Ku Klux Klan has fallen on hard times in South

Press, 20 October 1987, Page 23

Ku Klux Klan has fallen on hard times in South

By

STRAT DOUTHAT

NZPA-AP Atlanta Once a mighty southern United States Institution whose ' hooded members staged gruesome lynchings and socialised with powerful politicians, the Ku Klux Klan has fallen on hard times in the land of its birth. Klan watchers across the South, and even K.K.K. members themselves, say the so-called "invisible empire” is at its lowest ebb in decades. They largely attribute the klan’s dwindling influence and shrinking membership to the Federal Government’s legal campaign against racial violence and a rash of successful civil suits filed on behalf of K.K.K. victims. The klan’s most crushing setback came in February when an all-white jury in Mobile, Alabama, ordered Robert Shelton’s United Klans of America to pay SUS 7 million ($10.5 million) in damages to the mother of a young black man hanged from a tree after his throat was slit by klansmen in 1981. “That was stunning,” conceded Imperial Wizard James Venable of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. "Robert Shelton and the U.K.A. have all but been put out of business. I’ve been in the klan since the 19205, and I never thought I’d live to see something like that.” Venable, a lawyer, aged 82, has held a klan rally every Labour Day week-

end since 1930. He says he can’t remember when things looked worse for the K.K.K., a white supremacy organisation with roots to the previous century. “All these suits have everybody afraid to turn round for fear we’ll be taken to court,” he said. "This last summer was one of the quietest, as far as klan activity goes, I can ever remember.” In the Alabama case, the U.K.A., for years the strongest and most violent of the 40-odd klan factions in the country, was first hit with the convictions of two members in the murder of Michael * Donald, aged 19. Then came the civil suit, in which lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Centre won a landmark judgment from the white jurors, who held that the U.K.A., along with six of its members, was financially liable for Donald’s lynching. "It was an especially important decision because it marked the first time a klan organisation ever has been held liable for the actions of its members,” said Morris Dees, executive director of the S.P.L.C., a nonprofit law firm based in Montgomery. The Donald case, in which the U.K.A. had to deed the title of its Tuscaloosa office building to the dead man’s 67-year-old mother, Beulah Mae Donald, was one of several S.P.L.C. triumphs

over the klan in recent years. "These suits and others have stemmed from our Klanwatch Project, which we started in 1980 in an effort to drain the klan’s financial resources,” Mr Dees said. Dave Holland, Grand Dragon of the Atlantabased White Knights of Georgia, says the S.P.L.C. strategy has worked to perfection. "Dees wants to keep us tied up in court and the Southern Poverty Law Centre has enough money to do it. What’s more, he works hand in hand with the Government,” Mr Holland said as he pulled on his white uniform at the Stone Mountain Labour Day rally. “Much as I despise him, I have to admit he’s a genius at what he does. It keeps us broke just paying our legal fees.” Mr Holland, a construction worker, is a defendant in a suit brought by Mr Dees against klansmen who harassed Atlanta Councilman Hosea Williams and other civil rights marchers last January in Forsyth County, Georgia. A week after that incident, 25,000 demonstrators from across the country joined Mr Williams for a second parade in Forsyth County. In August the K.K.K. staged its own march in Forsyth County and drew about 100 participants. “That just ’ shows you what a pitiful state we’re

in these days,” Venable said. “Hosea Williams can get thousands of people out to march and the klan gets 100.” He looked around at the some 400 people attending his Labour Day rally and shook his head. “Used to be we had dozens of chartered buses from all over the country bringing people in for our Labour Day rally," he said. “Why, governors used to be K.K.K. members. Now look at us.” Stuart Lewengrub of the Anti-Defamation League’s south-eastern office in Atlanta also sees the klan losing its clout “When I arrived in the South 20 years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for politicians and law enforcement officers to be Klan members, or at least open supporters,” he said in an interview. “Now, the klan has very little political influence. We think the K.K.K. is at its lowest ebb in 30 or 40 years, both nationally and in the South.” Founded in late 1865 by six former Confederate officers at Pulaski, Tennessee, the K.K.K. has had a history of ebb and flow, depending upon the prevailing social climate. Mr Dees, citing recent incidents of random racial violence, cautions that the klan has the potential to rise again. “We’ve got them on the run, but the klan is far from dead,” he said. “The hard-core klansmen are still very much there,

even if they’re not so visible at the moment And, remember, the klan leadership is now permeated with neoNazis.” Swastikas were in evidence at the Labour Day rally, where robed klansmen and participants in combat fatigues began and ended conversations by shouting "White Power” and giving the stiff-armed Nazi salute. The rally leaders said they were searching for an issue, such as busing in the 1960 s and mill closings in the 19705, to bring people back to the klan. Mr Venable recommended the klan forget about rallies and parades "unless we can get thousands of people to turn out.” “What we need to do,” he said, “is turn out at the ballot box and get the right people on to the courts and into public office, then you’ll see some changes.” Many klansmen disagree. Klanwatch observers say the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, based in North Carolina, staged dozens of small marches across the Carolinas and the Virginias this year. "This is about the only southern klan group that is maintaining a high profile at the moment,” said Bill Stanton, who directed Klanwatch until departing to write a book about the S.P.L.C.