Klan Leader Calls For White Action

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30178, 9 July 1963, Page 13

Klan Leader Calls For White Action

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

ALBANY (Georgia), July 8.

A Ku Klux Klan leader last night called for an anti-Negro demonstration by 50,000 whites and urged a return to “fighting principles.”

Referring to recent negro protest marches, Mr Calvin Craig, Grand Dragon of the Georgia Realm of the United Klan of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, told a rally of 300 persons here: “The antidote for poison is poison.”

Urging his audience to atterd a rally at Savannah, Georgia, on July 20, he said: “I do not believe in violence, hut I do believe in self-preservation. “Now is the time to get back in the race and get this fight back on the road. It has always been a fighting organisation. You can check on the history of the Klan.” Attacking the negro integration leader, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Mr Craig said: "Martin Luther King says he’s willing to violate any law that he doesn’t think is just. “Well, I look at it this way —it’s about time to start violating some of these rules these communities have passed to protect these niggers.” He said that if negro demonstrators lay in front of a shop “don’t walk around them—step on them.” Earlier Judge Clayton Jones, of the Albany City

Court, said the integration movement was “being fostered by the Communists in Russia.” Negroes Plan March In Cambridge, Maryland, negro leaders promised a mass protest march today and further “sit-ins" when the National Guard troops withdraw from the racially-tense community, the Associated Press reported. In a statement issued late last night, the executive committee of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee said the group had voted “to resume demonstrations upon the removal of the National Guard on Monday. July 8.”

The committee said “sitin” demonstrations would be held during the afternoon at public facilities and stores and a mass march would be held in the evening to protest against, lack of progress toward integration. National Guard troops have been in Cambridge for more than three weeks. They were ordered in by Governor J.

Millard Tawes on June 14, after mass protest marches by negroes erupted in violence on four consecutive nights. Mr Tawes has ordered the troops out by noon today. The announcement brought expressions of surprise from National Guard and State police officials. Scope Reduced

In Frankfort, Kentucky, Governor Bert Combs indicated he was narrowing the scope of his anti-discrimina-tion order to include only public places of food, shelter, recreation, entertainment or amusement. “There is no cause for alarm,” the Governor said. “No action will be taken under the order that will infringe upon the legal or moral right of our citizens to conduct legitimate business.” The executive order on June 26, indirectly banning racial bias in all businesses and professions licensed by the State, was called the most sweeping document ai the kind issued by any State.