Little Klan feeling among party

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34089, 28 February 1976, Page 1

Little Klan feeling among party

Most members of an American tourist party of Shriners in Christchurch are upset that some of their group claim to be members of the Ku Klux Klan.

“We don’t want New Zealanders to think this particular group is a group of racists,” said Mr Carl Douglas Mayes, Potentate of the Oasis Temple in Charlotte, North Carolina, referring to the story in “The Press” yesterday about Mr R. E.

Scoggin, a Ku Klux Klansman whose “persona! calling card” is shown above. Mr Mayes, a television journalist, said that he was nominal leader of the tour group, but he had no jurisdiction over the man claiming to be a “grand Dragon” in the Klan's South Carolina chapter because he came from a different Shriner temple.

But he would prefer that the man stop handing out cards identifying himself as a Klan member. “Some of our people are

upset,” Mr Mayes said. “They are not racists or bigots. That is a way of life that I would hope is forever long-gone in America.” “If he wants to do this, that is his business,” he added. “But he is travelling with a group of people who deplore what he stands for.”

Shriners are a North American fraternity of Masons Who raise about s36m a year to support 19 Shriner hospitals for . crippled children and three burns institutes in North America.

Mr Mayes said his temple was the ninth largest in the United States. “The Shriners don’t have to hide their faces when they have a meeting,” Mr Mayes said. “The people of that bent, unfortunately, are people that have to attract attention.”

For all he knew, he added, Mr R. E. Scoggin — the self-acclaimed Klan member i — was a good Shriner. He had not met the man. There were no Shriner rules about not belonging to other organisations, but in

this case it might be advisable for the South Carolina temple member to stop distributing Klan cards. Referring to a story in “The Press” yesterday, Mr Mayes said: “I’ve been laughing about it all day because it's so far removed from what 99 per cent of our members think and believe that it’s hardly worthy iof discussion.”

Mr Mayes emphasised that there were no bars to patients of Shriner hospitals on the basis of colour or screed.