What is klanwatch

Much of the book focuses on the efforts of Morris Dees, a young attorney who defended one of the assaulted protestors in the now-infamous Decatur, Alabama, incident in which Klansmen attacked those demonstrating on behalf of a retarded black man accused of raping a white woman.

Stanton's narrative unfolds against the backdrop of the Klan's resurgence during the late 70's and 80's. He also introduces some of the far right's more frightening celebrities, including lynching enthusiasts, Aryan paramilitary instructors, and idealogues who mix quasi-Nazi teachings with Christian scripture.

Stanton resorts to too much tedious verbatim trial dialogue but rebounds with a chilling description of the moment when a murder victim's mother and the Klansman who killed him confront each other. However, he forfeits a fine opportunity to probe the minds of the villains whose inner workings obviously fascinate him.

An adequately documented advocate's perspective that is more a detailed synopsis than an in-depth study. Much of the book focuses on the efforts of Morris Dees, a young attorney read more. The book focuses primarily on two cases: a set of conspiracy charges against Klansmen who attacked a march in Decatur, Georgia, and the SPLC's groundbreaking victory in a civil suit against an Alabama klan organization.

Stanton's matter-of-fact style and strict chronology undermine much of the possible dramatic tension, and the book is short on analysis. He might have pursued, for instance, his suggestions about the complicated relations of the FBI and the klan thus supplementing the discussion in Michael R.

Nevertheless, this is a valuable account of an important confrontation. For public and academic libraries. No redistribution permitted. The book focuses primarily on two cases: a set of conspiracy charges against Klansmen who attacked a march in Decatur, Georgia, and the SPLC's read more.

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Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. Gathering Storm also promoted gun control, and argued that the Second Amendment guarantees no individual right. Schlesinger, Jr. Mainstream press coverage of the SPLC has generally been extremely favorable; Dees is subject of an admiring made-for-television movie biography, "Line of Fire", in which Corbin Bernson portrays Dees.

The Advertiser suggested that the SPLC preyed on gullible northern donors by creating vastly exaggerated pictures of the prevalence and danger of barely viable groups like the Ku Klux Klan. According to the Advertiser , many non-white former employees of the SPLC complained about racial discrimination, racial slurs, or condescension within the organization. Laird Wilcox, a scholar who studies political extremist organizations of both the right and the left, and the organizations which oppose them, offers a different critique: "The SPLC tends to view their critics and the groups they hate as essentially subhuman The SPLC's annually-released lists of hate groups, militias, and Patriot movement groups and leaders has not always been accurate in its characterizations.

For example, Bob Glass, a Jewish owner of a gun store in Longmont , Colorado , was labeled an anti-semite. Groups interested in Norse mythology have been labeled as neo-Nazis; groups interested in promoting Southern culture and romantic views of the Confederacy have been called racist. Militia and Patriot groups--and even mainstream political conservatives -- have been subjected to repeated innuendo claiming that they are violent or that they promote violence.

Barbara Dority president of Humanists of Washington, executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censorship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anticensorship Taskforce criticizes the SPLC for using guilt by association, and for reporting its ideological opponents to law enforcement agencies, while simultaneously proclaiming its belief in "tolerance.

He was a quiet, unassuming man who worked his entire life on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi. Members of the cottonmouth Moccasin Gang, a faction of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, conspired to kill the year-old man on the false premise that he favored school integration. They had an ulterior motive. They hoped the murder would lure Dr. Gang members James Jones, Claude Fuller and Ernest Avants took White to a secluded area outside Natchez on the pretext that they were looking for a lost dog.

There, fuller shot and killed the unsuspecting man. Wracked with guilt, Jones admitted his role in the slaying. Despite his admission, the jury was unable to reach a verdict against him and set him free.

Local authorities arrested Avants, but he was found innocent after arguing that he had shot a dead body. Fuller, the triggerman, was never tried.

The judge found in favor of the plaintiff, marking the first time civil damages were assessed against the Klan for the actions of its members. During the late s, it looked as if the Klan was heading for a revival to match its third incarnation during the Civil Rights struggle. A former neo-Nazi, Duke formed the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in and traveled the country soliciting radio and television appearances. Duke was articulate, well-dressed and willing to conceal his extreme racism for the general public.

Klan groups that had been inactive for years also saw their membership growing. Duke and others tried to translate the newfound attention into political power, with some surprising results but little real success.

Duke ran for the Louisiana Senate in and received a third of the vote. Congress, but lost the general election. Defeated for the state Senate again in , Duke lost his hold on the Knights when a rival Klan leader accused him of offering to sell his membership list. Don Black, who replaced Duke in , tried unsuccessfully to sustain the image of Klan respectability.

Black had been in charge of the Knights for only a year when he was arrested with other Klansmen and neo-Nazis for attempting to overthrow the government of Dominica. By that time, there was another Klan leader receiving national attention — not for his apparent moderation but for his brazen militancy. Invisible Empire Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson liked to appear in newspaper photos with a sneer on his face and two bodyguards by his side, each holding up submachine guns for the camera.

The children learned early on the art of intimidation. In one incident, about a dozen teenagers wearing Invisible Empire T-shirts burned an old school bus while assembled Klan members cheered. The most notable was a campaign of harassment against blacks in the town of Decatur, Alabama.

In , a year-old retarded black man named Tommy Lee Hines was convicted of raping three white women. Blacks in the community launched several protests, arguing that Hines lacked the mental capacity to plan the rapes. Sensing racial tensions were ripe for an explosion; Wilkinson took his Klan members into the area and held a series of rallies that drew from 3, to 10, participants.

Two blacks and two Klansmen were shot in the ensuing battle. Louis Beam, a grand dragon under David Duke, was developing his own confrontational style in Texas. Beam, a Vietnam veteran, instructed his Texas Knights in guerrilla warfare during the late s and formed a paramilitary arm of the Knights called the Texas emergency reserve.

When tensions developed between American and Vietnamese fishermen in Galveston Bay, Beam offered paramilitary training to the American fishermen. After burning a Vietnamese boat and issuing threats against the refugee fishermen, the Texas Knights were sued and subsequently ordered to end the harassment and the paramilitary training. In , a group of Klansmen and Nazis planned a confrontation with members of the communist Workers Party, who were demonstrating against the Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina.

They were acquitted of criminal charges but later found civilly liable for the killings. While they were on trial, another group of Klan and Nazi members were arrested for plotting to bomb parts of Greensboro if their friends were found guilty.

Members of that group were convicted and sentenced to prison. At the same time Klan organizations experienced a surge in membership; there was heightened public attention to another growing white supremacist faction in America, the neo-Nazis.

These were white Americans who, like the Klan, believed in the superiority of the white race but dressed in military-like uniforms instead of robes. They revered Adolf Hitler as their hero.

Like the Klan, the neo-Nazis were small in number and highly fragmented. The two groups pursued similar, if somewhat paradoxical, courses during this period: striving for mainstream respectability while at the same time practicing confrontational tactics.

Politics was the arena where the Nazis hoped to establish a broad following. In , three National Socialist Party of America NSPA members made surprisingly strong, but ultimately unsuccessful showings in their campaigns for city aldermen in Chicago. The most astounding election results came in when NSPA leader Harold Covington drew 56, votes in his losing bid for attorney general of North Carolina. The same year, Nazi Gerald r. Carlson won the republican nomination for a Michigan congressional seat.

Although Carlson was defeated in the general election, he polled 32 percent of the vote. The youths had gathered to counter a black protest against inadequate public housing, and when the protesters failed to show up, they attacked the police and passing motorists with rocks and bottles. An off-duty police officer was shot and at least cars were damaged.

The next summer, NSPA members led another group of 1, angry whites to confront black demonstrators in Marquette Park. A riot erupted, and 16 police officers were injured. The march was abandoned after Collin received permission to use a Chicago park, but the NSPA had already gained enormous publicity from the lawsuit. By the late s and early s, Klansmen and Nazis were beginning to see the value of cooperating with each other.

The combination of the Klan, with its historical foothold in American society, and the Nazis, with a modern militancy that appealed to many younger ideologues, resulted in a racist front whose potential for danger was evident by the early s. The Nazi influence radicalized traditional Klansmen. In secret camps across the country, white supremacists of all descriptions began training in the use of assault weapons, grenades, rocket launchers and explosives — all in preparation for what they believed would be a nationwide race war.

In , more than 1, people learned advanced guerrilla warfare techniques at an annual paramilitary training camp sponsored by the Christian Patriots Defense League in Louisville, Illinois, which had ties to the white supremacist pseudo-religion, Christian Identity.

Aggressive law enforcement and new legislation in many states halted much of the paramilitary training of the early s, but white supremacists continued to advocate arms training and preparation for a race war. In the span of a decade, the white supremacist movement had expanded in so many directions that it no longer made sense to talk about the Ku Klux Klan alone.

In addition to Nazis, there were survivalists, Identity churches and Posse Comitatus factions — the most diverse collection of white supremacist groups this country has ever seen. These dangerous allies would evolve into the new hate movement of the s.

The story of a white supremacist group formed in North Carolina in the s epitomizes the evolution of the Klan from traditional rituals to more militant underground tactics. Glenn Miller was a member of the national Socialist party of America, a neo-Nazi group, when he participated in the confrontation in Greensboro that resulted in the deaths of five anti-Klan protesters. Believing that the swastika would not appeal to large numbers of white Southerners, Miller founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan a year later.

He drew members from other less active Klan groups in the state and began building a network of klaverns local units. He staged well-publicized marches with his members dressed in the traditional Klan robes; he started a newspaper, The White Carolinian , and solicited members through numerous radio talk show broadcasts.

During , Miller and several other Carolina Knights ran for public office. Despite losing, they generated a flurry of publicity for the group. They operated 27 taped message hotlines, which delivered a racist recruitment spiel. But the marches, taped messages and political campaigns were only one side of the story.

Miller, like other Klan leaders in the early s, began to see the value of more militant tactics. He maintained his alliance with the national Socialist party and held joint meetings with other white supremacists in North Carolina. His group engaged in paramilitary training, which he publicized in order to attract more young male recruits. He published descriptions of the training in his newspaper, complete with photos of armed and camouflaged Klansmen, as if he had nothing to hide. But in fact, he did.

For Glenn Miller, the weapon training was much more than a clever recruitment tool. It was part of a long-range plan for a total white revolution.

In , Glenn Miller changed the name of the Carolina Knights to the Confederate Knights and preached the need to secure the Southern United States for a white homeland.

As the group adopted a more militant image, Miller delighted in issuing wildly provocative statements. But the public front was mild compared to the covert preparations for violence that had preoccupied him for years.

Not only was Miller conducting the training he wrote about in his newspaper, he authorized his second-in-command to purchase a whole array of weapons that had been stolen from military bases. They included dynamite, claymore mines, grenades, plastic explosives, AR rifles, gas masks, night scopes, chemical warfare items and light-weight anti-tank weapons capable of piercing up to 11 inches of armor. Miller also hired a military weapons expert to train his men in small teams at night, sometimes as often as twice a week.

In late , Miller hooked the Carolina Knights into the Aryan Nations Liberty Net, a computer bulletin board which listed activities of various radical white supremacists around the country. In , Miller, his lieutenant Stephen Miller no relation , and their organization, now renamed the white patriot party, were found guilty of violating the order that banned them from conducting paramilitary training.

But while they were out on bond waiting for their appeal to be heard, they took their radical strategy to its extreme. Several months after his conviction, Stephen Miller and four other white patriots were arrested after they plotted to rob a Fayetteville, North Carolina, restaurant, buy stolen military explosives, blow up the Southern poverty Law Center and kill Law Center Director Morris Dees.

Two of the conspirators pleaded guilty; Stephen Miller and another were convicted and sentenced to prison. The fifth man was acquitted. In his declaration, Miller assigned a point system for the assassination of key minority, government and civil rights leaders, with Dees heading the list. Ten days later, Miller was captured in Missouri along with three other White Patriots and a cache of weapons that included grenades, pipe bombs, automatic rifles, shotguns, pistols and crossbows.

Miller, who had become a hero in the eyes of the most militant white supremacists for his bold lawlessness, was suddenly in serious trouble. Already saddled with the contempt of court conviction, he now faced bond, weapons, and potential civil rights violations.

In a move that shocked his former allies, Miller agreed to plead guilty to one count of illegal weapons possession and testify against his former colleagues in the white supremacist movement. He has since served as a government witness against white supremacists in several trials, including the seditious conspiracy trial against 10 top leaders of the extremist movement.

The former white patriot party members believed that their targets were gay. In seven years, Glenn Miller had taken a small band of Klansmen, turned them into an underground paramilitary army, educated them in the ideology of revolution, and inspired their crimes of intimidation, threats, thefts and murder.

Although they were numerically a tiny group, the white patriots demonstrated the primary lesson of recent white supremacist history. The danger lies not in the length of the membership roll but in the zeal of the members. In her dream, there was a steel gray casket in her living room. Who was the dead man laid out in a gray suit?

The first thing she did, she later said, was to look in the other bedroom, where her youngest child slept. Though Michael watched television with his cousins in the evening, he had left before midnight. Donald drank two cups of coffee and moved to her couch, where she waited for the new day.

To keep busy, she went outside to rake her small yard. As she worked, a woman delivering insurance policies came by. Shortly before 7 a. Donald brightened — Michael was alive, she thought. Around his neck was a perfectly tied noose with 13 loops. On a front porch across the street, watching police gather evidence, were members of the United Klans of America, once the largest and, according to civil rights lawyers, the most violent of the Ku Klux Klans.

Lawmen learned only much later, however, what Bennie Jack Hays, the year-old Titan of the United Klans, was saying as he stood on the porch that morning. That week, a jury had been struggling to reach a verdict in the case of a black man accused of murdering a white policeman. The killing had occurred in Birmingham, but the trial had been moved to Mobile. To Hays — the second-highest Klan official in Alabama — and his fellow members of Unit of the United Klans, the presence of blacks on the jury meant that a guilty man would go free.

Michael Donald was alone, walking home, when Knowles and Hays spotted him. They pulled over, asked him for directions to a night club, then pointed the gun at him and ordered him to get in. They drove to the next county. When they stopped, Michael begged them not to kill him, and then tried to escape.

Henry Hays and Knowles chased him, caught him, hit him with a tree limb more than a hundred times, and when he was no longer moving, wrapped the rope around his neck. For good measure, they cut his throat. Around the time Mrs. Hays, who received the death sentence, is that rarest of Southern killers: a white man slated to die for the murder of a black. At that point, a grieving mother might have been expected to issue a brief statement of gratitude and regret and then return to her mourning.

Beulah Mae Donald would not settle for that. Donald file a civil suit against the members of Unit and the United Klans of America. Donald and her attorney, State Senator Michael A. In February , after 18 months of work by Dees and his investigators, the case went to trial. Although Mrs. And she cried silently when Knowles stepped off the witness stand to demonstrate how he helped kill her son.

Donald was more composed when former Klansmen testified that they had been directed by Klan leaders to harass, intimidate and kill blacks.

Just four days after the trial had started; it was time for the closing arguments. At the lunch break on that day, Knowles called Dees to his cell. He wanted, he said, to speak in court. When court resumed, the judge nodded to Knowles. Everything I said is true I was acting as a Klansman when I done this. And I hope that people learn from my mistake I do hope you decide a judgment against me and everyone else involved.

Then Knowles turned to Beulah Mae Donald, and, as they locked eyes for the first time, he begged for her forgiveness. Whatever it takes — I have nothing. But I will have to do it.

And if it takes me the rest of my life to pay it, any comfort it may bring, I will. The judge wiped away a tear. Donald said. In May , the Klan turned over to Mrs. And on the strength of the evidence presented at the civil trial, the Mobile district attorney was able to indict Bennie Hays and his son-in-law, Frank Cox, for murder.

By the late s, the Klan was once again in decline. The resurgence of a decade earlier had fizzled, and the Klan was down to around 5, members — much smaller than during the Civil Rights era and a mere fraction of its size during its heyday in the s.

The ebb in Klan fortunes continued into the s, and observers of the Invisible Empire began to question whether the organization would play any significant role in the extremist movement in the 21st century. The fear of litigation made Klan groups leery of organizing into chapters, naming officers and expanding across state lines. The Klan also reeled under the weight of internal squabbles over money and power.

The Klan had always been rife with petty infighting and jealousy among its leaders, and this natural inclination toward discord was exacerbated during the lean years of the s and s. Further dividing the movement was a disagreement over tactics: Some factions favored a cleaned-up organization that emphasized public relations, while rivals sought to revive the more militant tactics of earlier Klan incarnations.

But competition from other extremist groups was the real drag on Klan membership and influence. Racism and bigotry still existed in the United States in the latter part of the 20th century; the Klan just no longer seemed a relevant vehicle for expressing it. In the s, many extremists, who once would have gravitated to the Klan, joined the anti-government Patriot movement, especially its militia wing. The philosophy of the Patriot movement, as well as its commitment to armed paramilitary training, had more appeal than the worn-out rhetoric of the Klan.

This legacy of hate was a testament to the power of the Klan and its enduring influence for over a century. Civil lawsuits had a chilling effect on the activity of many Klan groups. Klan outfits toned down their rhetoric and propaganda, altered their recruiting tactics, and banned weapons, alcohol and drugs from their rallies and meetings. The Southern Poverty Law center, which filed the suit on behalf of Mrs. Donald, used this legal strategy against another Klan group with an equally sordid history of violence.

Over the years, the members of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had been convicted of crimes ranging from cross burnings and bombings to assaults and murder.

By the summer of , the Invisible Empire was defunct as a consequence of settling the lawsuit. The century-old Macedonia Baptist church, located near Bloomville, South Carolina, burned to the ground on June 21, , the night after another black church, Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in nearby Greeleyville, was destroyed by fire.

The arsons were among a string of over 30 suspicious fires at black or predominantly black churches from While lawsuits have a proven history of disrupting and even disbanding white supremacist organizations, they also deliver a powerful warning to others in the movement — hate violence can be expensive. A series of internal disagreements over leadership and tactics further decimated the Klan in the closing decades of the 20th century.

Klan groups historically were rife with infighting and jealousy, but strong figures usually emerged to bridge the chasms and provide direction. In the early s, Robb won invaluable publicity by appearing on nationwide television talk shows and in a Time magazine article on the hate movement.

Aside from Duke, no modern Klan leader was more adept at exploiting television than Robb. In , the irreverent television series, TV Nation , aired a segment that lampooned Robb and his followers. Later that year, the Knights splintered, and Robb found himself scrambling desperately for members.

The schism gave birth to a militant offshoot with strong neo-Nazi leanings called the federation of Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Novak said his group would be more militant than the Knights and would avoid the limelight Robb so avidly sought. After the split, Novak operated quietly behind the scenes, organizing rallies on private property and recruiting. But the militant Klan umbrella organization Novak hoped the federation would become never materialized.

As Klan influence faded in the s and s, the white supremacist movement began to chart a new course. The Order, a terrorist group that committed murder, armed robbery and counterfeiting in the early s, became the new standard for bold action on behalf of white supremacy. The Klan in contrast looked plodding, cowardly, and even foolish.

The old-line, traditional Klan came to be viewed as outdated and out-of-touch, all talk and no action. Militants left the Ku Klux Klan in droves. To that end, they aggressively pursued the young, ruthless, neo-Nazi Skinheads and recruited heavily on high school and college campuses.

Eager to prove their courage as radical racists, Skinheads quickly became the most violent of all white supremacists. Prominent white supremacists also sought to manipulate and exploit the anti-government fervor of the militias that sprang up across the nation and became the most visible of the extremist organizations in the s.

Some of these groups had ties to racist groups or leaders, or had expressed racist or anti-Semitic beliefs. Camouflaged fatigues may have replaced the Klan robes, but hatred of Jews, blacks, immigrants and other minorities continued to infect the American body politic. As the end of the century neared, there was no single, monolithic Klan, if indeed there ever was one. The organization was in tatters, its decreasing membership scattered in scores of squabbling factions across the country, some with no more than a handful of adherents.

The once powerful Invisible Empire was gone. The most militant activists, such as Louis Beam see accompanying article , Robert Miles now deceased and Tom Metzger, left the Klan years before and assumed leadership roles in other white supremacist groups.

These periods of growth have one common characteristic: they were eras of great social upheaval when the dominant white population felt threatened. In each of these eras, as the perceived attack receded, the Klan faded. And yet it has never completely disappeared. History would suggest a continued role for the Klan.

For over a century, the Klan has always appeared on the stage whenever white Americans felt threatened by people different than themselves. There should be no doubt that all means short of armed conflict have been exhausted. Louis Ray Beam personifies the evolution of the racist right in the last quarter of the 20th century from a movement led by the Ku Klux Klan to one where neo-Nazis and armed militias set the agenda.

Beam has been at the forefront of this transformation: where he has led, extremists have followed. As a Klansman in the s, he was a vocal supporter of paramilitary training.

When the Klan began to stagger under the weight of lawsuits and internal struggles in the s, he transferred his allegiance to other white supremacist groups. His radicalism influenced the neo-Nazi movement that spawned violent terrorist outfits. In the early s, Beam devised the strategy for the anti-government patriot movement and its armed militia wing. Throughout his career, Beam has been a fierce advocate of violent insurrection.

His willingness to carry out his deeply-held beliefs sets him apart from other leaders in the white supremacist movement whose actions fall short of their rhetoric.