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The Ku Klux Klan: Legacy of Hate |
On Tuesday, May 16, 2000 -- 37 years after the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in which 4 young black girls were murdered in Birmingham, Alabama -- the last two suspects, Thomas E. Blanton, Jr. 61, and Bobby Frank Cherry, 69, were indicted for murder.
The two men, along with the other two suspects, Robert Chambliss, who was convicted of murder and died in prison in 1985, and Herman Cash, who was never convicted and died in 1994, were all members of the Ku Klux Klan organization known as The United Klans of America, one of the most violent hate groups in American history
The United Klans of America, Inc. (UKA), was the largest Klan organization of the 1960s and 1970s. During the era of the civil rights revolution, it was notorious for its many brutal acts of violence, including a number of murders. Headquartered in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, it was led by Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton, who had spent time in Federal prison in the late 1960s for contempt of Congress. (He refused to produce Klan membership lists for the House Committee on Un-American Activities.) The UKA of the 1980s was much smaller than its 1960 precursor which had tens of thousands of members. The official organ of the UKA was The Fiery Cross, published in Swartz, Louisiana.
As Blanton and Cherry are brought to trial, it is
important to understand the hateful legacy of the UKA.
Emergence of the UKA
The Ku Klux Klan and Resistance to School Desegregation
On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic decision on school desegregation -- Brown v. Board of Education. The decision triggered a wave of resistance to school desegregation throughout the South that ultimately led to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan.In its initial stages, the resistance was headed by the "White Citizens Councils:" The Councils were largely composed of respectable citizens in local power structures throughout the South. Their main weapon was economic pressure directed against local individuals and organizations perceived as supporters of desegregation or insufficiently vocal in opposing it.
The Councils achieved considerable power and influence in the second half of the 1950s, generating an array of publications and spawning affiliated organizations that lasted well into the 1960s. But by the end of the decade their resistance to court ordered desegregation had become a losing battle.
Paralleling the efforts of the Councils were new Klan leaders with new campaigns. The Klan had no use for the Councils' less militant methods, and sought to mobilize like-minded believers into a resurgent Ku Klux Klan.
By mid-1956, a marked rise in Klan activity was well underway – new Klan groups were drawing strength from the ferment in the South. They gained members from extremist elements among the White Citizens Councils themselves. These organizing efforts succeeded in mobilizing former Klansmen who had been inactive for years.
The strongest of the new groups consisted of klaverns linked under the banner of the U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. (generally referred to as the "U.S. Klans"). This group was subsequently chartered and incorporated in the State of Georgia. The leader of the new group was Eldon Lee Edwards, a paint sprayer employed in an Atlanta auto factory. He had quietly begun organizing in 1953, had stepped up his activities in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision, and had incorporated his new organization on October 24, 1955.
By September 29, 1956, Edwards was able to stage one of the largest Klan rallies in years, drawing a crowd of approximately 3,000 to Stone Mountain, Georgia, the site from which the Second Klan had been launched in 1915. The crowd came in more than 1,000 cars painted with KKK emblems and bearing license plates from seven states – Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Florida, and Louisiana.
At its peak in the late 1950s, Edwards' U.S. Klans had units in nine Southern states. However, the group was beset by internal feuding and challenges to the Edwards leadership. In addition, more than a score of smaller Klans emerged to compete with the Edwards organization.
Although the U.S. Klans remained the strongest of the Klan groups in the South during the second half of the 1950s, Edwards was never able to gain a dominant position, nor to unify the competing and fragmented Klan organizations.
The New Klan Resurgence and Violence
In the early 1960s, the Klans functioned as a clandestine movement that spearheaded the resistance to a national trend toward equality for all Americans. Like their predecessors, the `60s Klans employed terrorism and a form of guerrilla race warfare to carry out their purposes. The Klans and their allies were responsible for a major portion of the assaults, killings, bombings, floggings, and other acts of racial intimidation that swept the South in the first years of the 1960s. The Klans provided the organizational framework and the emotional stimulus necessary to incite members and nonmembers alike to violence and terror.
The year 1960 was marked by a sharp increase in Klan activities and by the consolidation of some of the previously splintered groups in seven states. The Klan resurgence was spurred by the historic sit-in movement launched at Greensboro, North Carolina on February 2, 1960, by young Black civil rights activists. A few weeks later, on the weekend of February 27-28, 1960, representatives of splintered Klan groups from seven Southern states met at the Henry Grady Hotel in Atlanta and formed a "National Klan Committee" to coordinate their activities. The Klans represented there had long been opposed to Edwards' U.S. Klans; in fact, this opposition was the chief bond among them. The loose confederation of splinter Klans that emerged came to be known as the "National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan."
The National Knights made a show of strength on March 26, 1960, by a coordinated series of cross burnings. Newspapers in the South reported that more than 1,000 fiery crosses were seen that day throughout Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and other states.
Klan Strength Increases in the 1960s
By the end of 1960, Klan strength had increased noticeably. Total Klan membership was estimated at anywhere from 35,000 to 50,000. Edwards' U.S. Klans, dominant for the previous six years, remained the strongest and most cohesive of the increasingly consolidated Klan movements, with an estimated 15,000 to 23,000 members.
The loose confederation of splinter Klans used the banner of the National Knights, under which each unit retained its autonomy. The central leadership operated on a rotating basis heading an estimated membership somewhat less than that of the U.S. Klans – possibly 10,000 to 15,000.
There were also a number of local groups in various parts of the South that were not affiliated with either the U.S. Klans or the National Knights. Most important of these was the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., headed by Robert Shelton, who had been a leader of the Edwards Klan in Alabama until he was ousted by Edwards in the spring of 1960. By the end of 1960, Shelton had made rapid progress in absorbing local Klan klaverns, including many formerly affiliated with the U.S. Klans, and consolidating them into the Alabama Knights. The gains made by Shelton were further hastened by Edwards' death in August, 1960. Edwards was succeeded as Imperial Wizard of the U.S. Klans by Georgia Grand Dragon Robert L. "Wild Bill" Davidson, who declared at a Klan rally in November, 1960, that Klansmen would use buckshot if necessary to fight integration.
Davidson,
however, was unable to control the internal feuding and battling that had
followed Edwards' death. He and his successor as Georgia Grand Dragon,
Calvin F Craig, resigned from the U.S. Klans and almost immediately formed
a new Klan organization chartered by the Superior Court of Fulton County,
Georgia, under the name of the "Invisible Empire, United Klans,
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of America, Inc." The new group came to
be known as the United Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.
(UKA).
Robert Shelton Becomes a Dominant Figure in the Klan From that point on, Shelton’s UKA became the dominant group in the KKK
resurgence of the 1960s. With headquarters in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, it had
members and supporters in nine states by the middle of 1965. Estimates at
the time indicated that the UKA could probably count on active membership
and sympathetic support from 26,000 to 33,000 throughout the South. That
support included Klans directly affiliated with the UKA and some
semiautonomous groupings in Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee,
Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Virginia.
Robert Shelton, Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America, avoided publicity and retained the old concept of
the Klan as a clandestine order. During the 1960s and 1970s the UKA remained the largest Klan faction. In the spring of 1979, however, 20 members of the
UKA were indicted by a Birmingham Federal grand jury in connection with
violent racial episodes in Talladega County, Alabama. Three of Shelton's
members pleaded guilty and 10 others were found guilty and sentenced to
terms in Federal prison. The days of UKA dominance in the hate movement were numbered.
The beginning of the end for the UKA
followed a $7 million damage award in 1987 in an Alabama civil suit
against the organization. Included as defendants in that case were six
past and then current UKA members involved in the 1981 lynching of a
Black teenager, Michael Donald, whose body was left hanging on a tree. As
a result of that verdict, the teenager's family, whose legal
representation was provided by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC),
took possession of the United Klans' 7,200 square foot national
headquarters on 6.5 acres in Tuscaloosa. The property had an estimated
market value of $ 225,000 at the time. James
Knowles, a member of the UKA's Klavern 900 in Mobile and one of the two
men convicted for the 1981 murder of Michael Donald, testified at his 1984
trial that he and Henry Hays, who was executed for the act, had killed
Donald "in order to show Klan strength in Alabama." At the civil
trial, Knowles testified that he was "carrying out the orders"
of UKA "Titan" (regional leader) Bennie Jack Hays, Henry Hays's
father and a long time Shelton lieutenant. Bennie Jack Hays died in
August 1993 before his second criminal trial could take place. His first,
in 1988, ended in a mistrial At a Klavern meeting at the Hays home two
days before the murder of Donald, Henry Hays, who served as the chapter's
"Exalted Cyclops" (presiding officer), said that "a nigger
ought to be hanged by the neck until dead to put them in their
place." The Anti-Defamation League provided the SPLC's Morris
Dees, counsel to Michael Donald's mother (who has since died) and the
NAACP, a grisly cartoon from The Fiery Cross which proved to be a key
piece of evidence in the $7 million judgement ultimately rendered
against the UKA. The illustration showed a Black man about to be lynched,
with the caption "White people should give Blacks what they
deserve." Today, Shelton, 71, is a survivor of triple bypass surgery. Talking to a reporter in 1994 he
provided the Klan's potential epitaph: "The Klan will never return.
Not with the robes and the rallies and the cross lightings and parades,
everything that made the Klan the Klan, the mysticism, what we called
Klankraft. I'm still a Klansman, always will be. The Klan is my belief, my
religion. But it won't work anymore. The Klan is gone. Forever." Indeed, today's Ku Klux Klan is the weakest and the most fragmented it has been since World War II. Clearly the Klan has fallen on hard times. Nonetheless, it remains a dangerous force in American life. Vigilance remains the appropriate watchword for all who oppose the Ku Klux Klan and its hateful message.
The Decline of the UKA
© 2001 Anti-Defamation League
