The Ku Klux Klan

On November 3, 1979, four people were shot to death at an antiKlan demonstration in Greensboro, North Carolina. Those killed were members of an organization that claimed responsibility for disrupting a Klan rally the previous July, and the Klan had promised vengeance.1 Several issues come to mind in reference to both the raid, the murders, and the Klan's place in the rubric of North Carolina politics. This paper will first present a brief background on the Ku Klux Klan, give the specifics surrounding the Greensboro incident, analyze the probable effects the incident had on the political sphere within North Carolina, and conclude with the legacy of the events. The Klan began shortly after the Civil War in Pulaski, Tennessee. It was formed by former Confederate soldiers to keep the ideological spirit of racial purity and violence against enemies of the South alive. The name was chosen from the Greek letters of the club members' college fraternities. The men's favorite was "Kuklo

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lowed the Klansmen to the rally, he was powerless to stop the crime. With all that evidence, it seemed likely that North Carolina's courts would be able to enter an immediate, guilty verdict for Klan members. This was not to be, however, and a little more than a year after the event an allwhite jury announced a notguilty by reason of selfdefense verdict, thus acquitting all Klansmen indicted. Members of the Communist Workers Party had made accusations of political killings and coverups from the start, but now they were even more incensed. Immediately after the verdict, the federal files on Greenkil were reopened and in 1983, "based on additional evidence . . . a federal grand jury indicted nine of the Klan and Nazis for conspiracy to violate the demonstrator's civil rights. A year later, on Palm Sunday, 1984, another allwhite jury reached its verdict: not guilty."12 The Communists maintained that both trials were part of nothing more than an elaborate coverup. In fact, the surviving widows of the murdered protesters filed a $48 million dollar lawsuit "against sixtyfive defendants, including members of the Klan and Nazis, the Greensboro Police Department, and agents of the FBI and Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcoh
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Approximate Word count = 2530
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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