Word: klan
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...third puzzling revelation of the week, Birmingham detectives disclosed that they had also questioned about the bombing two former Klan members: Collie Leroy Wilkins Jr., 33, and Eugene Thomas, 54, who served ten years in prison for their part in the Liuzzo killing. They too wanted to switch the subject, to the Liuzzo shooting. For the first time, they claimed that Rowe killed the woman. Rowe has admitted being present at the murder, but insists that he only pretended to shoot a pistol at her, while Wil kins fired the fatal shot. But Wilkins and Thomas waited for twelve years...
...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...
...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...