Word: klan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...most mysterious figures in the civil rights protests of the 1960s. A ne'er-do-well and braggart, he drifted from job to job, working as an ambulance driver, bartender and nightclub bouncer. But he also was the FBI'S most important informant on the Ku Klux Klan's violent activities in Alabama. Rowe provided the bureau with information on the Klansmen's beating of black Freedom Riders at a Birmingham bus depot in 1961. He tipped off agents about a bomb shortly before it went off at a Birmingham church, killing four young black girls...
Just before noon, 600 blacks step out from the Springhill Missionary Baptist Church on Green Street and head silently for the courthouse, walking three abreast and carrying signs reading SMASH THE KLAN. A police helicopter whirls overhead. The 65-member Tupelo police force is stationed along the route, looking like a seedy version of a TV SWAT team. Most carry 12-gauge pump guns or rifles (some with bayonets), and several big old boys are bulging out of blue bulletproof vests. They look mad. "I walked point for 31 days in a row in Viet Nam," says a young black...
...Number of KKK members, of course, is secret. No wonder. Most of these Klansmen are older men, and the Klan's recent attempts to pretend that it is a political lobby like any other have been a transparent failure. "Let's face it," Wilkinson later tells me privately. "We had a couple of million members in the '20s, but we haven't got anywhere near that now. We just want to get the same attention from the press that the blacks...
...courthouse, Mississippi Grand Dragon Douglas Coen, a shipping executive from nearby Saucier, tells the crowd, "The Klan is here today, it was here yesterday, and it will be here tomorrow." Applause. "The Klan will be here forever!" Coen screams, and a few spectators hoot. Wilkinson takes the podium and is saying the KKK is basically a Christian organization when a white man yells, "You symbolize hatred! How can you call yourselves Christians?" Suddenly the crowd rolls forward as several Klansmen rush the heckler. The police grab him quickly. A local newspaperman is arrested too, for taking pictures of the arrest...
...evening rally starts at 7:30 in the auditorium at the edge of town. Police and Klansmen guard the entrance. A country band is playing old standbys (All My Trials, Heartaches by the Number), and every time they play Dixie everyone stands up. Klan ladies in robes are selling hot dogs and Pepsi. Sometimes they sell KKK Tee shirts ($5) and belt buckles ($6), but tonight they simply hand out the KKK gift catalogue ("We have 400 items...