Word: klan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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According to Klan watchers, the growth in membership is mostly a reaction to busing for school desegregation and to affirmative action, which Klansmen figure gives blacks an advantage over them in competing for jobs. David Chalmers, a historian at the University of Florida and author of Hooded Americanism, observes that most Klansmen have a resentful sense of being unfairly excluded from the middle class. Says he: "By joining the Klan and defending Americanism, they confer on themselves the status that society has denied them...
Today's K.K.K. units are also trying to recruit children. In more than a dozen cities throughout the country, Klan sympathizers have distributed leaflets to high school students asking: "Are you 'fed up to here' with black, chicano and [Oriental] criminals who break into lockers and steal your clothes and wallets?" The solution, according to the leaflet, is to join the Klan Youth Corps. At a K.K.K. summer camp in Jefferson County, Ala., robed counselors teach girls and boys ages ten to 18 the fundamentals of race supremacy and how to use guns. Near Decatur...
Although all Klansmen subscribe to the same racist beliefs, they are fractured among at least a dozen factions. The oldest and largest is the 3,500-member United Klans of America, led by Robert Shelton, 50, a former tire salesman from Tuscaloosa, Ala. But his group has been waning in influence in the past few years. The South's most visible klavern now is the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which has about 2,500 gun-toting, violence-talking members. Their imperial wizard is Bill Wilkinson, 36, a former electrical contractor from Denham Springs...
...slickest faction is the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which is headed by David Duke of Metairie, La. His 2,000 followers have tried to make racism more respectable by publicly condemning violence and recruiting a variety of middle-class professionals. Duke, 29, a smooth-talking graduate of Louisiana State University, ran for the Louisiana state senate, coming in second in a four-man race last week...
...enforcement officials and civil rights leaders are increasingly alarmed about the Klan, but they do not know what to do about it. Because of new federal restrictions designed to protect civil rights, the FBI no longer keeps as close watch on Klan activities as it once did. Says an FBI official: "We now cannot infiltrate them just because they are standing on a street corner and shouting, no matter how violent or antisocial their rhetoric." Other observers are persuaded that Klan strength will decline only when the people who are now attracted to it get a bigger share...