National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (NKKKK) is a Ku Klux Klan organization that has been active since 1962 and was the main competitor of the United Klans of America (UKA) in the 1960s and 1970s .
history
James Venable , a Klan veteran who had been active in various Ku Klux Klan factions since 1924, resigned from the UKA in the early 1960s, for which he was the chief attorney (a so-called "Legal Clonsul"). He had accused Robert Shelton of misappropriating funds. Instead, he founded the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963 and opened their headquarters in Atlanta , Georgia . One of the basic rules of the KKK was that the clan leader, the so-called "Imperial Wizard", was elected for a period of three years. With this rule, Venable broke, who declared himself “Imperial Wizard” for life.
The clan had its wedding in the mid-1970s with membership between 7,000 and 9,000 members, spread across 33 states. Since Venable's grandparents owned parts of the Stone Mountains , which is revered as a place of worship in clan circles, the clan became known through various rallies, to which Venable also invited his competitors. The decline of the Klan began in the late 1970s, as more and more modern, more militant clans and extreme right-wing , paramilitary groups in the United States occur.
Venable headed the organization until his death in 1993. In the year of his death, he named Railton Loy , a former railroad employee, as his successor. He has since been under the pseudonym Ray Larsen Imperial Wizard of the clan and moved the headquarters of the now only a few hundred members to South Bend , Indiana . The often amateurishly organized rallies made the once powerful clan a laughing stock. In 2001, for example, the Klan members had to be protected from counter-demonstrators by the police, but they could no longer find their cars and thus got into a scuffle with the counter-demonstrators. Eight members of the clan were arrested. At a Christmas party in 2002, the Klan invited members of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and representatives of the Aryan Nations . The 50 or so guests were served pork, something the members of the Christian Identity Movement rejected as "true" descendants of the Israelites . Burning a cross and a swastika also failed due to the inability to erect and fix the two crosses.
Despite these rather comical elements, the Klan is still considered dangerous today. Such was Glen Gautier and other members of the clan involved in the murder of an apostate become member of 2003. Two other members of the clan were convicted in 2006 for bombing the Johnston County , North Carolina courthouse to kill the local sheriff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Roger Martin: AmeriKKKa. The ku-Klux-Klan and the ultra-right in the USA . Rotbuch Verlag, Hamburg 1996, ISBN 3-88022-491-9 , p. 86-89 .
- ^ A b Church of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Southern Poverty Law Center , accessed August 2, 2013 .