Word: byrds
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...time he was 20, Byrd had saved enough to marry his high school sweetheart, Erma Ora James. Occupying two rooms of a house owned by his employers, the Byrds could not even afford an ice box; they hung half an orange crate outside a window. Four years later the couple moved to Crab Orchard, W. Va., where Byrd got a better paying job, as head butcher in a supermarket...
...Byrd made what he calls "the worst mistake of my life." He joined the Ku Klux Klan. He says that back home in Crab Orchard, "everybody was in the Klan?my adoptive father, the minister, the doctors, the judges. I got attracted to the idea of the Klan because it seemed pro-American and anti-Communist...
Last week Byrd revealed to TIME Correspondent Neil Mac-Neil that it was a top Klan official who first encouraged him to run for Congress. Said Byrd: "I know it will hurt me, but I want to tell the story in full." Byrd wrote to the Imperial Wizard of the Klan in 1942, asking to join...
...received a reply from Grand Dragon J.L. Baskin, a retired Methodist minister whose Klan realm included West Virginia; Baskin encouraged Byrd to organize his own klavern of 150 members. He did just that and was then unanimously elected Exalted Cyclops, the group's leader. Impressed, the Grand Dragon told Byrd: "These people believe in you. You ought to set your cap for Congress...
...Instead, Byrd went off to work as a welder in shipyards in Baltimore and Tampa during World War II. By the time he returned to Crab Orchard after the war, he had lost interest in the Klan but not in Baskin. Byrd, who played a mighty fine, foot-stomping hillbilly fiddle, asked Baskin what he should do next. Said the Grand Dragon: "Take that fiddle and use it." In 1946 he ran for the state legislature and fiddled his way into office. Playing such tunes as Turkey in the Straw and Old Joe Clark, he drew campaign crowds and attention...