Word: klaverns
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What can a hate group do to clean up its dirty image? The Reidsville klavern of North Carolina's Ku Klux Klan thought it had come up with a tidy answer: it offered to join the state's Adopt-a-Highway program, under which 5,000 civic and social organizations have agreed to keep 10,000 miles of state highways clear of litter. At least four times a year, the Klansmen would exchange their white robes for orange vests and pick up trash along three miles of U.S. 158, east of Reidsville. In return, a sign noting their good deeds...
...Klan is atypical of the groups that have been involved with the program," explained James Sughrue, a DOT official. No other volunteers, except a cub-scout pack considered too young to be on the roads, had been turned down for the highway-cleanup project. Rockey Chapman, head of the klavern, admitted he wanted "that sign to advertise my group." He asked the state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union to sue for a reversal of the rejection. The A.C.L.U. was expected to do so on the ground that the KKK was the victim of discrimination based on its "political...
...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, La., who travels from city to city in a private plane, recruiting members and staging demonstrations...
...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...
...Owner Herbert Guest, 37, a short, fat gun fancier; textile Yarn Plucker Cecil Myers, 25, who strutted around Athens toting a pistol; Machinist Joseph Sims, 41, a quick-tempered segregationist who was arrested in March for flourishing a pistol during a Negro demonstration. All are members of Clarke County Klavern...