Government’s Moves Worry K.K.K. Leaders

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30715, 2 April 1965, Page 13

Government’s Moves Worry K.K.K. Leaders

(From FRANK OLIVER, N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent)

WASHINGTON, April 1.

The majority of reports from the Deep South indicate that the infamous Ku Klux Klan is getting worried. The Klan has been denounced time and again but until now no Administration has declared war on it and the Klan knows that in Lyndon Johnson it now has an implacable enemy, a man with power who is in the habit of getting through with his projects.

It has been noticed for some months that Klan membership in the southern States has been on the rise, Klan officials have even held rallies and invited the public to attend and join up, a new departure for the organisation.

What the Klan represents today is the race supremacist and segregationist movement gone underground, which means that in some respects it is more dangerous than it was when it was all on the surface for all to see. Now the President has declared war on the Klan and the Klan is girding itself against the United States, though not one of their number would willingly admit it and perhaps few believe it.

What has to be remembered about the Klan membership is that it believes, sincerely and fanatically, that it is right and that the rest of the nation is wrong. It believes it is evil to mix the races anywhere at any time for any purpose. This is what is going to make the President’s task the more difficult. For reasonable Americans the case against the Klan was put by the New York “Herald Tribune,” which said the K.K.K. “in symbol and in fact, has been at the dark heart of the violent resistance to civil rights for Negroes.” A Klansman would probably admit this, adding that he believed it was absolutely right. Klan leaders feel that they should have equal access to the White House and the Presidential ear. In short they consider themselves eminently respectable in the political arena. They resent being called bigots. They call themselves patriots and resent having their patriotism questioned. 1 am familiar with considerable areas of the South and can say firmly that there are plenty of Southerners who believe firmly that there are law enforcement officers who

are either members of the Klan or at least sympathetic and co-operative with it. That is not going to make the Administration’s task any easier.