than themselves.

There should be no doubt that all means short of armed conflict have been exhausted. Louis Ray Beam personifies the evolution of the racist right in the last quarter of the 20th century from a movement led by the Ku Klux Klan to one where neo-Nazis and armed militias set the agenda. Beam has been at the forefront of this transformation: where he has led, extremists have followed.

As a Klansman in the s, he was a vocal supporter of paramilitary training. When the Klan began to stagger under the weight of lawsuits and internal struggles in the s, he transferred his allegiance to other white supremacist groups. His radicalism influenced the neo-Nazi movement that spawned violent terrorist outfits. In the early s, Beam devised the strategy for the anti-government patriot movement and its armed militia wing. Throughout his career, Beam has been a fierce advocate of violent insurrection. His willingness to carry out his deeply-held beliefs sets him apart from other leaders in the white supremacist movement whose actions fall short of their rhetoric. Beam honed his tactical skills in Vietnam where he saw action as a helicopter tail gunner with the U.

In the late s and early s, he established five training camps throughout Texas and recruited active-duty soldiers and veterans to the ranks of his Klan army, which he called the Texas emergency reserve. Beam directed his racist activities at minorities in general and Vietnamese immigrants in particular. When a group of Vietnamese fishermen relocated to the Texas Gulf Coast, Beam deployed his Klan troops to the area to drive the recently-arrived immigrants out of the state. The court order effectively disbanded the organization, forcing Beam to regroup. While in Idaho, Beam met a young racist named Robert Mathews who was about to launch a violent terrorist campaign against Jews, blacks and the United States government.

In the fall of , Mathews formed a terrorist gang, later known as the order that carried out murder, counterfeiting and armored car robberies in preparation for an international revolution of white people. The gang was eventually captured, and Mathews died in a shoot-out with federal agents. He was eventually captured in Guadalajara after a gun battle, during which his wife seriously wounded a Mexican police officer. Smith, Arkansas, in early on charges that ranged from civil rights violations to seditious conspiracy.

After seven weeks of testimony, an all-white jury acquitted the defendants. Immediately after the decision, Beam delivered a gloating, impromptu speech at a Confederate memorial across the street from the courthouse, crowing that the acquittals represented victory over the government. After the trial, Beam went underground for several years and began publishing a newsletter called The Seditionist.

In early , he announced that he was folding his newsletter. His final edition contained an essay that would set the course of right-wing extremists for the next decade. Acting without orders or commands, these cells would use violence to provoke a revolution against the federal government. Cells would operate independently so that the exposure of one unit would not endanger others. The essay circulated throughout the extremist movement. It appeared in numerous right-wing publications, on the internet and in manuals published by paramilitary groups.

The revolutionary tactic soon gained favor among the most militant white supremacists. In late , Beam emerged unexpectedly from his self-imposed seclusion as a result of a violent incident that occurred on a remote mountaintop in the northwest. Although no one realized it at the time, the anti-government patriot movement was born in august as a result of the events at a ramshackle Idaho cabin owned by Randy Weaver. A Christian identity follower and survivalist, weaver jumped bail on federal weapons charges in and retreated to his cabin. He avoided arrest for nearly two years, but finally gave in after law enforcement officials mounted an intense siege that resulted in the shooting deaths of his wife, teenage son and a deputy U.

Observers anticipated a show of force, similar to his Klan-led assaults on the Vietnamese fishermen a decade before. But Beam was plotting a more patient — and ultimately more dangerous — course. This invitation-only meeting drew more than white men, some of them militant racists from Aryan Nations, Klan groups, identity churches and other extremist organizations. Four months later, government agents were involved in yet another standoff that turned deadly — this time at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas. The religious cult was accused by federal authorities of stockpiling illegal weapons. Agents from the Bureau of alcohol, tobacco and Firearms had botched a February raid on the compound, prompting the standoff.

During the day siege that followed, extremists converged on Waco, among them Louis Beam. The lethal inferno that followed killed some 80 Davidians. Members of these armed groups saw the Waco and weaver events as proof of an oppressive federal government intent on taking away the rights and the weapons of American citizens, by force if necessary. The bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City and the sabotage of an Amtrak passenger train in Arizona later that year were believed to be the work of such cells.

Beam appeared at militia gatherings and spoke at identity and white supremacist rallies and conferences. At one such gathering in , Beam said he was heartened by the new coalitions between racists and anti government radicals drawn to the patriot movement. We are everywhere and we are going to get our country back. To hell with the federal government. It was a sultry June day in Decatur, Alabama.

I had come to meet with some of the black marchers who had been attacked on a Decatur street by robed Klansmen swinging bats and sticks, and firing guns. I am a lawyer and had sued the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and some of its top officials for the attack. I had come to Decatur that day to hear from the marchers, first hand, about the confrontation. Although I was not at the march, I felt as if I had been. I had spent hours viewing video news footage which showed the procession of about 75 black marchers as they were savagely assaulted by waiting Klansmen. I had studied hundreds of photo enlargements obtained by our investigators from the small army of news photographers who had covered the well-publicized march.

We had identified marchers as future witnesses, and Klansmen as future defendants. As I walked into the room where the marchers were waiting to be interviewed, I immediately recognized many of their faces. One was Hattie Brown, a rather large black woman, street wise though not educated beyond high school. On May 26, , Mrs. Brown was in the front line of marchers who gathered to protest the treatment of Tommy Lee Hines, a mentally retarded black youth convicted by an all-white jury for the alleged rape of three white women.

Brown was there because she believed, along with many others, that Hines was incapable of committing the crimes. Hattie Brown was one of the first marchers to feel the full force of Klan clubs, and she narrowly missed fatal injury. Dees, do Klansmen bleed? The man kept coming. She saw no blood. I heard in her question the genuine terror of a victim of Klan violence. The legends of ghostlike figures riding horseback across rural fields in the moonlight had been passed down through generations, and Mrs. Brown, like many Southern blacks, still viewed Klansmen as larger than life. I assured her that, yes, Klansmen do bleed. On the night of May 30, , he awoke to noise outside his small home located at the end of a dirt road, and saw the remnants of a smoldering cross.

Person emerged to see two men standing in the back of the truck with guns pointed at him. His children were terrified. Before the sheriff arrived, the men left. The man in the robe, I later learned from depositions taken in a civil suit filed on Mr. The other man, dressed in military camouflage, was Gregory Short. They are also its victims. Most rank-and-file Klan members I have met in over court depositions, and many more personal interviews, are basically good people. The Klan meetings offer them what they have not been able to attain in their day to-day life — social opportunities, a chance to gain leadership roles, and a forum to vent their gripes.

Klan violence, though horrible, is not the mainstay of Klan activity. Letson told me that he quickly saw the Klan leaders as being out for money and power. He agreed to testify against the Klan. Except for color, Bobby Person and Lloyd Letson are little different. Both wanted better lives for their families. If they had been neighbors, they might have been friends. Hopefully, both victims of blind racism — the members who fill the marching ranks and the minorities who suffer the ultimate abuse — will join hands in brotherly love and friendship.

New York: McGraw-Hill, Athens, Ga. New York: Plenum Press, Schwartz et al. Hearings on the Ku Klux Klan , U. House of Representatives, Committee on Rules. New York: Arno Press, Seattle: Open Hand Publishing, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, Lexington, Ky. Davis and Janet L. Westport, Conn. New York: Julian Messner, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. Revised edition, Washington, D. Revised Edition, Jackson, Miss. Trelease, Baton Rouge, La. For more information and publications from the Southern Poverty Law Center, please visit our main website at www.

For information on extremism, see out investigative magazine, Intelligence Report, at www. For daily updates on extremism, our blog, Hatewatch, is found at www. This report was prepared by the Klanwatch project of the Southern poverty Law Center. Search splcenter. March 01, The Evolution of a Klansman Afterword Appendix. Click here for PDF. Two early members of the Ku Klux Klan are pictured in their disguises. Part One The Terror is Born. Frontier Justice The answers do not lie on the surface of American history.

Aftermath of War An even more immediate impetus for the Ku Klux Klan was the civil War itself and the reconstruction that followed. Lynchings were a common form of vigilante justice during the 19th century. Klansmen were caught trying to lynch a carpetbagger in The Unusual Origins of the Klan. The Terror of the Nightrider. Part Two The Invisible Empire. The Klan was accepted as part of american life in the early s. Blacks were regularly lynched by white mobs. When The Klan Ruled Oregon. Box Office Propaganda. Part Three Fear And Violence. Klan Killings The South in the early s was the site of daily tensions between those who favored integration and those who opposed it, and the tensions sometimes led to bloodshed. Bombings Klansmen discovered dynamite as a weapon of terror and destruction.

Violence Stirs opposition Klansmen were often operating in an atmosphere of official disapproval but unofficial acceptance of their tactics. A white mob led by Klansmen burned a Freedom riders bus in Anniston, Alabama. Murdered By The Klan. In many cases, the killer was never apprehended, the crime concealed by a code of silence. Confrontational Klansmen By that time, there was another Klan leader receiving national attention — not for his apparent moderation but for his brazen militancy.

American Nazis At the same time Klan organizations experienced a surge in membership; there was heightened public attention to another growing white supremacist faction in America, the neo-Nazis. Paramilitary Training The Nazi influence radicalized traditional Klansmen. From Robes to Combat Boots. In , four members of a north Carolina-based Klan admitted to the burning of the century-old Macedonia Baptist Church near Bloomville, South Carolina.

The Evolution of a Klansman. The Paramilitary Klan Beam honed his tactical skills in Vietnam where he saw action as a helicopter tail gunner with the U. Leaderless Resistance After the trial, Beam went underground for several years and began publishing a newsletter called The Seditionist. New York: MacMillan, Attack on Terror , by Don Whitehead. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, Confession of an Imperial Klansman , by Lem A. Portland, Oregon, Conversion of a Klansman, The, by Thomas Tarrants. Garden City, N. Hooded Americanism , by David Mark Chalmers. New York: Franklin Watts, Putnam, The Flint Journal, June, Metuchen, NJ.

She saw no blood. The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age the day siege that followed, extremists converged on Waco, among them The Ku Klux Klan In The Civil Rights Age Beam. Grant signed Butler's legislation. Social ForcesVol. World War II. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.