Christopher Hitchens,
KKK
To accuse the Ku Klux Klan of conspiracy is a little like accusing Osama bin Laden of fanaticism, or the Pope of Catholicism. It is plain obvious. After all, running around in bed sheets (to hide identity, rather than to pretend to be a ghost at a fancy dress party) in the execution of sticksville plots to lynch uppity “Niggas” squares precisely with the dictionary definition of conspiracy as “a secret plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, esp. with political motivation”. What is less recognized, however, is that the Klan from the 1960s has been a terrorist organization, of which three pertinent questions can be asked:
• Did the Klan sponsor the assassination of Martin Luther King?
• Was the Klan behind the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995?
• Did the Klan, as some believe, inject popular foods and drinks to make black men impotent?
Deriving its name from “
By the end of the decade, the KKK had tens of thousands of members in the South, prominent among them the former Reb cavalry general, Nathan Bedford Forrest. Under Forrest’s headship, the Klan evolved a whole set of Masonic-like names and rituals, with the South becoming the “Invisible Empire”, and the leader the “Grand Wizard”. Each state was titled a “Realm”, headed by a “Grand Dragon”. Forrest, however, was unable to stop the KKK’s hood-long lurch towards terrorism, and in 1869 ordered the Klan to disband. The membership ignored him, and if anything ramped up its night attacks on the black community in the Southern states. With the South burning, President Ulysses Grant passed laws in 1870 and 1871 to outlaw and suppress the organization. Thousands of Klansmen went to the pen. Within a decade the Klan was merely a bad memory.
Bizarrely, the Klan was reborn by a movie,
Then, in 1925, the Klan II’s bubble burst as quickly as it had inflated. Stephenson, who was by now the Grand Dragon of twenty-two states (and a rich man on Klan membership dues), was found guilty of the rape and murder of his secretary; one of the causes of her death was from septicaemia, caused by Stephenson’s multiple bites to her body. Embarrassed Klan members could not rip up their membership cards quickly enough; by 1930, Klan membership, hit by the double whammy of the Stephenson scandal and the moneyless Depression, had sunk to 30,000. To absolutely ensure its own demise, the Klan then allied itself with Nazi groups in the USA, such as the German-American Bund, leading to accusations of disloyalty. Thirty years later, KKK membership was estimated at 3,000.
This truncated Klan turned to outright terrorism. During the Civil Rights era the Klan was implicated in a string of outrages: the assassination of NAACP member Medgar Evers in Alabama; the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; the shooting of Detroit civil rights activist Viola Gregg Liuzzo; the murder of black Army veteran Lt Colonel Lemuel Penn; the shooting of Civil Rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi in 1964.
Then there was the assassination of Martin Luther King. Dr Martin Luther King had a dream of racial harmony, but King’s dream was a nightmare for racists. At 6.11 p.m. on 4 April 1968, as he lounged on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, King was fatally shot. The shot which killed him was traced to a flophouse opposite, where a rifle was retrieved bearing the fingerprints of James Earl Ray. Two months later, after a massive manhunt, Ray was captured in London travelling under a false passport. He was extradited to Tennessee, where he was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.
Days after his sentencing, Ray began protesting his innocence, claiming he had only made an earlier confession of guilt on the advice of his lawyer, so he would avoid the possibility of execution. Numerous other observers of the case weighed in on Ray’s behalf, because aspects of the conviction did not stack up:
• Ray was a two-bit petty criminal, who somehow funded an escape to England with a false passport.
• He was not a trained sniper, but pulled off a difficult single shot to assassinate King. And the bullet from King’s body was never matched to the supposedly responsible rifle.
• The drunk who identified Ray as a denizen of the flophouse recanted when sober.
Although the 1977 House Select Committee on Assassinations disbelieved Ray’s claim that he was a guiltless patsy, it did allow the “likelihood” that Ray did not act alone. The Select Committee noted further that FBI files “revealed approximately 25 Klan-related leads” in the King assassination, but that the passage of time, conflicting testimonies, and a lack of cooperation from witnesses meant that the leads should be discounted. But two of these leads were always suggestive. First, was the evidence of diner waitress Myrtis Hendricks. The Select Committee recorded:
2. In an interview with an agent of the Dallas FBI field office on April 22, 1968, Myrtis Ruth Hendricks, accompanied by Thomas McGee, maintained she had overheard discussions of a conspiracy to kill Dr. King. Hendricks said that while working as a waitress at John’s Restaurant in Laurel, Miss., on April 2, 1968, she heard the owner, Deavours Nix, say he “had gotten a call on King”. Nix was then head of intelligence and the grand director of the Klan Bureau of Investigation for the White Knights of Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi (WKKKKOM) the most violent Klan organization during 1967 and 1968. Hendricks said that on April 3, 1968, she saw in Nix’s office a rifle with a telescopic sight in a case, which two men put in a long box in the back of a 1964 maroon Dodge. Hendricks alleged that on the following day Nix received a phone call announcing Dr. King’s death before the news was broadcast on the radio. Hendricks left Laurel shortly after Dr. King’s death to join her boyfriend, Thomas McGee, in Texas.
The Bureau had independently confirmed that John’s Restaurant was a gathering place for known Klan members and that members had been there on April 3 and 4, 1968. Nevertheless, it found no corroboration of the Hendricks rifle story. The committee’s review of FBI files concerning the White Knights’ activities uncovered informant information similar to the Hendricks’ allegation. In addition, statements attributed to Samuel H. Bowers, the imperial wizard of the WKKKKOM, in John’s Restaurant on April 5, 1968, raised the possibility of his involvement in the assassination. As a result of this information and an indication that it was not developed further in the FBI investigation, the committee pursued the lead.
Myrtis Hendricks denied the substance of her allegation when contacted by the committee. While admitting that she had worked for Nix, she said she was afraid of her former boyfriend, Thomas McGee, but refused to elaborate further. The committee’s attempt to interview FBI informants who had furnished relevant information was unsuccessful. The informants were either unavailable or uncooperative.
The Committee did note, however, that “Laurel, Miss., the scene of the alleged activities, lies between New
