The Golden Shower theory of Trickle Down Economics, the birth of Yuppies and the death of Hippies. The Cold War, the Gang War, and the Drug War. Greed was good, consumption was in, the rich got richer, the poor poorer, and the middle class strangled between them. This is how I described the 80s in American Decades. They say the teen years, particularly high school, are some of the best years of your life. Me? I had some good times in the 80s but, in general, not a fan. And that’s before we even get into the Fourth Wave of the Klan.
Neo Nazis and the Klan showing up in force, battles between Nazis and anti-fascists, a president slow to denounce white supremacy… Yeah, I’ve been here before. In 1974 Klan membership was down to 1,500. By 1981 they had almost ten times as many members. It wasn’t the tens of thousands of the Civil Rights Era or the millions the Klan claimed during the 1920s. But the growth was exponential.
The 80s Klan claimed to be a kinder, gentler Klan. The arson, land theft, rape, lynchings, shootings, murder, and torture- those things were all in the past. When I was in school a stretch of highway between my hometown and the next city over was sponsored by the Klan. Doing their part to keep things tidy. A Klan leader and recruiter of the time, Bob Lyons, claimed his group did not burn crosses because “everybody in the neighborhood gets together then and says, ‘poor ole n—er.’”
Meanwhile, just Baltimore County reported 29 cross-burnings in 1979.
In May of 1979 John McCollum was shot in the head at a Klan rally held in Carbon Hill, Alabama.
In November 1979 nine cars filled with Klan and Nazis fired upon a crowd of anti-fascist protestors for 88 seconds killing four people at the site and leaving a fifth dead of his injuries two days later in what would become known as the Greensboro Massacre.
Both local and federal law enforcement were aware of the intent of the Klan to attack the protestors and did nothing. It would take three trials before the Klan members were found guilty of murder.
In April of 1980 in Chattanooga, Tennessee Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson were waiting for a taxi when they were shot by Klan members in a drive by shooting. Their friend, Fannie Crumsey, was injured from flying glass. They were chosen at random and shot at because they are Black. An all-white jury acquitted two of three accused Klan members with a third convicted of reduced charges.
On March 21, 1981, in Mobile, Alabama Klan members Henry Francis Hays and James “Tiger” Knowles arbitrarily chose Michael Donald to torture and murder hanging his brutalized body from a tree. Local police dragged their feet, and the FBI nearly closed the investigation.
It would not be until 1983, under relentless pressure from the family, that police arrest Hays, who was the son of Alabama’s second highest-ranking Klan official, and Knowles. Knowles’ confession and testimony resulted in the conviction of both men.
By this point the Klan had terrorized Black folks, People of Color, and anyone else that didn’t fit their narrow parameters of full humanity for over a century. “Our basic beliefs have remained the same as those of the Klan for the last 100 years, but they are becoming more acceptable to whites now,” said Lyons.
In the 1920s the Klan appealed to folks uncomfortable with the shifting nature of America from a rural agricultural society to an urban industrial nation. The Mid Century Klan arouse from the turmoil that came after WWII which brought an increase in immigration and the clamor by African Americans, Asians, and other others for basic human rights. During the 80s we had rising inequity, inflation, crime, and international economic competition.
As with the previous waves of the Klan the organization in the 80s attracted plentiful folks of middle and even upper-class backgrounds. Much like the modern alt-right movement. However, recruitment focused on those most negatively affected by the changes shaping the country at the time: farmers, fishermen, workers in the rapidly closing manufacturing arena.
Open white supremacists like the Klan are most successful in times of flux. Especially when 1) whites think the expansion of human and civil rights is a threat to their status or, as they would say, “their way of life”. 2) Where there isn’t a lot of pushback against their fanatical ideals. This is why social media bubbles make such rich breeding grounds. And 3) policing against conservative extremism is lax.
To this day the Klan promotes white supremacy through Christian fundamentalism and devout patriotism. One continuing aspect of the resurgence of white supremacists is the scapegoating of power minorities for the social and economic difficulties of the time. Klan recruiter Lyons acknowledged in the 80s, “Yeah, we notice we pick up members in times of stress. It has a lot to do with the economic and political situation.” People will do horrendous things to bar change and keep things as they are. Even when as they are is terrible.
“If you perceive things are happening to you that you are beyond your control, the Klan may be attractive,” says the Anti-Defamation League’s Olshansky. “It becomes like a club, with patriotic and religious trappings. White rights becomes a draw — you can feel superior to someone else, you can even wear little costumes. And, more importantly, people can be afraid of you.”
Barker, K. (1980, June 02). A resurgence by the Klan. Retrieved May 09, 2021, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/06/02/a-resurgence-by-the-klan/31ef5d25-716c-486b-9274-8a2d4a58a7e3/
The Klan was helped along by the politics of the time. Leading figures of the Klan of this time included Aryan poster boy David Duke who was the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton of the United Klans of America, and Bill Wilkinson of the Knights of the KKK which was based right near my hometown of Baton Rouge, La.
The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, endorsed Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential bid in an editorial in its newspaper that noted that, “the Republican platform reads as if it were written by a Klansman.” In 1984 Klan leader Wilkinson called the GOP platform “pure Klan.” In a move that will remind many of a more recent former president it took Reagan a month to reject Wilkinson’s support.
There were several major forces that ended the rise of the Fourth Wave. As usual, dire predictions of America’s collapse at the hands of immigrants and other “others” failed to arrive. In fact, the 90s turned out to be a time of shiny, happy, people holding hands.* Anti-fascist protestors continued to confront the Klan wherever they rallied.
But, most powerfully, people took to the courts. Not the criminal courts. Justice in the criminal courts remains less than a sure thing even today and much more so then. Especially when the defendant is white, and the victim is not. Instead, victims sought relief in the civil courts.
In 1982 Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, Fannie Crumsey, and Katherine Johnson, represented by New York attorney Randolph McLaughlin, would win the first ever federal civil lawsuit filed against the KKK. The women were awarded $535,000. The Chattanooga lawsuit, the first time the Klan had ever been sued in a civil court, set legal precedent for cases involving social and racial injustices.
The family of Michael Donald, working with the Southern Poverty Law Center, went on to file a federal wrongful death suit against the United Klans of America. A $7 million judgment was awarded to the family in 1987. In 1988 a group of demonstrators, represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center, who were attacked by Klan members while observing Martin Luther King’s birthday won $1 million in damages. Morris Dees** of the SPLC successfully argued that the Klan has agency over its individual members’ actions. This legal precedent is used to fight the actions of hate groups in court to this day.
But even as the Fourth Wave died down the seeds for the modern era of Klan, alt-right, and other extremist right wing-groups and movements were being planted and fertilized. Former Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Louis Beam had a dream of “all the great minds of the patriotic Christian movement linked together and joined into one computer.” The Klan and their ilk had devolved into individual cells scattered throughout the country. Imagine being able to connect them. Which is exactly what Beam did using a Commodore 64, a dial-up modem, and a phone line.
Sources
https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/greensboro-massacre-ku-klux-klan-far-right
https://www.csmonitor.com/1980/0826/082608.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1980/06/02/a-resurgence-by-the-klan/31ef5d25-716c-486b-9274-8a2d4a58a7e3/ Note: almost everyone interviewed in this article was white.
https://blog.utc.edu/news/2020/02/1980-shooting-of-black-women-the-focus-of-feb-20-event/
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/86-year-old-survivor-of-1980-chattanooga-kkk-attack-shares-her-story-in-front-of-hundreds
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/26/us/louis-beam-white-supremacy-internet.html
https://www.history.com/news/kkk-lynching-mother-justice The photo of the victim looks suspiciously like a mug shot while the murderers are pictured in court, arrogant and well groomed. It’s also the way people write about the Klan.
*Yes, there were mass shootings, unnecessary wars, famine, rampant crime, climate change, and geocide. But things did seem to be moving in the right direction.
** Morris Dees, the co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, was dismissed from his position on March 14th, 2019. Dees, and the SPLC, had come under fire over the last couple of decades. In 1995, the Montgomery Advertiser documented staffers’ allegations of racial discrimination. Harper’s, Ken Silverstein had revealed that the center’s endowment of over a hundred and twenty million dollars did not trickle down to support the work the Center claimed to be doing. Writing for The Progressive, John Egerton painted a damning portrait of Dees as a more of a businessman than a social justice warrior. On top of this incoming female staffers were routinely warned about Dees’s reputation for inappropriate behavior. It is fitting, then, that according to the Los Angeles Times and the Alabama Political Reporter Dees’s ouster was sparked by a woman, senior attorney Meredith Horton. Horton was the highest-ranking African-American woman at the center before she resigned in protest. The information above came from this article. More can be found here.