United Klans of America

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United Klans of America Inc. (UKA) was one of the largest Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States. The organization was headed by Robert Shelton . The UKA peaked in popularity in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was considered the most violent clan organization of its time. The headquarters of the UKA was outside of Tuscaloosa and was called the Anglo-Saxon Club . The clan is charged with the murder of teenager Michael Donald , a bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham that killed four young girls, and the murder of Viola Gregg Liuzzo (1965). In addition to Robert Shelton, well-known members of the clan were Thomas Blanton, Jr., Bobby Frank Cherry, Herman Cash, Robert Chambliss, Bennie Hays, Henry Hays and James Knowles. Robert Shelton died of a heart attack in 2003 at the age of 73 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama . Many former members are now organized in other sound groups.

history

During the US civil rights movement in the southern United States in 1960, members of the United States Klan and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) began working together to suppress change. In July 1961, Robert Shelton , son of a KKK member, moved to Alabama after being discharged from the Air Force . He got a leadership position in the Klan and was promoted to Imperial Wizard after he united the "Alabama Knights" with the Invisible Empire , the United Klans and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of America and the combined organization called the "United Klans of America Inc. "was there. Georgia Knights, and Carolina Units.

By 1965 the UKA had grown to 26,000 to 33,000 active members, making it the largest clan organization in the world. The organization published The Fiery Cross newsletter , which was printed in Swartz , Louisiana . However, after the organization attracted attention through criminal acts and Shelton himself was sentenced to a year in prison in 1969 for disobeying Congress , the number of members fell. In the early 1970s, membership dropped to between 3,500 and 4,000, but this did not reduce the number of violent acts committed by the Klan. At the beginning of 1980 there were only 900 members.

Bomb attack on 16th Street Baptist Church

The 16th Street Baptist Church in 2005

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was a place where many members of the civil rights movement met. On a Sunday in September 1963, a bomb exploded in a church, killing four young girls. 11-year-old Denise McNair and three 14-year-olds Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins died in the blast and twenty other people were injured. Addie Mae Collins' sister lost an eye in the assassination attempt. Witnesses testified that a white man hid a box under the church stairs after getting out of a Chevrolet . Police arrested Robert Chambliss , a UKA member, after being identified by a witness. He was charged with murder and the illegal possession of explosives. However, Chambliss was acquitted of murder charges in October of that year. He was only fined $ 100 for possession of explosives and served a six-month prison term. He was retried after Attorney Bill Baxley found that evidence from an FBI investigation was not used in the trial. The verdict for the murder of the four girls was not made until 1977. At 73 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He spent eight years in prison, where he died at the age of 81. He denied involvement in the crime until his death. The crime was not solved until May 16, 2000. A court ruled that the attack was carried out by UKA members Robert Chambliss, Thomas Edwin Blanton, Jr. and Bobby Frank Cherry using a total of 19 sticks of dynamite . In 2001 Thomas Blanton, Jr. was sentenced to life imprisonment, followed by Bobby Frank Cherry in 2002.

The murder of Viola Liuzzo

In 1965, Viola Gregg Liuzzo , 39 years old, decided to take action against racial segregation in the south. She went to Alabama and helped the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) drive civil rights demonstrators from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama . On March 25, 1965, she was driving 19-year-old African American Leroy Moton when members of the UKA saw her car stop at a red light. They followed their car, passed it, and shot. Leroy survived the shots and pretended to be dead, but Liuzzo was fatally hit. Collie Wilkins, William Orville Eaton, Eugene Thomas, and Gary Thomas Rowe were arrested the next day. Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas each received 10-year sentences. Rowe was the undercover agent uncovers the FBI.

Lynch murder of Michael Donald

Street in Mobile dedicated to Michael Donald

A trial of a black man in Alabama resulted in the lynching of 19-year-old Michael Donald on March 21, 1981 . Josephus Andersonan in Mobile was charged with the murder of a police officer, but was acquitted by a jury during the trial . UKA member Bennie Hays blamed the jury for the acquittal, as it was largely made up of African Americans. From this, Hays derived the right to kill a black man. On March 21, he, his son Henry Hays, and James Knowles, another member of the clan, drove the streets in search of a black man. They met Michael Donald and forced him into the car. They then hanged the man.

The police tried to add the murder to the drug scene, but Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, defended her son against the allegations. She also spoke to Jesse Jackson , but it was Thomas Figures, Mobile District Attorney, who helped her out. Figures notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which eventually took over the case. Shortly thereafter, Knowles confessed to the crime. In 1983 James Knowles, a member of Mobile UKAs Klavern 900, was convicted of the murder of Michael Donald. He received a life sentence. During the trial, he testified that he and Henry Hays killed Donald "to show the strength of the clan in Alabama."

Hays was also indicted in the same year and found guilty, with Knowles as the main witness. He was sentenced to death and, after a lengthy legal battle, executed in June 1997 . It was the first time in 80 years that a "white man" had been executed in Alabama for the murder of an African American.

In 1987 the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) sued the United Klans of America as those responsible for the lynching in a civil court on behalf of the victim's family. The court upheld the SPLC and sentenced the UKA to $ 7 million in damages. Since the Klan could not raise this sum, the headquarters of the Klan had to be left to Donald's mother, who eventually sold the property. As a result, the United Klans of America Inc. were financially ruined and declared their official dissolution in 1987.

further activities

In the spring of 1979, 20 members of the United Klans of America were imprisoned in Birmingham, Alabama for several violent crimes. They are said to have shot at the houses of members of the NAACP . Three members pleaded guilty and ten others were found guilty.

In 1998, Bonnie Jouhari sued Roy E. Frankhouser , UKA's former Grand Dragon in Pennsylvania . Frankhouser allegedly threatened her while working for the Reading-Berks Human Relations Council. Her job was to help other people who were discriminated against. Frankhouser threatened her and her daughter, Pilar D. Horton, and after many attempts to bring him to justice, the SPLC took on the woman's legal status. Frankhouser was sentenced to community service, had to apologize publicly and undergo anti-aggressiveness training.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Arthur Gerringer: Terrorism: From One Millennium to the next . iuniverse, 2002, pp. 221-222.
  2. ↑ a b c d Abby Ferber: White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy . Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p. 176.
  3. ^ A b c d e Ted Robert Gurr: Violence in America: The History of Crime . Sage, 2004, pp. 142-143.
  4. ↑ Lawsuits prove to be a big gun in anti-Klan arsenal. In: The Boston Globe. 17th June 1993.
  5. ↑ a b c Stephen Atkins: The Encyclopedia of Modern American Extremists and Extremist Groups . Greenwood Press, 2002, p. 302.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g William Wines: Ethics, Law, and Business . Routledge, 2005, p. 158.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Emergence of the UKA. Anti-Defamation League , 2007, archived from the original on November 10, 2007 ; Retrieved September 18, 2007 .
  8. ↑ a b c d e 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing: Forty Years Later, Birmingham Still Struggles with Violent Past. Retrieved October 20, 2008 .
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Effects of the Ku Klux Klan. Archived from the original on March 16, 2009 ; Retrieved October 15, 2008 .
  10. ^ The Ku Klux Klan Legacy of Hate: United Klans of America. Anti-Defamation League , 2000, archived from the original on September 26, 2007 ; Retrieved September 18, 2007 .
  11. ^ Viola Gregg Liuzzo. In: Encyclopedia of Alabama. 2007, accessed October 16, 2008 .
  12. ↑ Donald v. United Klans of America ( Memento of February 6, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ Morris Dees, Steve Fiffer: Hate on Trial: The Case Against America's Most Dangerous Neo-Nazi . Villard Books, 1993, p. 11.
  14. ↑ a b c Jouhari / Horton v. United Klans of America / Frankhouser ( Memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  15. ↑ David Bernstein: You Can't Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws . Cato Institute, 2003, p. 74.