Handling the Klan on Easter Sunday, 1965 [A Message for this Holy Season] Handling the Klan on Easter Sunday, 1965 Hunter Gray [John R Salter, Jr]
[Note by Hunterbear: I was in the hard-core South in several settings, deeply involved in the Movement from 1961-67, and keep up very closely with Dixie and many of its people and events and issues. I've also learned over the ensuing decades that while some historians of the Southern Movement are fine -- especially those who were actually around at the time -- many don't want to write about radicals and radical involvement. I posted this -- one of my more popular pieces -- well over a year ago. So I often recount History as I and others have been privileged to live with and within it -- and even help make some of it from time to time. This is reposted by request and also because I want to. Along with a great deal of other Southern Movement material [Mississippi, North Carolina etc], it's on our large website www.hunterbear.org -- at this specific link: http://www.hunterbear.org/handling_the_klan_on_easter_sund.htm ============================================================= >From Hunter Gray [formerly John R Salter, Jr] There's been a good deal of talk on various lists about First Amendment and related matters. Here's my silver dollar: I've never had a relativistic view of First Amendment rights -- and I have little tolerance for that kind of slippery slope stuff. So far I think I've done consistently OK on those issues, if I do say so myself. But, every so often, I'm much tested by events. One of those came on Easter Sunday, 1965 in Halifax County, North Carolina -- vis-a-vis a huge Klan rally. At that point, I was Field Organizer for the radical Southern Conference Educational Fund. For well over a year, we had been pushing a militant, grassroots civil rights and anti-Klan organizing project in the extremely tough, hard-core multi-county Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt: rigidly segregated, poverty-stricken, Klan-infested, cruelly repressive with much White supremacist night-riding violence. Our campaign, starting in Halifax County and moving into the other Black Belt counties, was going very well: extremely successful grassroots organization and mobilization,economic boycotts, non-violent direct action, successful Federal court cases [our lawyers included, among others, Sam Mitchell of Raleigh, and from NYC and environs -- Bill Kunstler, Morty Stavis, Phil Hirschkop, Arthur Kinoy. And we were increasingly effective -- as, via hard work, we built up our numbers -- in voter registration and education and political action thrusts. [But, early on, we had had to go into Federal court en masse to win the very right to register and vote.] The Alabama-based, Southwide United Klans of America [Knights of the Ku Klux Klan] was a major foe. [At that point, North Carolina had, by far and away, the largest Klan membership in the South.] In addition to that, there was also the John Birch Society, the North Carolina Defenders of States Rights [affiliated with the White Citizens Councils], and a variety of other poisonous outfits. But the Klan was the most dangerous on a day-to-day [or often night-to-night basis.] Yet, as our momentum gathered and rolled along, the Klan began to fade in the Black Belt. We had the initiative. Then, in late March, 1965, not long after our major Black Belt Civil Rights and Anti-Poverty Conference [with a strong labor unionization focus] held at Bertie [Burr-tee] County drew over 1,000 people from the far-flung northeastern quarter of North Carolina, Klan posters were up all over the Black Belt and in other parts of North Carolina as well. They advertised a huge Southwide United Klans rally that would be held at the Halifax County mill town of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina -- and close to the adjoining town of Weldon -- in a very large public open area surrounded by Black homes. It was to be held a very few weeks hence -- on Easter Sunday. This -- right in our base county -- was a direct challenge to us and a deliberate effort to incite violence. It also smelled of maneuvering by the viciously anti-union managers of J.P. Stevens Textile -- which, at Roanoke Rapids, dominated the northern end of the county. I immediately did what I had now done on a number of previous occasions -- starting with the Governor Terry Sanford [no friend of ours] administration. I called the Governor's office -- it was now Governor Dan K. Moore -- and spoke with his key administrative assistant, Ed Rankin. We had been through this before. I said that -- especially given the fact that the county sheriff and his deputies were Klansmen, the county attorney was a conspicuous Klan sympathizer, and that Klan dues were openly collected in some of the Halifax County police departments [though not at the Roanoke Rapids P.D.] -- it was incumbent on the State to send in a very large contingent of state troopers for at least a day before the huge rally, keep them there on hand all during the affair, and for at least a day thereafter. Ed Rankin and I could do ethical business with each other. He agreed immediately to send many, many state police. And then he added something new, something intriguing: "You know, John" he said, " the state is in the process of change. The Governor doesn't like these Klan things. It's hurting all of us." He paused and went on, "Have you ever considered using those fine Yankee lawyers of yours to go into court and get an injunction against the rally? Say, right at the last minute?" Ed Rankin then named several jurisdictional possibilities. "You just might get that," he finished. The implication was obvious. From the shadows, he could help us get the injunction. My response was quick. "I hear you, Ed," I told him. "And I'm not unappreciative." I thought hard and fast. "But," I went on, "if we could block their rally, you all could start blocking ours. Right?" I could feel him smiling over the phone. We ended on our usual note of pragmatic amiability. Forthwith, I carried the conversation to our local leaders in Halifax County. They agreed with my response. But, now, we had to work out a genuinely creative strategy. And that we did. Easter Sunday, 1965, was predictably bright and clear. Klansmen and families, with license plates from as far away as Mississippi and Louisiana, began arriving at the very large open area early in the morning. Three huge crosses had been erected for night-time burning. The rally was scheduled for 1 p.m. but, like everything else in the South -- regardless of race, ethnicity, and purpose -- was late in getting started. True to his word, Ed Rankin had a huge contingent of state police on hand -- more than half, we later learned, of the entire state force. The sheriff and his deputies were there -- not in robes. They lounged laconically by their vehicles. The nervous chief of police of Roanoke Rapids -- not a Klansman and, from what we'd heard, a fundamentally decent guy -- sat with his men and their vehicles at a far corner. And, as all of this gathered --thousands of garbed Klansmen [with garbed women and children] and many dozens of state troopers et al. -- so, according to our strategy, did we. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Black families -- and many Indian -- gathered around the borders of the rally. We were all dressed in our Sunday church best [even me] and every family brought a picnic lunch and sat down on the grass to watch. Children of all ages were very plentiful. The rally began about 2 p.m. with an estimated six to eight thousand sheeted figures present. The Klan speakers featured the Imperial Wizard himself, Robert Shelton of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He was to be the final night-time orator -- preceded by every top official in the Southwide United Klans. One by one, standing with a mike on the back of a very large generator-carrying flat-bed truck, they spoke their litanies of pure hatred to the thousands of white-garbed figures whose mass of parked, generally older vehicles bespoke poverty. [The Klan officialdom all drove new white Cadillacs.] Heavily armed Klan guards in brown Nazi-type uniforms stood stiffly around the borders of the rally. As the hate speeches [one by N.C. State Grand Dragon J.R. Jones] -- featuring constant use of the N_____r word and consistent multi-epithet attacks on myself and others -- got underway, three of us now began to patrol the borders between our people and the huge hate rally: myself, the Rev. A.I. Dunlap, and the Rev. Clyde Johnson. As we patrolled, we visited cordially with the Black and Indian families closest to the border. At times, we were only inches from the Klan guards. When the extraordinarily vicious national Klan chaplain, himself from Greensboro NC, began to speak, Black children right on schedule began to play ring-around-the-rosy -- right on the borders of the rally, only feet from the armed Nazi-type guards. Rev. Dunlap, Rev. Johnson, and myself continued our three-person patrol -- slowly but steadily moving around the entire rally, visiting and joking with the Black and Indian people. Back and forth, on and on. The Klan chaplain then went completely over the edge, emotionally -- and began screaming racist epithets about Black children. Pointing at the cheerful, playing kids, he began using the P____ ies word over and over again. And then, even worse than that. The kids continued to play, the families continued to observe, and we continued to patrol. And then, suddenly, after speaker after speaker had delivered his poisonous froth -- all of this frequently punctuated with "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Dixie" played over a loudspeaker from the back of a flat-bed truck and after many fund appeals -- Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton appeared at the fore. But this was 5:30 p.m. -- not at night when he was supposed to be doing his thing. It was clear to everyone that something very unusual was happening! Shelton spoke his usual, venomous diatribe: against Blacks, against Indians, against Jews, against the Civil Rights Movement, against "Communism," against the Federal government, against the United Nations, and against most of the world -- and more. Like others, he honored a number of us with personal attacks of the greatest intensity. And he attacked unions. Several times, unions. And then, after half an hour or so had passed, he signaled. The three huge crosses, scheduled for night-time burning, were now -- in broad April daylight -- ignited. The "Old Rugged Cross" was played once again, then "Dixie." The Klan chaplain gave a long benedictory hate prayer. And then, hours early, they all began to leave. And we had won -- and we'd won without an injunction and without firing a shot. A voice called me. It was the chief of police of Roanoke Rapids. I went over to him. He pulled me gently behind a police vehicle. Out of sight of almost everyone, he grabbed my hand and shook it with vigour. "Thank God," he said, "thank God!" And I agreed. And I still do. It wasn't too many years after that that the large work force at the J.P. Stevens Textile Mill at Roanoke Rapid, North Carolina -- Blacks, Indians, Whites -- voted overwhelmingly to unionize. And, some years after that, a very fine labor film was made about the labor dimension of the Roanoke Rapids/Stevens struggle: Norma Rae [1979]. Most likely some of you have seen it. If not, do. There's a good deal about our Northeastern North Carolina Black Belt project on our website via this link http://www.hunterbear.org/in_very_early_1964.htm In Solidarity - Hunter [Hunterbear] Micmac / St Francis Abenaki / St Regis Mohawk [and Solidarity, DSA Anti-Racism, SPUSA, CCDS] Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] www.hunterbear.org (social justice) Left Discussion Group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Redbadbear Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] www.hunterbear.org Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ and Ohkwari' In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and remembering way. [Hunterbear] _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
