JFK and the Ku Klux Klan
This is work in progress I will complete the rest in days but for interested readers can get an early start
Source wants to remain Hidden I will Call this Person Informant
INFORMANT
I'm not sure where my information fits in but I thought I would mention what I experienced on November 22, 1963. at the time I was in the sixth grade and only ten years old.
On that date I was living in my hometown, Terry, south of Jackson, in Mississippi. It was just after lunch when I heard the principal of our school going from door to door making an announcement. Although I could not hear what he was saying, a loud cheer came from each classroom in response.
So I was expecting good news when the principal of our school, a card carrying member of the KKK, stuck his red neck in the door and said, "The president's has been shot", to which every student, but me, jumped up and cheered.
Noticing that my head hung sadly low, a Klan Kid said to me, "Ha, that's nuthin'. They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK!" (Kennedy King Kennedy)
I felt stunned as all the children in my class were so excited and happy. They all ran out into the hall where the principal, the teachers and most of the students gathered around one eighth grade boy. The principal rubbed the boy's head and said, "Son, your father's a mighty hero". Teachers exclaimed, "You should be proud of your pop" and students shouted, "Yo' daddy's one fine shot!" Nearly everyone wanted to shake his hand.
Of course I suspected his father had just shot the president, so I walked up to him and asked, "Did your father just shoot the president?".
His homeroom teacher was standing proudly beside him and answered saying, "Naw honey, he just won a 'Turkey Shoot'!" (three marksmen in a triangular formation)
I had known all summer that there were many members of the KKK in my hometown who hated Kennedy. I lived across the road from the man who shot his gun from the grassy knoll and knew he was in the National Reserves. He was the best marksman in all the south at the time. I had grown up living across the road from the man and knew he had bombed a church in '59, just down the road, among other crimes. He had thrown me off his property when I was 5, because he said, "We don't tary with nigga lovuhs. You go on home and don't come back, y'heah". What was even sadder on November 22, 1963, was the fact that I had written to President Kennedy to warn him of the planned attempt on his life. It was at Klan rallies across the road from my house (I did not ever attend a Klan rally, but they used a PA system which I could clearly hear from our front porch), and the Klan kids, that I had learned of their plans. I had mailed the letter shortly before his trip to Dallas. I prayed the letter would reach him in time and it did, but who listens to a 10 year old? That letter must be sealed up with all the other evidence. I wrote it and I would like it back.
Also I would like to mention to people who want to know why the Klan would have used a PA system, that in the 50's & 60's I lived in the country outside of Terry with my great grand parents. There were also many Klan rallies in Byram that summer, a town 5 miles north of Terry. In the country (and most of the south) the Klan reigned supreme. There was no one to tell about anything that was heard, because anyone you might have wanted to tell, law enforcement, judges, etc, were at the rally. So who could anyone tell?
As I walked back to my classroom, the seventh grade teacher was standing in her doorway. She had not congratulated the boy. She scurried me into her empty classroom, seeing the stunned look on my face and sat me down.
"Mrs. Long, E_____'s father just shot the president. We have to tell someone", I said.
Mrs. Long took a long look at me and said, "Nothing will be done about the men who did this. The same group of men who just shot the president also murdered my uncle, Huey Long, who was governor of Louisiana and they got away with it. Nothing was ever done to them then and nothing will be done about what they have done now. There is nothing anyone can do. There is no one you can tell".
There was another man, who everyone called "Doc", in our hometown. He lived down the road from me. He was a rich doctor, Joel Garrett Brunson. He was gay and had my brother and his friends over to his house when they were in high school, after school for "drug parties". My brother stayed in his house while the doctor attended in the autopsy of RFK.
That man who shot the president and his friends (one of whom was Doc) financed many atrocities in the south over the decades that their lives spanned. The man who was a "Star" in the greatest coup d'etat in the history of the USA, died just a few years back and was never charged with ANY of the crimes he committed. Even if I told you who he was and even if you believed me, nothing could be done about it, because the will to have true justice in this case was never there. That was perhaps the saddest thing I have learned from the events of November 22, 1963.There WERE three marksmen and the one who was on the other side of the limo from the grassy knoll, went on the become a serial killer (Zodiac); he was another one who died without ever being charged, yet probably killed more people than any one single person in history, save someone in the military. No one in authority could have afforded to bust him; he might have talked.
On the evening of November 22, 1963, as I sat and watched the news with my grandmother, she was happy, I was sad. I told her that E_____'s father had shot the president. She shot an angry look at me and started boasting about how my uncle had also been present and part of the team and said I should be proud of him. I do not know everything about my uncle, but I know he was a lousy shot. He shot his own right middle toe off in a hunting accident when he was a teenager. That's why he used a flashlight on top of his gun to shoot people in the Zodiac killings. He was never even investigated in relation to the crimes. I guess no one could afford to bust him as he might have talked about Dallas. I know more about the Zodiac Killings, but that is not on topic here.
One year after the death of Kennedy, I wrestled with my conscience about whether to tell anyone and did finally muster up the nerve to tell the town Marshal. He just laughed at me and called me a 'crazy little girl', said no one would ever believe me. So if you want to call me crazy, well at least it isn't a bullet and won't really hurt me. I have grown accustomed to the insult. But I know the truth, not that it does any good. People talk about where they were that day. This is my story.
Response to INFORMANT
This is indeed a very chilling story. I have heard stories about cheering taking place but I have not heard a first-hand account of it.
Are you talking about Arthur Leigh Allen or Charles F. Albright as the possible assassin?
This is a very interesting tale. Was Oswald in with this group of men? Was Ruby? Suppose it was just the KKK who killed President Kennedy because of his civil rights bill (posthumous) or getting James Meredith into school?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes, the whole James Meredith case, as well as the confiscation of weapons, civil rights, the coziness to MLK Jr, and Marilyn, if you can believe it, stuck in the craw of the KKK. The Klan Kidz did tell me that it would keep going till there was a KKK (Kennedy King Kennedy). This was said on the day JFK died.
Sorry if I shouldn't have posted any names. I thought people wanted to know who the man was. But please feel free to remove it. Or tell me how to. The man is dead. He died in 2007. Nearly everyone my age or older in my hometown and most racist groups (even here in Canada) know who he was.
Not sure how I benefit from telling you who the man was. No one has ever believed me in the past, and you are free not to believe me as well, Tom Scully.
I don't think Oswald fired any shots, but do not know that for a fact.
More
I do know that Bannister was in my hometown quite a bit that summer. I do know he bought our town a green Ford Pick-up.
Bannister was admired by the KKK in my hometown. I did write a letter to warn Kennedy after giving much thought to it, as I knew that the men meant business. I liked Kennedy and thought he should be warned. I am not sure if anyone else wrote and warned him, but as you know, he did not heed the advice. Not sure why. Maybe because I was only ten. I would also like that letter back some day.
Obama went to Terry with Oprah Winfrey during his campaign in 2008, which kinda scared me. I have tried in the past to report it to the FBI, the US Marshal's office in Mississippi and other law enforcement who have all laughed me off. I don't really know any more than that about the Kennedy assassination. Hope that info has been helpful and again, you are free to not believe it.
Response to INFORMANT
The letter you wrote to Kennedy may never ever reached its destination if the KKK controlled everything , police, judges, courts and most likely mail system?
INFORMANT, which Klans, Klaverns, did these KKK members belong to?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I have no idea about Klaverns. Like I said, I was not a member. Other family members were part of the Klan, but they did not talk to me about details as I was seen as someone to be shunned and was ostracized, a "nigger lover" is what they called me. Not all of my family were Klan members. My great grandparents never belonged to the Klan, but as they wanted to live in peace, they followed the rules, so to speak; they lived surrounded by Klan in the country. Like not having the help come to the front door or sit in the front seat, etc.
My grandmother, their daughter, was a Klan member, but kept things to herself, unless she was riled, which I seemed to have done sometimes. My great grandfather was not happy about family members joining the Klan, but he would not go up against them. It was dicey growing up with Klan all around me. My mother was also ostracized by our hometown, by the KKK, as she had sat in the back of the bus when I was 4. The KKK had Mom sent to Whitfield for shock treatment for three months for that stunt, which she did as a show of support for Rosa Parks. She explained their actions to me as being niggardly.
Mom had married a man from New York and we had been living in Syracuse for the first half of '63. She and her husband were supporters of JFK, as was I. When troubles broke out between her and her husband, my brothers and I were sent back to Terry that summer after school was out.
The day I arrived back in Terry, my grandmother was taking me uptown to buy some new clothes when the town marshal drove by in a new truck. I remarked that he had a new truck, not the old black one that had always been used, but a new green Ford pick-up truck. My grandmother said, "Yes, a nice man named Bannister arranged for the town to get that truck for free".
The following year, something terrible happened to someone whom I considered a friend, at the hands of certain Klan members. He was lynched horribly; they didn't "hang him". It was an effort to scare me into submission. It worked for a couple of years, but then I became defiant in high school, not really scared of them anymore. I did something that made them tell my grandmother "Mavis, you gonna have to send her away; we can't protect her no mo'". At 17, I was sent to live with my uncle in San Francisco in the summer of 1970. That's when things got real scary.
I eventually got away from him and went to Montreal to live with my mother. The tale gets a little more twisted from there. But I won't go into that here as it is a different topic.
I am not sure how many people know that in Mississippi at that time, there was a literacy test for voting.
That was put in place to keep anyone who the KKK did not want to be able to vote, from voting. In the 50's & 60's it was an unwritten law that if anyone was caught teaching black people to read or write or anything, it was grounds for a lynching for all involved.
That was another reason for the death of JFK, integration, which no one in the KKK wanted to see come about, because it meant that black people might end up voting. It was not good to get caught teaching anyone black at that time.
Response to INFORMANT
Does Albert Lee Lewis have family still living. And, do you think any of them would have information (documentation) about his shooting the president. Surely as these people have aged they may want to get this to the people. I think that most people want to hear what you and others have to say.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I don't know who Albert Lee Lewis is? Who is he?
Also do you seriously want to go to a Ku Klux Klanman's house, out in the country, and ask his children, around 60 by now, if their daddy did such a thing? Do I have you right? It seems like a pretty naive thing to do.
Then they want to know who told you and soon, it's my ass that's on the line. . Do you think stories you have heard about the KKK, are jokes?
Yes, my uncle was in on it. He went on to be a serial killer who died without ever being charged for any of his crimes, strange as I am sure all of my claims must seem to you. I'm sure the facts that I do not know, are stranger still.
Response to INFORMANT
I find your information intriguing and plausible. It conforms to my own theory that places the core of the JFK assassination in a grass-roots movement of men and women associated with the "Minutemen," whom, as I have read, had close ties to the KKK.
The "Minutemen" were (and to a lesser degree still are) local vigilante groups loosely organized into a national movement (just as the KKK has always been). They were all riflemen, and they gathered on formal occasions in the country-side for shooting practice and even "war games", much like the KKK.
Writer William Turner, wrote a book about the extreme right-wing in the USA (Power on the Right, 1973), and in that book, as I recall, he said that in 1963, no man could become a member of the Dallas Police Department unless he was already a member of the John Birch Society, the Minutemen, or the KKK and preferably all three.
In local legend, one of the shooters at JFK in Dallas -- and possibly even the killer of J.D. Tippit -- was Roscoe White. Roscoe was working for Guy Banister in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, and in the fall of 1963 he joined the Dallas Police Department. Although he was a new trainee, he was already wearing a gun in Dallas beginning in November, 1963. His wife and son claim that he confessed to being one of the grassy knoll shooters. My point is that Roscoe White was also allegedly a member of the KKK as well as the Minutemen.
Guy Banister, so I've read, was also a member of the KKK, a member of the Minutemen and also a member of the White Citizens' Council in his neighborhood. Many Minutemen, especially in the deep South, were also members of their local KKK chapters. Ex-General Edwin Walker was a frequent speaker at White Citizen Council meetings, and was also a respected leader of the Minutemen (according to Harry Dean).
By considering the assassination of JFK to be a grass-roots movement of extreme rightist organizations, we obtain a more plausible theory, IMHO, that best explains why: (1) the shooters have remained unknown for so long; and (2) why so many witnesses who offered warm clues ended up dead on a regular basis.
Another strong point to a KKK-Minutemen involvement in the JFK assassination is that it confirms that we are talking about a conspiracy involving hundreds of people -- a disciplined group that is able to keep quiet for fifty years or more.
Further, so many KKK-Minutemen would need a leader and a goal. Ex-General Edwin Walker who led the Ole Miss race riots in Oxford, Mississippi, would be a plausible leader for them. He was shunned by the American majority but he was still beloved by the extreme right-wing. Walker was a regular speaker on nationwide right-wing tours promoting racial segregation as late as April, 1963, and appeared in local segregationist venues throughout the South for the remainder of 1963.
But more to the point, Edwin Walker and Guy Banister were leaders among the Minutemen and helped to provide training grounds for war games. These training grounds were also shared with Cuban Exiles who wanted nothing more than to take Cuba back in a blaze of glory. This combination of KKK, Minutemen and Cuban Exiles on fire was a witches brew. Add a dash of ex-CIA rogues and anything was possible.
In June, 1963 James Meredith was seriously wounded by a shooting in Mississippi, while his mentor in the Ole Miss movement, namely, Medgar Evers, was shot in the back in his own driveway and killed. His killer, Byron de la Beckwith, was brought to justice decades later, but in 1964 he got away with that crime. During his first trial in 1964, Ex-General Edwin Walker walked up to Beckwith and shook his hand publicly, in a show of support.
Although Ex-General Edwin Walker was not an open racist while he was wearing a US Army uniform, after he resigned from the Army (as the only US General to resign in the 20th century) Walker soon learned that the only friends he had left were those among the extreme right-wing. Luckily for Walker, the entire USA right-wing had begun to fall in line under the McCarthyist doctrines of his beloved John Birch Society, whose key doctrine was that FDR, Truman, Ike and JFK were all Communists, traitors and deserved to die.
The Cuban crisis brought it all to a head. The Minutemen arose in 1961 upon fears that Fidel Castro would invade the USA (see the 1984 version of the movie, Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze). Perhaps 1963 was the peak of extreme right-wing grassroots militant activity in the USA, in my opinion, and it was ripe for a world-historical act like the assassination of JFK.
Finally, Terri Williams, I believe that the KKK involvement with the Minutemen fits with the pattern in which we find ex-General Edwin Walker throughout 1963. So, your claims are plausible according to my own theory.
QUESTION
Didn't Marshall resign to become Secretary of State and Ike resign become President of Columbia and 2nd time to run for POTUS?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes the man I named was a member of the National Guard Reserve, and an ace marksman.
Response to INFORMANT
Guy Banister, so I've read, was also a member of the KKK, a member of the Minutemen and also a member of the White Citizens' Council in his neighborhood. Many Minutemen, especially in the deep South, were also members of their local KKK chapters. Ex-General Edwin Walker was a frequent speaker at White Citizen Council meetings, and was also a respected leader of the Minutemen (according to Harry Dean).
By considering the assassination of JFK to be a grass-roots movement of extreme rightist organizations, we obtain a more plausible theory, IMHO, that best explains why: (1) the shooters have remained unknown for so long; and (2) why so many witnesses who offered warm clues ended up dead on a regular basis.
Another strong point to a KKK-Minutemen involvement in the JFK assassination is that it confirms that we are talking about a conspiracy involving hundreds of people -- a disciplined group that is able to keep quiet for fifty years or more.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes and their children are not about to start talking now.
Response to INFORMANT
Further, so many KKK-Minutemen would need a leader and a goal. Ex-General Edwin Walker who led the Ole Miss race riots in Oxford, Mississippi, would be a plausible leader for them. He was shunned by the American majority but he was still beloved by the extreme right-wing. Walker was a regular speaker on nationwide right-wing tours promoting racial segregation as late as April, 1963, and appeared in local segregationist venues throughout the South for the remainder of 1963.
But more to the point, Edwin Walker and Guy Banister were leaders among the Minutemen and helped to provide training grounds for war games. These training grounds were also shared with Cuban Exiles who wanted nothing more than to take Cuba back in a blaze of glory. This combination of KKK, Minutemen and Cuban Exiles on fire was a witches brew. Add a dash of ex-CIA rogues and anything was possible.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Many young men and high school boys trained in Louisiana. My uncle at the time was fresh out of the Merchant Marines. There were many rallies that summer throughout the south, but especially in my hometown.
Response to INFORMANT
In June, 1963 James Meredith was seriously wounded by a shooting in Mississippi, while his mentor in the Ole Miss movement, namely, Medgar Evers, was shot in the back in his own driveway and killed. His killer, Byron de la Beckwith, was brought to justice decades later, but in 1964 he got away with that crime. During his first trial in 1964, Ex-General Edwin Walker walked up to Beckwith and shook his hand publicly, in a show of support.
Although Ex-General Edwin Walker was not an open racist while he was wearing a US Army uniform, after he resigned from the Army (as the only US General to resign in the 20th century) Walker soon learned that the only friends he had left were those among the extreme right-wing. Luckily for Walker, the entire USA right-wing had begun to fall in line under the McCarthyist doctrines of his beloved John Birch Society, whose key doctrine was that FDR, Truman, Ike and JFK were all Communists, traitors and deserved to die.
The Cuban crisis brought it all to a head. The Minutemen arose in 1961 upon fears that Fidel Castro would invade the USA (see the 1984 version of the movie, Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze). Perhaps 1963 was the peak of extreme right-wing grassroots militant activity in the USA, in my opinion, and it was ripe for a world-historical act like the assassination of JFK.
Finally we have more information , INFORMANT I believe that the KKK involvement with the Minutemen fits with the pattern in which we find ex-General Edwin Walker throughout 1963. So, your claims are plausible according to my own theory.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
My hometown was ripe for the picking for anyone looking for militia men, back then. They were fighting to keep their oppressive way of life, supreme. I know that the reaction to losing the weapons, who everyone credited Kennedy for, was to want him dead, not to mention James Meredith and the whole idea of integration.
Back then the way whites kept power was to enforce a 'literacy test' on voters. Of course white people got an education, but black's were not really allowed to have one. That is why so many churches were blown up; they were being used to teach.
Guy Bannister was in our hometown more than once in 1963 and arranged for our town to get a brand new green Ford pick-up truck for free, that summer. I never met the men, but my grandmother bragged about having net him and considered him a nice man. She was a bigot. Anything the KKK did she was all for it, while I was appalled.
Apparently, Bannister had visited my grandmother for supper and chosen my uncle, also present, to attend in Dallas. I was not there, but was told this by my grandmother who was bragging about the encounter and the importance of her son in the whole Dallas affair. I knew about the other man from what happened at school and what the other kids said, plus the way the man was treated like a hero by the whites in power after that and from his own bragging.
The Klan Kidz also bragged. They bragged about what Kennedy had coming to him, what would happen if he kept the security shield off, bragged about the man who did it and also bragged on the day JFK died, that "They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK", (Kennedy King Kennedy) which also came about. The Klan Kidz were right most of the time about violent events. I know much about what happened to a few black people in my hometown, but no one will ever be prosecuted for any of the murders. No one will ever investigate. No one who should, wants the crimes to be solved. It leads to a nest of snakes.
Response to INFORMANT
Can you follow up on this just want to clear this up as it was mentioned earlier
Didn't Marshall resign to become Secretary of State and Ike resign become President of Columbia and 2nd time to run for POTUS? (as the only US General to resign in the 20th century)
INFORMANT RESPONSE
No; Marshall and Eisenhower retired. When an officer resigns from the US Army, he forfeits his pension. It's considered a hostile act. Only a rash, brash fool would do something like that.
There was utterly no reason for Walker to resign, either -- even if he wanted to become a KKK member after he quit the Army -- his pension had nothing to do with it. It was a hostile act -- a protest against the USA and against the Presidents that Walker considered to be FASCISTS .
Response to INFORMANT
Responding to your comment here
..My hometown was ripe for the picking for anyone looking for militia men, back then. They were fighting to keep their oppressive way of life, supreme. I know that the reaction to losing the weapons, who everyone credited Kennedy for, was to want him dead, not to mention James Meredith and the whole idea of integration.
Back then the way whites kept power was to enforce a 'literacy test' on voters. Of course white people got an education, but black's were not really allowed to have one. That is why so many churches were blown up; they were being used to teach.
Guy Bannister was in our hometown more than once in 1963 and arranged for our town to get a brand new green Ford pick-up truck for free, that summer. I never met the men, but my grandmother bragged about having net him and considered him a nice man. She was a bigot. Anything the KKK did she was all for it, while I was appalled.
Apparently, Bannister had visited my grandmother for supper and chosen my uncle, also present, to attend in Dallas. I was not there, but was told this by my grandmother who was bragging about the encounter and the importance of her son in the whole Dallas affair. I knew about the other man from what happened at school and what the other kids said, plus the way the man was treated like a hero by the whites in power after that and from his own bragging.
The Klan Kidz also bragged. They bragged about what Kennedy had coming to him, what would happen if he kept the security shield off, bragged about the man who did it and also bragged on the day JFK died, that "They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK", (Kennedy King Kennedy) which also came about. The Klan Kidz were right most of the time about violent events. I know much about what happened to a few black people in my hometown, but no one will ever be prosecuted for any of the murders. No one will ever investigate. No one who should, wants the crimes to be solved. It leads to a nest of snakes.
Here is the Question to the above INFORMANT
INFORMANT, although I consider your claims to be reasonable and plausible, I don't imagine that you are presenting your claims as proven -- even if you know for a fact that they are true. You cannot produce proofs without endangering your life -- and you probably couldn't produce proofs even if you did endanger your life, because as you said, the children of these extremists would never admit anything.
I find it easy to accept the existence of right-wing militia, bearing arms, and hating JFK in 1963. Harry Dean says that whenever he attended a Minuteman training camp event, there was a continual, chatter about killing JFK and Fidel. It was the daily routine.
By the way, JFK didn't even recommend gun control -- all he did was shut down all all these Cuban Exile training camps and confiscate underground arms shipments -- and furthermore he did this to present a smiling face to the world -- in clandestine terms he (almost certainly) kept some training camps open.
But that wouldn't matter to the Minutemen -- it wasn't the gun issue that was the problem -- because they all owned their own rifles and guns anyhow. Rather, it was James Meredith on the one hand, and Fidel Castro on the other hand. These two monsters were frightening the hell out of the average American -- but in the rural areas the response was considerably different than in the urban areas. There were many more paramilitary training grounds in the rural areas.
The James Meredith case (like the Little Rock case) directly addresses your claim, INFORMANT, namely, that African-American education was the key motivation for blowing up Churches in the South that were used to teach literacy to African-Americans.
I have often heard that Guy Banister was a member of the KKK, but I have not seen documented proof. Your eye-witness account is valuable, however, and I appreciate it.
I can also accept your account, INFORMANT, when you say Guy Banister visited your grandmother for supper and chose your uncle as a shooter in Dallas in November 1963. However, I would add that there were probably dozens (if not scores) of plots to kill JFK nationwide, and besides that (as Gerry P. Hemming told this Forum years ago) there were many teams of shooters that were available for various positions around Dallas. Furthermore, none of these teams would be allowed to meet the other teams, or to know of their existence.
So, even if your uncle was available with his rifle in Dallas on 22 November 1963, INFORMANT, we still cannot guarantee that he was the final shooter, nor even that he was in the front lines. As I say - I believe that your claims fit all the criteria of reason and plausibility, and yet so do the claims of the family of Roscoe White, for example. There were many such figures, in my opinion.
I find your imagery about the KKK Kidz bragging to be unforgettable. We might recall, in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, when some groups in the Middle East danced in the streets after the World Trade Center in NYC fell to the ground. Apparently you saw something similar in the aftermath of 22 November 1963, when your schoolmates cheered and gloried in the fall of JFK.
Also, that chilling prophesy, that "They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK" (which referred to the deaths of JFK, MLK and RFK) would be fulfilled in five more years.
Such a prophesy suggests more than foresight -- it suggests insight. It suggests planning. And it speaks volumes about a subculture in the USA that we typically prefer to ignore, to neglect, which exists in our blind spot -- so that we might not even know how large it is, to this very day.
If this is correct, then it also helps to explain why after fifty years the JFK murder has not yet been solved to the satisfaction of reason. The solution may exist in our blind spot.
Quote
INFORMANT although I consider your claims to be reasonable and plausible, I don't imagine that you are presenting your claims as proven -- even if you know for a fact that they are true. You cannot produce proofs without endangering your life -- and you probably couldn't produce proofs even if you did endanger your life, because as you said, the children of these extremists would never admit anything.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
The only proof I could ever hope to show, is that letter that I did write to Kennedy in the fall of 1963, warning him of the impending danger that awaited him in Dallas. It only makes sense that that letter is sealed up with the rest of the evidence, but if I am alive when it is all unsealed, I want the letter back. I wrote it and I want it back. That would be the only proof I could ever have. As for any other evidence, I'm sure it exists somewhere.
Quote
So, even if your uncle was available with his rifle in Dallas on 22 November 1963, Terri, we still cannot guarantee that he was the final shooter, nor even that he was in the front lines. As I say - I believe that your claims fit all the criteria of reason and plausibility, and yet so do the claims of the family of Roscoe White, for example. There were many such figures, in my opinion.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
It was a Turkey Shoot in Dallas. Three marksmen in a triangle formation. There may have been others, but the three shooters were hand picked. Like you noted, there are not any Klan who will come forward and admit this to anyone here. Nor are there any who will tell you how revered the man who lived across the road from me was. I don't know who the third shooter was.
Quote
We might recall, in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, when some groups in the Middle East danced in the streets after the World Trade Center in NYC fell to the ground. Apparently you saw something similar in the aftermath of 22 November 1963, when your schoolmates cheered and gloried in the fall of JFK.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes, very much so. In fact we witnessed something of the Arab Celebration on the day of September 11, right here, a lot of high-fiving and congregating to celebrate. It was very reminiscent of the day JFK was killed.
Quote
Such a prophesy suggests more than foresight -- it suggests insight. It suggests planning. And it speaks volumes about a subculture in the USA that we typically prefer to ignore, to neglect, which exists in our blind spot -- so that we might not even know how large it is, to this very day.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes, it is quite a big blind spot, for some strange reason. Creatures who delve into these kinds of groups, usually prefer to operate in blind spots, in the dead of night, like the criminals they are.
Response to INFORMANT
INFORMANT REGARDING THIS COMMENT
The only proof I could ever hope to show, is that letter that I did write to Kennedy in the fall of 1963, warning him of the impending danger that awaited him in Dallas. It only makes sense that that letter is sealed up with the rest of the evidence, but if I am alive when it is all unsealed, I want the letter back. I wrote it and I want it back. That would be the only proof I could ever have. As for any other evidence, I'm sure it exists somewhere.
...It was a Turkey Shoot in Dallas. Three marksmen in a triangle formation. There may have been others, but the three shooters were hand picked. Like you noted, there are not any Klan who will come forward and admit this to anyone here. Nor are there any who will tell you how revered the man who lived across the road from me was. I don't know who the third shooter was.
...In fact I witnessed something of the Arab Celebration on the day of September 11, right here, a lot of high-fiving and congregating to celebrate. It was very reminiscent of the day JFK was killed.
...Yes, it is quite a big blind spot, for some strange reason. Creatures who delve into these kinds of groups, usually prefer to operate in blind spots, in the dead of night, like the criminals they are.
Question for the above statement
INFORMANT, the question the researcher must ask is -- where do we take it from here?
The 1964 Warren Commission did not investigate the KKK. Jim Garrison did not investigate the KKK in 1968. The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations did not investigate the KKK. Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK, did not implicate the KKK (because it was based firmly on Jim Garrison's investigation).
All the major books about the JFK assassination tend to revolve around a handful of suspects: Oswald, the CIA, the Mafia, the FBI, the Pentagon or LBJ...but nobody has yet developed a theory about the KKK.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the reason why nobody has solved the JFK assassination after 50 years.
There is a link between your claim, INFORMANT, that the KKK was the predominant player in the JFK assassination, and Jim Garrison's claim that 544 Camp Street is the center of the cyclone, namely, Guy Banister.
You speak of Guy Banister as a man whom you saw in your home town -- actually in your grandmother's kitchen -- and you portray him as very friendly to the KKK. Banister once rewarded a KKK member for his help, you said, by buying him a truck. That's significant.
So, for those who wish to pursue this line of questioning, I think the next step should be a full disclosure of Guy Banister's possible connections with the KKK. This is something that Jim Garrison failed to provide for us, although he should have, since Guy Banister lived in New Orleans.
Also
Why did LBJ, the FBI, the CIA, and the military go to such concerted lengths to cover up for these people, including provision of a ready-made lone-nut patsy?
The only possible reason was that they were hired indirectly by the CIA, etc. The same is possibly true of the anti-Castro Cubans who have been closely associated with the assassination.
Would these Klansmen have been infiltrated by the rogue members of the CIA? They would need black ops help to get away with it and insider help to complete the cover-up.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Very astute observation
I think it is more likely that when LBJ, the FBI, the CIA, and the military got off work, they attended the same KKK rallies. I think it is fairly obvious, at least to me, that the KKK had the controlling hand in what went on and they had, not only the membership, but the smarts to plan such a coup. I wouldn't be so hasty to tease out members of the different groups mentioned as being NON-Klan. Even top CEO's, people in positions of great power (possibly even Hoover) were members of the KKK (right wing groups). It was Kennedy King Kennedy (KKK) after all, which was foretold to me by a Klan Kid on November 22, 1963. Much of the action in carrying out the coup took place in the south in 1963, much of it in Terry & Byram, Mississippi, almost due north of New Orleans.
On a side-note, it might even be possible that Kennedy was wanting to make the technology invented at NASA, available to the public, which would have threatened Standard Oil at the very least. A move like that would have rallied the forces like nobody's business, along with all the other reasons to kill the man. My mom worked for Brown Engineering (part of the Redstone Arsenal) in the 60's, where much fantastic technology was being developed. Much of it was canned by big oil. I think this pissed Kennedy off, too, unless he was behind it being canned. It is more likely that he had plans to introduce this technology to be explored publicly. It's just a thought.
Response to INFORMANT
Consider First, the Establishment (LBJ, FBI, CIA, Pentagon) did not provide the patsy (Lee Harvey Oswald).
It seems to me that there were two plots -- the plot to kill JFK and the plot to cover it up. The two plots were guided by two different groups with two different goals.
The kill-JFK plotters provided the patsy, Oswald, and their goal was to inspire the USA to invade Cuba and eliminate Castro (much as we (NATO) invaded Iraq and eliminated Saddam Hussein in the past decade).
The coverup-plotters knew who the kill-JFK plotters were, but they believed that the truth would only make the USA attack the right-wing, start a Civil War in the midst of the Cold War, tempt the USSR to interfere, and thus start World War 3. So, the goal of the coverup-plotters was National Security -- that is, to prevent a Civil War and so prevent World War 3.
ALSO to this Would these Klansmen have been infiltrated by the rogue members of the CIA? They would need black ops help to get away with it and insider help to complete the cover-up.
On the theory that the KKK was at the center of the plot to kill JFK, I have no problem believing that rogue or ex-CIA players would be involved. I think INFORMANT is correct in suspecting that plenty of conservative officers of the US Government were (and are) secretly members of the KKK.
Naturally, if some loose-cannon rogues from the CIA did get involved with a grass-roots plot like this, they would bring a lot of resources to the table.
However, I don't think that the cover-up was planned at the same time as the JFK assassination. the perpetrators believed in their hearts that the USA would get behind them 100% and blame Oswald the Communist, and then blame Castro, and then invade Cuba within a few days.
In other words, the patsy was their whole gambit -- their entire alibi. they thought the Communist patsy ploy was a fool-proof plan that would have no repercussions at all.
They did not count on the Federal Government's response -- namely, to blame neither the left-wing extremists (Communists) nor the right-wing extremists (KKK) but to blame the Lone Nut and his neurotic mother.
The people who killed JFK did not care if they were caught, as long as the American people became fired up enough to invade Cuba. It would have been worth it to them, even if they were later caught, as long as Cuba was taken back from the Communists.
The people who covered up the JFK killing, on the other hand, prevented the truth from becoming known -- not to protect the KKK, but to protect the planet from World War 3.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I think it is more likely that when LBJ, the FBI, the CIA, and the military got off work, they attended the same KKK rallies. I think it is fairly obvious, at least to me, that the KKK had the controlling hand in what went on and they had, not only the membership, but the smarts to plan such a coup. I wouldn't be so hasty to tease out members of the different groups mentioned as being NON-Klan. Even top CEO's, people in positions of great power (possibly even Hoover) were members of the KKK (right wing groups).
Response to INFORMANT
INFORMANT , I think what you're saying here is plausible to a degree, but I would hedge my bets a little more.
What you're implying, namely, that high-placed members of the US Government were supporters of the KKK, was certainly true in the early 1900's. The great Democratic President, Woodrow Wilson, for example, was an outspoken advocate of the KKK, and he allowed the KKK to march in Washington in great parades. Wilson promoted the movie, Birth of a Nation, as historical truth.
The reason that Woodrow Wilson was nominated by the Democrats in 1912 was because he successfully maintained race segregation at Princeton University. (It's hard to imagine that the party of JFK and LBJ was once the party of racism and Jim Crow. But the new movie, Lincoln, makes this very clear.)
There was a time when keeping a US University free from Negroes could get a man elected President. That is possibly what Ross Barnett believed (with ex-General Walker at his side) when he struggled so hard to keep the first Negro student (James Meredith) from enrolling at Ole Miss University in 1962. We should count George Wallace in that same category.
The KKK was still very active in the South in 1962, and the riots at Ole Miss are sufficient proof. But the time for racist Presidents had long passed. After World War 2, the USA (like it or not) inherited the mantle of the British Empire. So, in order to be the new World Police, the USA has to put on a noble face for the whole world. JFK was very good at this. Ross Barnett didn't understand what was going on. The KKK, in my opinion, still does not understand what is going on.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
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The KKK was still very active in the South in 1962, and the riots at Ole Miss are sufficient proof. But the time for racist Presidents had long passed. After World War 2, the USA (like it or not) inherited the mantle of the British Empire. So, in order to be the new World Police, the USA has to put on a noble face for the whole world. JFK was very good at this. Ross Barnett didn't understand what was going on. The KKK, in my opinion, still does not understand what is going on.
It is more my view that those who are in right wing power, ARE KKK, or some such group. If the USA is concerned about its image, it is more likely that it would just go to great lengths to hide the truth, rather than filter out the "wrong types". In fact I would be flabergasted if there was some mechanism that filtered out racists from the CIA, especially when so much of the right wing are the ones with the money, hence power & influence.
The KKK and other such groups, are employed in some high-powered positions and backed by some high-powered money. They do not operate out in the open. They know the law enough to be "diplomatic" when needs be, but they are determined in their point of view. You'd never know if one was your representative. I think the right-wing pretty much runs things these days anyway. It is entirely possible that the KKK planned, covered up and carried out the whole JFK, MLK & RFK killings. It wasn't just some rogue CIA agents, the whole organization has too much going on in secret. I think the CIA had MANY members involved in carrying out the assassinations. I would be shocked if the CIA, Border Security, FBI wasn't crawling with KKK or other racist groups.
I think the racists run a lot more than you think. You may be shocked to find out who is a member of racist groups. Most of those kinds of people have a LOT of money and with it, have I mentioned - LOTS of power and influence. If LBJ wasn't a Klansman, I'll be a dillied liver. I think the KKK planned the whole assassination, cover up right down to the song:
"The Eyes of Texas" -
'
The eyes of Texas are upon you
All the live long days
The eyes of Texas are upon you
And you cannot get away
Do not think you can escape them
From night till early in the morn
The eyes of Texas are upon you
Till Gabriel blows his horn
'
Hell yeah the KKK (LBJ, CIA, FBI, Standard Oil, Dixie Mafia, National Guard and Reservists, many big wigs) planned,
supplied, carried out and covered up JFK and more. Still do I suspect.
Ross Barnett was small potatoes who liked to show off and was mighty proud of the members of 'his' state; he licked the boots of those who DID pull off the coup d' etat.
Response to INFORMANT
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It is more my view that those who are in right wing power, ARE the KKK, or some such group. If the USA is concerned about its image, it is more likely that it would just go to great lengths to hide the truth, rather than filter out the "wrong types". In fact I would be flabbergasted if there was some mechanism that filtered out racists from the CIA, especially when so much of the right wing are the ones with the money, hence power & influence.
There is clearly a lot of truth in your words, Informant At the turn of the 20th century, the USA was 94% white, while colored people as a whole owned next to nothing in terms of land or capital property. Therefore, to protect private property (which is widely considered the basis of civilization) it was most common for people in power to be white, and to give preference to other white folks.
However after World War 2, the demographics of the USA began to change significantly. American boys who fought in Europe saw first hand that they were no longer as white demographically as the USA used to be -- there were already lots of half-breeds in the USA population.
By the time of LBJ, it was clear that half-breeds in the USA were a major force. With the passage of LBJ's Civil Rights legislation, the dam broke, and lots of colored people began to own land, companies, capital and to get rich in the USA. At the turn of the 21st century, there is hardly one city in the USA that can claim to be purely white anymore. Things have changed.
There are exceptions. My guess is that in the South there are pockets of old-fashioned culture that resist any encroachment of the modern age. It's all too sinful -- all these half-breeds running around doing whatever they want. This is what happened and shameful
But the world has changed. By the middle of the 21st century, the half-breeds in the USA might even become the majority.
The problem with the KKK is not that it's right-wing (because everybody who wishes to protect private property is right-wing to that extent). Rather, the problem with the KKK is that it still lives in the turn of the 20th century, when the USA was 94% white. But those days are long gone.
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The KKK and other such groups, are employed in some high-powered positions and backed by some high-powered money. They do not operate out in the open. They know the law enough to be "diplomatic" when needs be, but they are determined in their point of view. You'd never know if one was your respresentative. I think the right-wing pretty much runs things these days anyway. It is entirely possible that the KKK planned, covered up and carried out the whole JFK, MLK & RFK killings. It wasn't just some rogue CIA agents, the whole organization has too much going on in secret. I think the CIA had MANY members involved in carrying out the assassinations. I would be shocked if the CIA, Border Security, FBI wasn't crawling with KKK or other racist groups.
I actually agree with you here, Informant . The KKK today is still represented by some large land-holders in the South, and because USA property values are forty times what they were at the turn of the 20th century, some of them are very rich and powerful.
Now, when it comes to 1963 and the assassination of JFK, I am not at all surprised to hear claims that the KKK was not only rooting for the ground-crew, but supporting them and even guiding them at every turn. That sounds correct to me. Guy Banister was reputed to be a profoundly racist individual.
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I think the racists run a lot more than you think. You may be shocked to find out who is a member of racist groups. Most of those kinds of people have a LOT of money and with it, have I mentioned - LOTS of power and influence. If LBJ wasn't a Klansman, I'll be a dillied liver. I think the KKK planned the whole assassination, cover up right down to the song: "The Eyes of Texas"...
But there is still a difference. In 1912 the KKK was out in the open, proud of their enormous membership, and they even marched in Washington and convinced several Congressmen to join their ranks. But that doesn't happen anymore. In fact, that stopped happening soon after World War 2, and by 1963, the KKK was only a shell of its former self (at least in public; because it's hard to say what happened behind closed doors).
But my point is that the KKK, if it still operated with power, had to take that power underground. Now -- joining other underground organizations would make this an easier task. The Minutemen were a secret organization, also. They also had lots of rifles. They also practiced target shooting on a regular basis, out in the countryside. It makes good sense to me that there were plenty of KKK members there in the underground with the Minutemen. No problem.
As for the CIA however, they had rules against membership in the KKK. It was already illegal -- illegal -- to be a KKK member and also an employee of the CIA or the FBI (although secret, underground membership was still possible). The difference is -- how open were they?
Already in 1963 the days were gone when racists like the KKK, or the Third Reich, could march in large numbers down public streets in their full costumes with pride. No, already in 1963 the racists had to hide in the shadows.
But it is precisely these same shadows that give more credence to your theory, Informant , that the KKK was centrally involved in the JFK assassination.
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Hell yeah the KKK (LBJ, CIA, FBI, Standard Oil, Dixie Mafia, National Guard and Reservists, many big wigs) planned, supplied, carried out and covered up JFK and more. Still do I suspect.
Ross Barnett was small potatoes who liked to show off and was mighty proud of the members of 'his' state; he licked the boots of those who DID pull off the coup d' etat.
Well, there I agree, too -- Ross Barnett was not a major player -- although he took a gamble. If he had successfully made JFK back down at Ole Miss, then Ross Barnett (like Woodrow Wilson) would have had a chance to become President of the USA.
I agree, also, that in 1963 the majority of rich and powerful people in the USA were white and proud, and convinced that there must be something about their genes (as opposed to, say, their Judeo-Christian culture) that gave them their great power. Add to this the USA emerging from World War 2 as a powerful nation on earth. There's an ego-booster. Yet the paradox was that the USA gained power only after the defeat of Germany, which Germany tried to stop the the Zionist Jew Banking cartel from enslaving them in debt (much of this has been hidden with there control on news, publication and propaganda)
What a challenge for the rightists in the USA. The USA under Eisenhower (and Earl Warren) found another way with or without the KKK.
The riots at Ole Miss, brought on by Ross Barnett and ex-General Edwin Walker, wanted to return to the old days -- when white was right and colored people knew their place. Eisenhower and Earl Warren were dangerous as we now know with more information, That's just what the KKK wanted to hear. Yet by 1963 they were already reduced to running in the shadows.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
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But there is still a difference. In 1912 the KKK was out in the open, proud of their enormous membership, and they even marched in Washington and convinced several Congressmen to join their ranks. But that doesn't happen anymore. In fact, that stopped happening soon after World War 2, and by 1963, the KKK was only a shell of its former self (at least in public; because it's hard to say what happened behind closed doors).
In the South in 1963, almost anywhere in the South, the KKK did not have to hide so much. They were the power in power. They were the sheriffs and marshals, they were the authority. There was no way to report a black person as "missing" after a lynching back then. They didn't march in public, except at night. And they are very good at hiding in the dark, in fact prefer darkness as the setting for their activity.
The KKK RAN my hometown/the South back then. There was no going against them in the 60's even into the 70's. By the 80's things were changing. I think after the Republicans lost power, the KKK lost some teeth, but they have never just gone away. You may not know about their activity in the North, but plenty of white Southerners know. No they were VERY active in far more than just church burnings and lynchings. They were the young men who were training to invade Cuba. Kennedy confiscating their weapons really pissed them off, then James Meredith. The plot thickened all with the help of backing and funds from the KKK. There may have been outside help, but the Klan are very picky about who they do business with. It is more likely that all the people involved in the assassination and cover up were Klan.
In the sixties, whites, the KKK, were not trying to turn the clock back; they were trying to keep it from moving forward. The South WAS a time capsule back then. When I moved from Mississippi to New York in 1962, it was like moving forward in time. Moving back to Mississippi in 1963 was like stepping back in time a hundred years. It was still segregated back then. Blacks were not "free". Most could not vote without fear. Most blacks lived in poverty. The South had not kept pace with the changes happening in the rest of the country. Actually, slavery was not abolished in Mississippi until 1991. Whites were "The Culture". And everyone KNEW the Klan watched them always.
No, in 1963, the KKK did NOT have to hide in the South; they WERE the power and they wanted fiercely to keep it that way.
Lyndon Johnson was not a KKK member. In fact, he and his family hated and feared the KKK. LBJ was also very pro-Jew at a young age. The local KKK hated LBJ's father.
LBJ may have thought and *behaved* like Joseph Stalin, and he may have thought that the proper relationship of white and black folks was "master and slave," but LBJ was most definitely NOT a Klan member. LBJ was very pro Jew and very pro Israel.
Lyndon Johnson was a murderous thug, with a mentality like a classic tyrant, but he hated the Klan.
LBJ was pro anything that benefited himself!.
Perhaps he feared the Klan because he knew what they were capable of?.
There were assassination threat reports re LBJ. The one that comes to mind is a right wing one involving blowing up a train.
LBJ also did bow to pressure and not only watered down the implementation of the Civil Rights Bill but also presided over changing it significantly from that proposed by JFK in '63. He sent Allen Dulles to Mississippi regarding the M3. Poor blacks suffered disproportionately in the Vietnam War.
It was where MLK was focusing when he was shot. It's wrong to go from an assumption that LBJ did not help in his way the cause of bigotry. It doesn't matter whether he was a signed up member of the reviled KKK. He did his bit to mollify them. Would Kennedy have done so (MLK, RFK)? I think there is good reason to think not.
Reply to INFORMANT
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In the South in 1963, almost anywhere in the South, the KKK did not have to hide so much. They were the power in power. They were the sheriffs and marshals, they were the authority. There was no way to report a black person as "missing" after a lynching back then. They didn't march in public, except at night. And they are very good at hiding in the dark, in fact prefer darkness as the setting for their activity.The KKK RAN my hometown/the South back then. There was no going against them in the 60's even into the 70's. By the 80's things were changing. I think after the Republicans lost power, the KKK lost some teeth, but they have never just gone away. You may not know about their activity in the North, but plenty of white Southerners know. No they were VERY active in far more than just church burnings and lynchings. They were the young men who were training to invade Cuba. Kennedy confiscating their weapons really pissed them off, then James Meredith. The plot thickened all with the help of backing and funds from the KKK. There may have been outside help, but the Klan are very picky about who they do business with. It is more likely that all the people involved in the assassination and cover up were Klan.
In the sixties, whites, the KKK, were not trying to turn the clock back; they were trying to keep it from moving forward. The South WAS a time capsule back then. When I moved from Mississippi to New York in 1962, it was like moving forward in time. Moving back to Mississippi in 1963 was like stepping back in time a hundred years. It was still segregated back then. Blacks were not "free". Most could not vote without fear. Most blacks lived in poverty. The South had not kept pace with the changes happening in the rest of the country. Actually, slavery was not abolished in Mississippi until 1991. Whites were "The Culture". And everyone KNEW the Klan watched them always.
No, in 1963, the KKK did NOT have to hide in the South; they WERE the power and they wanted fiercely to keep it that way.
INFORMANT , I agree with you on most points here. I have a friend in church about my age who grew up outside of Dallas, and he tells me that in his home town the KKK was very active and strong.
In the town, Duarte, California, there was a tree on the main road, Huntington Boulevard, called "the hanging tree", and it had a historical marker that explained its use in the 1920's and 1930's for "lynching." I never saw a lynching myself, but I was assured that it was not unknown in my parent's generation in Southern California.
In Northern California, even today, near Stanford University, West Palo Alto is almost entirely white and East Palo Alto is almost entirely black. California is advanced -- but not that advanced. (Southern California reflects the South a bit more, so we had the Rodney King beatings, for example.)
So, I can accept your observation that in the early 1960's in the South the KKK did not have to hide but was often openly in power through the police departments. I get the impression from your posts that you might have seen a lynching in your lifetime. If so, I'm sorry to hear that -- it sounds traumatic.
Another image you conveyed that sounds eerie is the night-time marches of the KKK. I gather this was their "duty" after work as they burned crosses on the lawns of suspected infidels, or went wild in a lynching. It's discouraging to recollect that the KKK was a normal part of American life at the start of the 20th century. In your own perception, the KKK ran your home town all the way through the 1970's. Furthermore, even though they lost some influence in recent decades, we must all agree that the KKK still exists today.
What is crucial for the EDUCATION FORUM, INFORMANT, is your perception that the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba."
From 1959 to 1963 we see a five-year period -- before Vietnam -- in which the USA was obsessed with the news about Cuba. In 1960 Che Guevarra had published a book called "Guerrilla Warfare," and this terrified many Americans. Robert DePugh responded with his own book, and he started the Minutemen.
Robert De Pugh and his hunting friends were terrified that Cubans (and other Latin American forces) would invade the USA, beginning with the South. So, they organized as many riflemen as they could into a secret organization called the Minutemen.
Robert De Pugh was the leader -- sort of. Ex-military men (like Edwin Walker) would join and would take command of entire cities of Minutemen. They held official guerrilla warfare training in large outdoor camps. Naturally, ex-military men with combat training would be very valuable to them. The Minutemen ground-troops would consist of volunteer policemen, National Guard, reservists, Klaverns, and various hunters and mercenaries looking for connections.
Naturally, Cuban Exiles would become involved in the Minutemen -- seeking support for their next raids against Castro. But the Minutemen did not pay -- they charged membership dues. The Minutemen were not generally rich men but were generally working men and women. Cuban Exiles could be valuable if they could lead combat training. They might also give speeches about how dangerous Castro had become.
But there would also be tensions because Minutemen tended to be WASP, while Cubans tended to be Catholic, and many Cubans spoke little English. (This is why non-religious, English-speaking Latinos like Loran Hall, Larry Howard and Ed Butler could become the leaders in and around the Minutemen and the Cuban Exiles.)
What your claims clarify, INFORMANT , is that in the South the KKK was deeply involved in the Cuban crisis through paramilitary training camps like those of the Minutemen and the Cuban Exiles. JFK's demand to keep these low-profile as possible was probably misunderstood (or misinterpreted) to mean that JFK was against them. But the Ole Miss riot was probably the final straw.
Now, you believe that the KKK was probably the leader of the plot to kill JFK,INFORMANT , because the KKK would not do business with just anybody. I can understand that. For example, the KKK was and I believe still remains exclusively WASP -- that is, no Jews or Catholics were invited. Do I have that right? and what about Zionist Jews as they seemed to have Hi jacked many governments right up to now
In that case, the Minutemen would be in a stronger position, since it could include more money and members from among Catholic and Jewish rightists in the USA.
Your portrait of Mississippi in 1963, in which blacks were intimidated at polling places, is chilling. I know little about the South -- it is especially chilling to read your words that "slavery was not abolished in Mississippi until 1991." I take that to mean that slavery -- which was illegal in the USA since Abraham Lincoln abolished it in 1865, was still practiced underground in Mississippi. Is that correct? This culture was hidden from the rest of the country, but in the countryside in Mississippi, in 1963, black slavery was still practiced out in the open? Is that what you're saying?
This is important information for gauging the social climate in the South in 1963, and why the South was more dangerous than JFK ever understood.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes the South was a dangerous enemy of JFK and RFK. Probably, I am not sure, Catholics were kept out of the Klan. I only knew of a couple of Catholic families in the south back then. They had money and position and I know some were quite friendly with Klan members. There were hardly any Jews in the south and they would NOT have been accepted into the Klan, no if and or buts.
Yes I did witness a couple of lynchings, heard a few more coming from ------ --- ----- ' property during rallies at night in the late 50's. There were church bombings and that, as I said before, was because since white people didn't allow anything to be taught at the black schools, which were just fronts, blacks held classes at church. It was the whole integrated schools thing that was of great concern to the Klan. If blacks were to go to white schools, they would learn and eventually, VOTE.
I think the white Klansmen could see the hand-writing on the wall. Black people were having children and white were buying birth control. The Klan, although kings in the south were reacting like rats in a cage back then. They could feel that the world they had so carefully kept the way they wanted it, was about to be torn asunder. Their power would be disrupted.
There was not slavery per se back then, but blacks were not hired at good paying jobs and most worked for peanuts. Commodity trucks would come around regularly with food for the poor (blacks). Most black families were under the control/protection of white families. A certain black family was associated with a certain white family. The "Taylors" worked for the "Ervins". The "Porters" worked for the "Eeley's". If the black family needed something, they generally asked the white family for it. Good people helped. Racists felt it was their duty to make life hard for any black person.
Some white families even taught "their" blacks, but word of such things was kept very quiet out of fear of the Klan. The Klan knew who were on their side and who they had to watch out for. Even white families that were not at all racist, had to tow the Klan line.
Fortunately for me, my family had money and power, otherwise I would have ended up in the woods. Whites with no money were lynched if caught stepping boldly (teaching blacks, befriending blacks) outside of Klan lines. Whites who stepped out of line and whose families had money, were sent for shock treatment. I never had shock treatment; they had a better solution for me, send me to my uncle. Still I live to write about it.
My mom was sent by the Klan to Whitfield for three months of shock treatment for sitting on the back of the bus in 1956 in solidarity with Rosa Parks, for instance. If we had been poor, she would have been paraded to the woods. Lots of "missing" whites as well as blacks from back then.
I guess I am a dillied liver, but then LBJ: "His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America."
The Zionists are every bit as racist and extreme as the Klan if not more so. Zionists are just another racist group. Don't give up on my liver just yet though, it will be dilled if it is proven that LBJ knew nothing about the planned events in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew what was comin' 'round the bend. Hell I knew and I was only ten. There is no way LBJ didn't know.
the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba.
Yes they were. Many who were training were young men and cousins of mine. They were furious when JFK confiscated their weapons. The white boys came to school ranting and raving about it. I don't know, but have been told by those who do know, that Dr ---- ------- ------- supplied some of the arms. He even had a training area on his property, but from what I heard back then, most of the training to invade Cuba was done in Louisiana. Not sure if it was a military operation at an army base or just back in the woods.
I'd like to give a little bit of my family history. The Terry's owned most of the land that Dry Grove, Mississippi was built on, and more. Augusta Terry who live primarily in the 1800's, had a notion that slavery was wrong. He would buy slaves, lots of them and set them free. Robert Terry, son or grandson of Augusta Terry, eventually gave the land that Dry Grove was built on, to the town, provided they name it after him; its name was change to Terry. He was one of my uncles. I am named for his niece, my great grandmother's maiden name, Terry, only Mom spelled it with an "i". (Thanks Mom)
The Klan were not happy with Augusta Terry. They didn't like blacks being 'set free', but the old man had lots of money and lots of land, he was their landlord. So they put up with it, but continued on their way anyway, in spite of him. Plenty of them were the ones who did business on his property and ran the commerce of the area. I am not sure about some of the history between Klan and my family, but the Klan have 'grown up' having that kind of relationship with members of my family. The great conundrum, what to do about the unruly rich; draw them in! My uncle (mother's brother) was at least a Klansman, and more.
Eventually after marrying into Klan families, members of my family became Klansmen. Not all of us though. I came out the exact opposite and am, what you might call 'totally liberal' even 'socialist', while there are hard core deep rooted Klansmen in my family. Of course I chose to leave rather than stay and be persecuted, which would have continued.
Living with my uncle taught me lots. He was a cagey man. He and one of my cousins, who used to be a cop in New Orleans in the early 60's, exposed me to quite an education.
I sometime miss the south and would like to return home, but I feel it would be a dangerous thing to do. It is not the same place anymore. There would be no one to watch my back and I would need that if I was to live there. There are new dangers, as well as old.
Response to INFORMANT
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...There was not slavery per se back then, but blacks were not hired at good paying jobs and most worked for peanuts. Commodity trucks would come around regularly with food for the poor (blacks). Most black families were under the control/protection of white families. A certain black family was associated with a certain white family. The "Taylors" worked for the "Ervins". The "Porters" worked for the "Eeley's". If the black family needed something, they generally asked the white family for it. Good people helped. Racists felt it was their duty to make life hard for any black person.
Some white families even taught "their" blacks, but word of such things was kept very quiet out of fear of the Klan. The Klan knew who were on their side and who they had to watch out for. Even white families that were not at all racist, had to tow the Klan line.
OK, I understand what you're saying now, INFORMANT. This is interesting sociological anecdotal information, and I'm not aware of any other person who has been willing to come forward with anecdotes about the KKK during the 1960's as it relates directly to the JFK assassination.
You're saying that black slavery was still illegal in Mississippi in 1963, although the social climate was still profoundly oppressive of black Americans. That's an important distinction for me -- I define slavery in terms of ownership of one's own body. (That is, genuine slaves, no matter what race, can be bought and sold, their children can be bought and sold, and they can be rented as sexual objects, female or male, at the caprice of their owners, all within the permission of the legal system. That's the only true definition of slavery -- metaphors don't apply. When people use catch-phrases like 'wage-slavery,' that is just literary phooey. True slavery is physical brutality and any milder definition desecrates the memory of real slaves.)
So, slavery was gone in Mississippi, although the KKK and similar organizations worked hard to keep black Americans (along with brown, yellow, red and Jewish Americans) as dependent as possible, including lynching as a deterrent. Although that is obviously criminal, it is not precisely the same as slavery. I just wanted to clarify my opinion on that.
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Fortunately for me, my family had money and power, otherwise I would have ended up in the woods. Whites with no money were lynched if caught stepping boldly (teaching blacks, befriending blacks) outside of Klan lines. Whites who stepped out of line and whose families had money, were sent for shock treatment. I never had shock treatment; they had a better solution for me, send me to my uncle. Still I live to write about it.
My mom was sent by the Klan to Whitfield for three months of shock treatment for sitting on the back of the bus in 1956 in solidarity with Rosa Parks, for instance. If we had been poor, she would have been paraded to the woods. Lots of "missing" whites as well as blacks from back then.
INFORMANT., your claims here are interesting on multiple grounds. They help to explain why Brown v. the Board of Education was such a disaster for the KKK and its Southern culture. It was probably perceived as part of the Restoration after Lincoln. No wonder the same arguments used before the Civil War would arise again when speaking of the integration of public schools, specifically, the argument of State's Rights.
It's a legitimate argument -- whether States ought to retain any rights or not. But the outcome of World War 2 complicated this -- now the USA was no longer one more nation in the world, but the USA now became the new British Empire -- the leader of the free world. We now have to put on a noble face for the whole world to see.
(Here's something we don't commonly learn in US History class -- the US Army during World War 2 did not start out as racially integrated. Yet we were going up against Nazi Germany, which was stridently racially segregated. In order to preserve Army morale, Eisenhower and the Pentagon generals decided to racially integrate the US Army. Hollywood was drafted into this propaganda campaign, to always portray US soldiers in racially integrated platoons. But when the War began, that was a myth. World War 2 changed everything for the USA.)
Anyway, your claims are topical today, Terri, because education remains a major problem in the USA. Public education is more expensive than ever, and yet millions of kids graduate from high school with low reading, writing or arithmetic abilities. Many US public schools are surrounded by guards and barbed wire, and some of them resemble prison camps. White flight from public schools is a cliche today. Home schooling is increasingly common. It is disingenuous to ignore race as the primary issue here.
That is, it appears that some powerful force is working overtime to ensure the failure of the public schools, and to undermine education for the children of poverty. Your citation of the KKK in this same regard in your home town while you were growing up is interesting sociological anecdotal information
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I guess I am a dillied liver, but then the link you provided states this about LBJ: "His aunt Jessie Johnson Hatcher, a major influence on LBJ, was a member of the Zionist Organization of America." The Zionists are every bit as racist and extreme as the Klan if not more so. Zionists are just another racist group. Don't give up on my liver just yet though, it will be dilled if it is proven that LBJ knew nothing about the planned events in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There is no doubt in my mind that he knew what was comin' 'round the bend. Hell I knew and I was only ten. There is no way LBJ didn't know.
As for LBJ, INFORMANT, I'm one of those who places LBJ above the level of the JFK assassination itself. In my opinion, LBJ was the leader of the cover-up of the JFK assassination. I hope the difference is clear. Some right-wing extremists (probably including the KKK, the Minutemen, the JBS and ex-General Walker) were the perpetrators, but they only wanted to invade Cuba. That was their main target.
LBJ did not belong to the perpetrators, because he did not want to invade Cuba. (If LBJ was on the side of the perpetrators of the JFK assassination, we would have invaded Cuba right away, I have no doubt. Lee Harvey Oswald would have been portrayed as a Communist Castro agent, and that would have been that.)
LBJ belonged to the second plot -- to the cover-up plot. But the cover-up plot was not invented by the JFK assassination plotters. This is clear because the cover-up plot had a different motivation or goal. The cover-up plotters wanted to hide the identity of the actual JFK assassins because they knew that the American people would start riots in all major cities, and that this might spark a new Civil War in the USA. Now, during the Cold War, a new Civil War would have tempted the USSR to interfere, and this could have ignited World War 3.
Therefore, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover and Chief Justice Earl Warren, in order to prevent World War 3, -- for reasons of National Security they created this story about Lee Harvey Oswald would be sealed away until 2039. This is the only explanation that makes sense to me. If Oswald was the lone assassin, and Oswald was now dead, then how is National Security threatened by releasing his files?
No, the only threat to National Security was in disclosing the identity of the real perpetrators.
So, , INFORMANT, in my opinion, that is, LBJ certainly knew more about the JFK assassination than he ever admitted -- however, is he was a member of the KKK. But for purposes of National Security, LBJ would protect the identities of the real JFK assassins for 75 years. That's my opinion.
Response to INFORMANT
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LBJ was pro anything that benefit ted himself!.
Perhaps he feared the Klan because he knew what they were capable of?.
If LBJ hated the Klan, I suspect he was like some of my family members and grew to tolerate (even using) them, while maybe feeling he was in competition with them, on his part. I know some of my family members are members of other groups that feel they are superior to the Klan, which seems to have created a more competitive/antagonistic relationship between themselves and Klan. Using one another is not beyond them.
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So, you're partially correct, Terri, in my opinion, that is, LBJ certainly knew more about the JFK assassination than he ever admitted -- however, it wasn't because he was a member of the KKK. As Robert Morrow rightly said, LBJ was an enemy of the KKK. But for purposes of National Security, LBJ would protect the identities of the real JFK assassins for 75 years. That's my opinion.
That makes sense to me, since he certainly DID manage to let the real assassins live out their lives in peace and prosperity.
I have no proof, but I know that ------ --- ----- was the man who actually pulled the trigger, that shot the bullet, that killed JFK. It was not at all beyond the man to do such a thing. My uncle was also present at what was a 'Turkey Shoot'. I have heard tell of another man named Malcolm Wallace who may have been the third shooter. No matter who it was, I am convinced there were three marksmen that day in Dallas; only one of them is attributed with having fired the fatal shot.
But the files sealed until long after the cows come home, must contain more than just info on Oswald. If LBJ was in on the cover up, there would have been such things as the letter I wrote to JFK to warn him. If I live long enough, I would like the letter back; it is my only evidence that I have not made this whole 'theory' up.
Without it, I trudge forward to open the bag a little so to speak, ahead of schedule. I am not sure what harm it could do now, most of the guilty are dead. No one has ever listened to me in the past and I must say I am surprise anyone does now, but I will say in my defence, I have not said anything that didn't actually happen. I have not made up any 'facts'. That's what it was like in the south in the fifties and sixties, total apartheid. It has morphed into the various right wing groups today.
Besides, it is common knowledge among racists, just who killed JFK AND where he is from. The info racist groups in Canada have about the JFK assassination did NOT come from me; it came from the Klan.
Response to INFORMANT
Where's J. Edgar Hoover in all this? A Johnson crony and Kennedy enemy whose agency had infiltrated the Klan for at least three decades by 1963?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
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Where's J. Edgar Hoover in all this? A Johnson crony and Kennedy enemy whose agency had infiltrated the Klan for at least three decades by 1963?
"infiltrate"! Is that what they did? I heard Hoover was a Grand Dragon at one point. Yes I have often wondered that, too. Where was Hoover in all that? I place my bets on Hoover having his hand in it. In fact once again, my liver will be quite dillied if Hoover was not involved in carrying out some of the logistics, as well as in covering up. I can't see him keeping quiet throughout the whole time period. It would make sense that he was involved in a primary way, at least in the death of RFK, since he hated the man so, but most likely more.
It also would make sense that Hoover was friendly with Dr ---- ------- -------, a very inventive pathologist.
Response to INFORMANT
So, INFORMANT, in my opinion, that is, LBJ certainly knew more about the JFK assassination than he ever admitted -- however, it wasn't because he was a member of the KKK. As Robert Morrow rightly said, LBJ was an enemy of the KKK. But for purposes of National Security, LBJ would protect the identities of the real JFK assassins for 75 years. That's my opinion.
That makes sense to me, since he certainly DID manage to let the real assassins live out their lives in peace and prosperity.
I have no proof, but I know that ------ --- ----- was the man who actually pulled the trigger, that shot the bullet, that killed JFK. It was not at all beyond the man to do such a thing. My uncle was also present at what was a 'Turkey Shoot'. I have heard tell of another man named Malcolm Wallace who may have been the third shooter. No matter who it was, I am convinced there were three marksmen that day in Dallas; only one of them is attributed with having fired the fatal shot.
But the files sealed until long after the cows come home, must contain more than just info on Oswald. If LBJ was in on the cover up, there would have been such things as the letter I wrote to JFK to warn him. If I live long enough, I would like the letter back; it is my only evidence that I have not made this whole 'theory' up.
Without it, I trudge forward to open the bag a little so to speak, ahead of schedule. I am not sure what harm it could do now, most of the guilty are dead. No one has ever listened to me in the past and I must say I am surprise anyone does now, but I will say in my defence, I have not said anything that didn't actually happen. I have not made up any 'facts'. That's what it was like in the south in the fifties and sixties, total apartheid. It has morphed into the various right wing groups today.
Besides, it is common knowledge among racists, just who killed JFK AND where he is from. The info racist groups in Canada have about the JFK assassination did NOT come from me; it came from the Klan.
INFORMANT, I think your claims have merit, even if it turns out that your uncle was only one of the many possible shooters at JFK on 22 November 1963.
According to my theory, your uncle fits the profile -- he was among the thousands of radical right-wing Minutemen obedient to ex-General Edwin Walker who gathered regularly throughout 1963 to call for the execution of the "traitor" and Communist JFK who was selling the USA out to the United Nations and the USSR.
These right-wing vigilantes -- who would have quickly accepted anybody from the KKK on their side, as well as any radical Cuban Exile -- operated completely underground, without oversight from any governmental agency. They were also a magnet for rogue CIA and rogue FBI defectors. If there were CIA and FBI spies that infiltrated them (e.g. Harry Dean) and reported what they saw, then obviously their words fell on deaf ears.
ATF agent Frank Ellsworth told the Warren Commission point blank that "the most likely suspects for the JFK assassination in Dallas were General Walker and the Minutemen." Nothing whatsoever came from his admonitions.
What about Hoover's role in all this -- I also wonder. Mark Knight wrote that Hoover knew about the Carlos Marcello contract on JFK and did nothing about it; and Sylvia Meagher wrote that Hoover was clearly an accomplice 'after the fact'. Harry Dean says that he himself reported to the FBI about his eye-witness account of hearing ex-General Edwin Walker identify Lee Harvey Oswald as the patsy in a plot to kill JFK at the same time that my Congressman, John Rousselot, handed a suitcase full of money to war hero Guy Gabaldon in the company of Loran Hall and Larry Howard, and the FBI never responded to his report. This makes me suspect Hoover.
Yet I'll personally withhold judgment against Hoover until more evidence is in. At the very worst I'm inclined to believe that J. Edgar Hoover was willing to look the other way as the countless enemies of JFK made closer and closer circles around JFK. Hoover was indeed threatened by the Kennedys on many levels. Gerry P. Hemming wrote (on this very FORUM in 2005) that he was the one who personally accepted money from RFK to find dirt on J. Edgar Hoover, and he quickly and easily did so -- very compromising photographs. In exchange for those, Hoover was obliged to hand over his compromising photographs of the Kennedys. At that point, said Hemming, Hoover was out to frame Interpen for anything he could.
In my theory, however, since Hoover came up with the "Lone gun theory of Oswald," was this a cover up ,,,, Hoover belong to the plot to kill JFK -- because those who plotted to kill JFK proposed the "Communist theory of Oswald." in order to inspire the USA to invade Cuba. That tells me that, no matter how much J. Edgar Hoover hated the Kennedys, his role in the assassination was at the very worst to ignore reports that came his way, and to look the other way as the inevitable happened.
Now Hoover has been found guilty in Dr. King was in fact murdered as a result of a “conspiracy” involving Lloyde Jowers and “others, including governmental agencies,” which were named in the trial to include the FBI, Memphis Police Department, and others
Info on Trial http://www.thekingcenter.org/civil-case-king-family-versus-jowers
See -- the Kennedys had so many enemies that all the government had to do was "look the other way" for a few weeks at most. I think that's what happened.
INFORMANT I find your information interesting on many levels. Your descriptions of your home town when you were growing up are fascinating; I believe many readers want to read a lot more about the KKK in the mid-20th century South -- especially Yankee readers. I also believe that your portrait of the South in the early 1960's offers the most appropriate background for understanding how and why JFK was assassinated when he came to the South. This would be the case whether or not your uncle turns out to be the fatal shooter of JFK.
Do you think Gabaldon enlisted your uncle?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
To be clear, my uncle never fired the fatal shot. He was a bad shot. He shot his own right middle toe off in a hunting accident when young. I suspect it kept him from becoming a cop. ------ --- ----- IS the man who fired the fatal shot. He was a National Guard Reservist.
My grandmother bragged about having Bannister in her home for supper with "Bubba" and bragged, on November 22, '63, that Uncle Bubba had a hand in what happened in Dallas, claiming I should be proud of him. I have no proof that he was even in Dallas on that date, but I believe he did live in Texas at the time and my grandmother's behavior would make no sense at all, unless Uncle Bubba was in Dallas and part of the coup.
I have often felt that Bubba must have been "hired on" in Dallas as only a special position, but he could have been CIA. I have no proof of that. I do have information about him on other cases, elsewhere. There is always DNA for those other cases, if FBI cared to look.
About Hoover, I just can't see him keeping quiet. It is plausible that he gave advice on plans and made suggestions for cover ups. From what I have heard from the Klan in Mississippi, Hoover WAS Klan.
Another point I wanted to make, is that traditionally the south had always voted democratic. But if you consider that Kennedy and Barnett were both Democrats, you can see the vast gulf of difference between national Democrats and the party at state level in the south. Ross Barnett was certainly more a Republican in his views.
Response to INFORMANT
....About Hoover, I just can't see him keeping quiet. It is plausible that he gave advice on plans and made suggestions for cover ups. From what I have heard from the Klan in Mississippi, Hoover WAS Klan.
John Drabble is a historian that has published a series of articles and papers on COINTELPRO - WHITE HATE, "the FBI's domestic covert action program against the Ku Klux Klan 1964-1971."
http://cointelprowhi...0&max-results=1
An excerpt from one of Drabble's articles:
The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Mississippi, 1964-1971
Introduction
In September 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a highly secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program, known as "COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE." This covert action program sought to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" Ku Klux Klan groups, whose violent vigilante activities had begun to alarm the nation, and with it, the national government. This article will assess that program's effect on Klan groups in Mississippi, between 1964 and 1971, when the program was exposed. In doing so, it will add an entirely new dimension to the question of how and why an important change in race relations came to one state in the American South during this period.
......To begin this process, I have chosen to trace systematically each documented covert operation used by the FBI against Klan groups and Klansmen in Mississippi, to assess their effects. My research is based primarily upon the COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE file. I also use documents from the MIBURN file, an investigation of the murder of three civil rights activists in Neshoba County in June 1964, as well as FBI intelligence files I obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Additional conclusions are drawn from white supremacist publications I acquired from a number of archival collections.
The COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE operation endeavored to expose and disrupt Klan activities, cause disillusionment, and create factional splits within Klan organizations. It aimed to increase animosity and factional activities among Klansmen, and cause expulsions and defections from the Klans. A careful reading of these sources indicates that COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE operations aggravated factionalism in Mississippi, contributing to the splintering of Mississippi's Klan organizations. They discredited high-ranking Klan officers, many of whom were purged or quit. They brought about resignation, frustration and fear among rank and file Klan members, which, in turn, brought about drastic reductions in the membership rolls and the concurrent disbanding of most of the local Klan units in the state. In combination with criminal prosecutions, this article concludes, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE vitiated all of the KKK organizations that operated in Mississippi.
For those wanting to read a more complete version of John Drabble's paper, see this post from another Forum thread on the Klan:
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Thanks for the link. I will read it later. Yes there was an investigation into the three civil rights workers who were murdered by the Klan in Neshoba in June of 1964.... and thousands of other murder victims had gone before and after them. My friend, Junior Ransom, was murdered in Terry in August of 1964, but there was and never will be an investigation into his death, even though I know who did it.
I left the south in 1970, but when visiting in the decades afterward, I did see an improvement in the atmosphere of my hometown. By the 80's the white and blacks of Mississippi who had disagreed with the Klans, but had not spoken out in fear of reprisal, began to become unafraid. I was one of those, which is why I was sent away. Blacks were retaliating and it WAS scaring the Klan. I don't know how much effect the FBI had on things, but it was when the blacks started organizing and retaliating that things started to cool off. I still say the FBI WERE Klan, at least the ones with power and position to get away with it. In fact, from what I have seen, most law enforcement are racists, so it does not makes sense that the FBI are so squeaky clean.
Even after the death of JFK, I was still not afraid of the Klan, and was still unaware of the pressure the Klan was putting on my family. It wasn't until after the lynching of my friend that I became afraid. My grandmother had threatened that I would be thrown in the fire too, if I tried to stop what was happening to Junior. She was very much Klan, but her father had not been, although he did not speak out against them openly, out of fear. My great grandfather would have been happy if there had never been any sort of racism. He would have preferred it that way, but his daughter, my grandmother was a fanatic. Her daughter, my mother, was not at all racist and the two of them fought on many occasions. My grandmother even burned the Dr Suess book, 'Star Bellied Sneeches' my mom had sent us, because she felt it was deplorable literature for children, inciting a mixing of races.
My mother had spent time in Whitfield for sitting on the back of the bus. Shock treatment for three months. My grandmother saw to it and was pressured into committing her daughter to the mental facility by the Klan. Also my grandmother wanted to make sure they would not retaliate against the rest of the family.
The Klan was like a trapped snake back then. The world was crushing in on the way of life white Klansmen had built up for well over two centuries. It was the final death nell of the Civil War for the south, integration, blacks voting and ELECTING blacks. It was a very big deal in the south.
Response to INFORMANT
To speak of Gabaldon here is topical in my theory, although my theory is anything but settled. Anyway, in my personal view so far, there were so many people involved in the JFK assassination plot that there's plenty of blame to go around.
For example, I accept Harry Dean's claim that Guy Gabaldon was involved in the arm of this plot that reached into Southern California. This is also where Loran Hall and Larry Howard entered the picture. Yet Harry's eye-witness account does not (to the best of my knowledge) extend all the way to Dallas. Harry saw what he reported that he saw -- and the rest of Harry's theory is his own interpretation of events based upon what he could see from his single viewpoint.
I happen to accept Harry's eye-witness account as truth, and I build on that. Yet that doesn't mean that I accept all of Harry's interpretation of events that occurred outside of his eye-witness account. Harry Dean says he saw ex-General Walker and Guy Gabaldon at a secret John Birch Society (and quasi-Minutemen) meeting in September 1963 discussing Lee Harvey Oswald and the future assassination of JFK. I take that as fact. Now, does this mean that Harry's conclusions about Dallas must be correct? Not necessarily, because (to the best of my knowledge) Harry wasn't in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Anything could have happened at that point -- literally anything.
For example, the crew that was supposed to be on the front lines that day might have been held up in traffic, and another crew had to take their place. Jim Garrison thought there had to be at least three crews. Other researchers thought that there were at least five crews. The estimate of the number of shots fired ranges from three to twelve, as I've read them. The truth will be hard to find, but we must start with the ground-crew, in my opinion. That means (to me) that the Dallas players will probably play the leading role.
It is possible (but not certain) that Guy Gabaldon was the leader of only one critical task, namely, management of the patsy. That is what Harry Dean's eye-witness account seems to guarantee. Guy Gabaldon was in direct and close contact with Loran Hall and Larry Howard. We can connect these two with Gerry Patrick Hemming, who confessed to A.J. Weberman that he convinced Lee Harvey Oswald to sell his Manlicher-Carcano rifle for double its going price, and to bring it to work on 22 November 1963, and leave it on the 6th floor for his friend to pick up. I accept that. Since we can connect Hemming directly with Loran Hall and Larry Howard, then I will surmise that Guy Gabaldon managed Hemming's participation, as well. These are tiny roles, but totally necessary for the big picture.
Therefore, it is not necessary for me even to conclude, along with Harry Dean (whom I respect and admire) that Hall and Howard were the JFK shooters. They did their part by managing to manipulate and position Oswald in Mexico and in Dallas. That was what they were ordered to do (as Harry Dean witnessed it) and that is what they did, and if they did any more than that, then we simply have no eye-witness confirmation of that extra work (to the best of my knowledge).
Let's take a moment to reflect, on our situation today, fifty years after 1963. Now is the time when we might expect the real shooters to come forward to stake their claim to history. There was more than one shooter -- how many were there? Not as "groups" (like the CIA, FBI, Minutemen, KKK, JBS, Mafia, Cubans, etc.) but as individuals? This identification stage has already begun. Aside from Lee Harvey Oswald theorists have proposed the individual names of Roscoe White, James Files, Charles Nicoletti, Loran Hall, Larry Howard, Johnny Roselli, Tony Cuesta, Eladio Del Valle, Herminio Diaz Garcia, even J.D. Tippit and a growing list of others. Who knows where it will end?
What we might surmise about the individual names offered so far is that they were all racists and they were all right-wing fanatics. Terri's description of this person she believes shot JFK matches this profile. Terri proposes that somebody from her childhood (not her uncle) was the shooter and I believe that she is earnest in her proposal. I'm even willing to place this person in Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1962 -- but that doesn't prove that this person fired the fatal shot. There were at least nine expert rifleman in Dealey Plaza that day, and only one of them fired the fatal shot.
Who will it turn out to be? That's the big question today. Roscoe White was an excellent candidate, in my opinion, but his family lost their empirical evidence, so we have no final proof. What we are all waiting for, IMHO, is that final proof of the final shooter -- the Rosetta Stone of the JFK conspiracy theorists.
Also
John Drabble is a historian that has published a series of articles and papers on COINTELPRO - WHITE HATE, "the FBI's domestic covert action program against the Ku Klux Klan 1964-1971."
...
In September 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a highly secretive and extralegal counterintelligence program, known as "COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE." This covert action program sought to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" Ku Klux Klan groups, whose violent vigilante activities had begun to alarm the nation, and with it, the national government. ...
Although I agree that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI worked to "neutralize" the KKK in America, we must also consider the other side, namely, that J. Edgar Hoover spent more time and money spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. than any other single American.
We should not conclude that the FBI was a friend to the Civil Rights movement in the USA, simply because they opposed the KKK here and there. We should also bear in mind that JFK and RFK took a public position of condemning the vigilante raids against Cuba, and closed down Minutemen and other vigilante training camps -- while at the same time they continued underground and secret activities against Castro's Cuba.
In other words -- some actions that powerful public figures perform for the Mass Media are strictly intended for public consumption, while privately they may hold different attitudes.
For example, J. Edgar Hoover was a zealous Anticommunist -- and yet he also convinced himself and his followers that the Civil Rights movement -- especially with regard to Negroes -- was part of the Communist movement and the USSR underground. That is, Hoover twisted his Anticommunism to attack the USA Civil Rights movement!
Granted, Hoover might have believed this fantasy in his heart. But the end result was racist business as usual, was it not? Terri's perception that the FBI acted to suppress the rights of black Americans to an equal extent as the KKK did, has real merit in the light of actual history. .
Also
...What we might surmise about the individual names offered so far is that they were all racists and they were all right-wing fanatics. Terri's description of this person she believes shot JFK matches this profile...
Having said this, I must remove Lee Harvey Oswald from the line-up on the basis of this characteristic alone. This adds contour to my theory -- it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the perpetrators of plot to kill JFK were motivated by the Brown decision, also known as the 2nd Reconstruction, which comes to a peak with JFK's Civil Rights address of 11 June 1963:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cSrvqYKQH8 .
This was soon followed by MLK's "I have a dream" speech of 28 August 1963.
The massive right-wing resistance to the 2nd Reconstruction yielded organizations like the White Citizens' Councils (later renamed to Citizens' Councils) which openly called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren for his 1954 decision in Brown v. The Board of Education.
Ex-General Edwin Walker played a vocal role in the Citizens' Councils after his conscience was torn in Arkansas following his obedient fulfillment of Eisenhower's demand to racially integrate Little Rock High in 1957. Walker's politics were increasingly molded by the 2nd Reconstruction, by the Citizerns' Councils, and by segregationist neo-Christian preachers like Dr. Billy James Hargis. All this pressure was heightened by the threat of Communist Cuba, so that new groups like the JBS and the Minutemen sprang up for a new generation.
The paramilitary groups among these rightists became Edwin Walker's new troops after his loss of command over the 24th Infantry Division in Augsburg, Germany in early 1961. Along with Harry Dean, I place my suspicions on Edwin Walker, the Minutemen and their fellow travelers regarding the JFK plot. Our suspicions are confirmed by ATF Agent Frank Ellsworth who told the Warren Commission via the FBI that his evidence pointed directly to "General Walker and the Minutemen."
There is no doubt in my mind that the KKK was a kindred spirit of the Minutemen and joined in the same White Citizens' Council meetings. All of this gives further plausibility to Terri Williams' claim that some KKK member in her family was a Dallas shooter on that fateful day.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
The White Citizens' Council was formed out of fear of what might happen to the young white kids if they had to attend school with black kids. New 'Academies' sprang up soon, governed by WCC's, to give white kids a private place to go to school, so that the government had no control. Whites, in the Klans and associated groups and mindsets, were terrified of Blacks having the vote. It was the vote, in the hands of a people who Whites knew they had wronged for a long long time, that frightened Whites. The Whites in power in the South back then did not want to give Blacks the vote. The only way they had maintained power over the centuries, was by inflicting fear, deprivation and the denial of education. The cute little voter registration test that Whites came up with, in response to allowing Blacks the vote.
But if the vote was going to be given to Blacks, Whites prepared to avoid the inevitable possibility integration opened up. Not only was integration giving Blacks the right to vote at long last, it also presented the possibility that young Whites might "mix" with Blacks, THAT was the biggest fear, Mixing of the Races. That's when Terry Academy, a private school for whites only, was started, I believe. Sometime in the '60's, "Whites Only" schools began to spring up around the south.
"the perpetrators of plot to kill JFK were motivated by the Brown decision, also known as the 2nd Reconstruction, which comes to a peak with JFK's Civil Rights address of 11 June 1963 & MLK's "I have a dream" speech of 28 August 1963, the White Citizens' Councils, groups like the JBS and the Minutemen sprang up for a new generation"
Oh Yes! All of those events created waves of anger throughout the south. Bannister started coming to town, rallies were held quite frequently, the atmosphere in Terry was charged with excitement, anger, righteousness and malice. The scent of blood was in the air as Blacks were used as 'mascots' in the preparations.
The Minutemen were controlled by Klan, at least the branch in the 'South'. There might be a few that were not in the Klan, but they must have known not to step out of line, given what they might also have participated in or knew of. Like I said before, the three civil rights workers who were murdered, were not the first nor the last. In fact, in my hometown, it was acceptable to say there had been only "two" civil rights' workers who were murdered. As far as people like my grandmother were concerned, the big deal was made over the whole affair because of the two white people murdered. Blacks were murdered all the time back then and no one made a big deal about that, so when speaking on the subject of the murdered civil rights' workers, in my hometown, it was always referred to as "the Two Civil Rights' Workers", not three.
I am not as well versed on evidence as other members of this forum, I only know the subject from the view point of someone who lived in the south at that time, where there seems to have been a different reaction to the death of JFK, MLK & RFK than in the rest of the country, possibly world. There was a different mindset in the south in 1963 (and earlier) than there was in the North. I had come from the North (New York) in July of 1963, so I know for a fact that the mindset of the people in the North, for he most part, was quite opposite to that of the mindset in the South. It was quite a startling contrast.
The differences really stood out, the segregation, the disrespect for Blacks, but what stood out the most was the hatred southerners felt for Kennedy. In the North, Kennedy was well loved and admired for his courage, but in the South, he was most righteously (in the White mindset) despised. The Whites had a Cause: to maintain power in the South, possibly even in the White House. They did not want to give up power and face changes to their way of life. That's what seemed to have driven the people of my hometown during that time period. In the end, things did change there and they have had to accept the inevitable. There are fewer KKK members in the south now, but there seems to be more in other part of the country, even in Canada, now.
Some of the members from my hometown moved Northwest. My uncle lived out his days on the west coast. He traveled the Pacific Northwest, through Canada into Alaska, throughout his life. He is dead now.
Racism is not dead, though, nor are the groups that sponsor such hatred, quashed.
Response to INFORMANT
Also, I did read Drabble's paper, and found it interesting and valuable. It's a triumphant article, claiming total victory over the Klan in Mississippi. According to Drabble, if it weren't for the FBI, the Klan would have been much, much worse than it is, i.e. it would have been united and enormous.
That is speculation. Drabble provides (as far as I can see) no social statistics to demonstrate his claims. Drabble succeeds in showing that a long-term, well-funded FBI program of infiltrating the KKK did take place in the 1960's. After the 1960's, to the best of my knowledge, Civil Rights workers were no longer murdered with impunity in Mississippi -- and so one may tend to agree with the conclusions suggested by Drabble.
Or not. I remember in the late 1970's, we saw a local news story about a mixed-race couple who were shot in broad daylight in a public park. The perpetrator exclaimed to the Press, "My name is ____ and I'm against race-mixing and communism!" So the KKK fire may have dissipated in the 1960's, but it was not extinguished, and might even have spread beyond Mississippi.
My original point is that J. Edgar Hoover, while bringing the KKK under control in Mississippi, nevertheless spent more FBI time and money spying on Martin Luther King, Jr. than any other American. Every activity of MLK's life was taped and photographed by the FBI. IMHO that is comparable to the actions of the KKK. From this viewpoint, Hoover seemed only to demand a higher role than the Grand Dragon in monitoring and controlling black Americans.
As it turns out, MLK, like JFK, had a weakness for women. So J. Edgar Hoover kept a photo-library of MLK's liaisons (just as he kept a photo-library of JFK's liaisons) and he tried to bribe the King family (just as he tried to bribe the Kennedy family) with threats to publish these photographs.
One might grant that spying and blackmail are at least more genteel than lynching. On that point, I'm willing to agree.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Quote
I don't believe Hoover was a member of the Klan. I don't believe that Hoover was a Grand Dragon in the Klan.
I never said I know for a fact that Hoover was a Klansmen, but I did hear the Klan in my hometown make the claim. Maybe it was hyperbole on their part. However, if FBI DID infiltrate, not join, the Klan, they would have known about the man across the road from me. Why then was he never busted? Unless of course it is more "hyperbole", which I assure you, it is not. I will always know and say, FOR A FACT, that ______ ___ _____ killed JFK, no matter who else is capable of discerning the truth.
You state that Hoover spent great deals of money chasing MLK around for dirt. That tactic sounds Klan to me. Hoover was no friend of JFK or RFK. Why? Because RFK was going after the Mafia, which Hoover claimed did not exist? It seems to me that Hoover was really good at overlooking fact.... or he had ulterior motives, payoffs. If he would climb into bed with the Mafia, why would it be so far fetched to think he was also a Klansmen? He certainly used a lot of money to blackmail, which was another Klan tactic that was used against "enemies" with money and power. Hoover Blackmailed the Kennedy's & Martin Luther King Jr.
What is it that a squeaky clean FBI agent would do with evidence of blackmail? Please, it is hyperbole to think the FBI are such champions against crime. Hoover never solved the crime and it was a crime that the president was shot.... and killed. Hoover never did anything about it. Not much of an investigator, even with all his "infiltrating".
As for busting the Klan in Mississippi in their chops, what year did that happen exactly? The Klan are very much like snakes. You don't see them, are lucky if you hear them and better be two steps ahead if your hunting them.
Response to INFORMANT
Is there any way, without putting yourself in physical danger, that you can find hard evidence about this person and his involvement in the assassination. I know that some, myself included, felt that Gerry Hemming had a part in it, but he never indicated that he was. You are the first that has come on and said what you "know" who the shooter was. I am asking, while making every effort not to be pointedly ignorant, can you find anything to help in bringing the killer(s) to justice, albeit posthumously?
Also
INFORMANT, I think your points are hitting home . Hoover has long been a suspect by many researchers. As for the FBI, they are only human, after all, and some of them even vote on the extreme right. We can probably expect most FBI agents to be right-wing. For example, James Hosty, the FBI agent assigned to monitor Lee Harvey Oswald, was also a bridge partner with Nazi publisher Robert Allen Surrey. Now, one might argue that Hosty was spying on Surrey during these bridge games -- or not.
In other words, it is entirely possible and plausible to claim that people in the FBI could also be sympathetic to the goals of the KKK. They might disagree with some KKK tactics (i.e. lynching) but they might agree with other KKK tactics (i.e. spying and blackmail).
You mention the link between Hoover and the Mafia, and you ask whether a person linked to the Mafia could also be linked to the KKK. Of course it's possible, but sociologically it wasn't common because Mafia folks tend to be Catholic while KKK people tend to be White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP). Naturally there would be "intermarriage" here and there. But for the most part, a person was either one or the other and not both.
One might argue that Hoover kept his connections with the Mafia and resisted prosecuting them because in this way he could monitor them more closely (like Hosty monitoring Surrey). Or not. It is also possible that Hoover became corrupt after so many generations of associating with hoodlums.
The critics in your thread, Terri, seem to insist on making fine-point distinctions between the enemies of JFK. The KKK is not the FBI is not the Mafia. Hoover was not a member of the KKK (unless somebody has proof). For example, Michael points out the research done by John Drabble about COINTELPRO-White Hate, an FBI domestic spying program against the KKK from 1964 to 1971. Hoover probably wouldn't infiltrate the KKK if he was a member of the KKK (although one can imagine a TV-drama showing Hoover the Grand Dragon sending the FBI to pretend to infiltrate the KKK, to fool the American public).
Yet other researchers will be quick to remind them that the FBI used the Mafia to do dirty work at times (just as the CIA used the foreign Mafia in foreign lands to do dirty work at times). When something less-than-legal has to be done, the Mafia can be effective contractors -- as the story goes.
As for the KKK, which is your own circle of expertise, Terri, based on your personal experience, I think JFK researchers have tended to neglect the KKK. The Warren Commission neglected any KKK investigation. Jim Garrison neglected a KKK investigation. The HSCA neglected a KKK investigation. One might argue that they all neglected the KKK because they had no evidence to work with. One might also argue that they all neglected the KKK because the KKK is simply that clever -- after all, it has been 50 years and the Case is still open.
My own research tends to circle around ex-General Edwin Walker, the JBS and the Minutemen. Yet the more I research these elements, the more connections I find with something called the White Citizens' Councils. And the more I look into the White Citizens' Councils, the more I find the hand of the KKK.
So, INFORMANT, I must admit that you have my attention. Any details you can provide about this new turn in JFK research would be most welcome, IMHO.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Is there any way, without putting yourself in physical danger, that you can find hard evidence about this person and his involvement in the assassination. I know that some, myself included, felt that Gerry Hemming had a part in it, but he never indicated that he was. You are the first that has come on the forum and said that you "know" who the shooter was. I am asking, while making every effort not to be pointedly ignorant, can you find anything to help in bringing the killer(s) to justice, albeit posthumously?
Geesh, I kinda doubt it. The most I would be able to come up with, is another person who was there that day, November 22, 1963, in my school, who saw what happened right after the president was shot. The principal of our school came around within 30 minutes of the incident to report that the president had been shot. He sure knew pretty fast.
Then, the principal and most of the teachers and students surrounded the man's son and congratulated him, saying his father was a fine shot, which everyone already knew. There is NO DOUBT in my mind about who exactly shot JFK, NONE whatsoever.
I can appreciate that you may find my account all a little too hard to swallow, there has been so much spin put on the event. There are at least two other people I know of, who were present at Terry Consolidated School, on the high school side, the day Kennedy was killed, who might be able to confirm that activities I described happened on November 22, 1963, did in fact happen, that a certain students' father was praised for having shot the president. There were some other teachers who were as upset as I was the day JFK was killed, but they kept quiet and have already passed away. I tell you, the whole south either feared or joined the Klan back then. There was no "outside forces" at work in my home town to quell the tide of hatred. If there were the FBI agents you claim there was "infiltrating" the Klan back then, they sure did miss a lot.
There was no "diminished presence" of the Klan in the South in the 60's. They ruled, not just Mississippi, but the whole South! From Georgia to Texas, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mason Dixon, the Klan RULED. It was when Blacks started fighting back that the Klan began to lose power. Maybe the Blacks who fought back were FBI, who knows? But that DID have an effect on the White power of Mississippi.
White power was just white people from families of whites who had lived in the area for as much as four centuries. They have carefully crafted out a way of life, where anyone with darker skin was to serve like a slave, anyone whose skin was white. This is not something I saw in a movie, but lived through. That's the way it was in the South (and I know, because I lived in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas during the 60's) and Whites didn't want it changed.
I spent a year in New York, from June of 1962 - July 1963, so I saw the differences between the North and South. I was amazed at the differences. Truly, when I first came North, I got an education. In New York, you could sit on the back of the bus without fear, if you were white and in the front if you were black. You could have friends of ANY race. There were no segregated drinking fountains, businesses and schools. CHURCHES were MIXED! That's the way I always thought it should be. By the time I went home a year later, I felt somewhat emboldened, because I had lived somewhere where racism was frowned upon, not a daily practice. I was Kennedy supporter and not popular in Mississippi; I did not fit in there. There were others like me, of both races. It is hard to say who might also come forward to back my claim. Certainly it should be the FBI (among others) investigating the claim, not me.
Response to INFORMANT
...I was Kennedy supporter and not popular in Mississippi; I did not fit in there. There were others like me, of both races. It is hard to say who might also come forward to back my claim. Certainly it should be the FBI (among others) investigating the claim, not me.
This is an interesting angle. Since research done by John Drabble about COINTELPRO-White Hate (an FBI domestic spying program against the KKK from 1964 to 1971) wouldn't it be interesting to review those FBI records with a focus upon Terry, Texas?
Were there any reports from any informers from Terry, Texas back in 1964? That would be a worthwhile quest, IMHO.
Thanks, INFORMANT for sharing your first-hand experience of the South in the time that JFK was assassinated. We tend to relegate these facts to our "blind spot".
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I don't know where you got Texas from. Terry is in Mississippi. Of curse there might also be a Terry in Texas, but my hometown is Terry, Mississippi, just south of Jackson.
Having lived in New York a portion of my childhood, I am aware of how Northerners hold stereo-typical images of KKK. Like, Northerners seem to think the KKK were all but extinguished in the 20's. In truth however, it was strong as ever in the South till the 80's and it has NOT gone away, but branched out.
In the North, people tend to separate police from Klan. In the south, police ARE Klan.
Most Northerners think that the KKK are backwoods, uneducated people. I truth however, many KKK are highly educated, wealthy and hold positions of power.
Most Northerners are unaware of how important segregation was, and sill is, to the the KKK or what a 'threat' education for Blacks, was.
Most Northerners think lynchings ended in hangings. To the Klan, a pile of rubber tires gets hot enough to burn anything.
Most Northerners think ALL Southerners are KKK. It is simply not true.
Most Northerners never hear about all the thousands of people the Klan are responsible for murdering, only the Northerners who are murdered.
It was Apartheid, completely.
You do have the other side of the coin, you Northerners, for which I am grateful. The South was a scary place for me to grow up.
I don't know where you got Texas from. Terry is in Mississippi. Of curse there might also be a Terry in Texas, but my hometown is Terry, Mississippi, just south of Jackson.
Response to INFORMANT
Thanks for the correction. The JFK research community should delve into FBI records of CounterPro-White Hate in 1964 in Terry, Mississippi. (There is a Terry County in Texas, so I mistook it.)
I believe your descriptions of the South in your lifetime are sociologically valuable. You have a perspective that is rare in American literature, because it is an insider's experience.
As an avid follower of history books, I'm aware of the torrent of books about the Civil Rights movement, but I'm also aware of the very few books about the Segregation backlash in the USA. It is so difficult finding books -- or even historical records -- about the White Citizens' Council gatherings of 1962 and 1963 in Mississippi and Texas (or anywhere for that matter).
It is one thing to talk about the Civil Rights heroes, but without the opposite side, without a firm knowledge of the White backlash in the South, we cannot appreciate the context of the Civil Rights heroes, so we are missing so much -- perhaps most of the story.
Your writings, INFORMANT, fill a vast void. For those JFK buffs who want to understand the context of the JFK assassination, I think we need to understand the history of the White Citizens' Councils in the South far more than we ever have before.
Here's my current theory: the JFK assassination plot got into first gear with the Ole Miss riots of 30 September 1962. It moved into second gear in October, 1962 when ex-General Edwin Walker was tossed into an insane asylum, and then revved into third gear when Walker was released only five days later, with all but an apology from Deputy Attorney General Katzenbach. The plot moved into fourth gear in January, 1963, when a Mississippi Grand Jury acquitted Walker of any blame for the Ole Miss riots.
But the plot finally lifted off when Lee Harvey Oswald (and one other shooter) tried to assassinate ex-General Walker at his home on 10 April 1963 (at the blatant urging of the liberals George De Mohrenschildt, Volkmar Schmidt and many others who were at their party in early February).
The plot was set in stone on Easter Sunday 14 April 1963, when ex-General Edwin Walker learned that Lee Harvey Oswald was a suspect in his April shooting (which Walker learned from a government agent, as he always claimed, which is viable since George De Mohrenschildt told his friends Mr. and Mrs. Igor Voshinin on Easter Sunday, and she immediately told the FBI, says Dick Russell).
On Easter Sunday 14 April 1963, the patsy was finally discovered. All the Southern hate-talk about JFK was now set in motion in a real plot, with all the pieces totally planned.
My point is that the social context of Walker's plot to assassinate JFK (which has always been the cornerstone of my theory) must always involve the race riots at Ole Miss on 30 September 1962.
That's why I am trying my best to trace Walker's involvement with the racist South in 1962-1963. It seems to me that somebody has tried their best to destroy all those White Citizens' Council magazines from 1962-1963, because they are so far impossible to find.
That's also why I sincerely appreciate your ability to shed light on the White backlash of the South during 1962-1963.
Remember, too, that the mentor of James Meredith, Medgar Evers, was shot and killed on 12 June 1963 (and Meredith was shot on 6/6/1966). They were both key black figures in the Ole Miss episode. Remember, too, that ex-General Edwin Walker visited Evers' convicted killer, Byron de la Beckwith, in a Mississippi courthouse in February 1964, during his first mistrial, to offer Beckwith comfort.
The Ole Miss riots and the White Southern backlash against the Brown decision play major roles in the JFK assassination, in my opinion. I hope you'll keep sharing your experiences with this thread, INFORMANT
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yeah, Terry Is in Hinds county, Mississippi.
As I have said, I was not and never will be a member of the KKK. It was the KKK that started the White Citizens' Council. It was Plan B. Plan A would have been for whites to control the White House and segregation to continue as it always had. White Citizens' Councils were set up to keep schools segregated for one thing. Pools, for another. White Citizens' Councils were just another tool Whites came up with, like the tool (literacy test) they had come up with to keep Blacks from voting. White Citizens' Councils were a way the KKK could operate legally to make any federal laws whites didn't like, ineffective. It was just another tool up the KKK sleeve.
To my knowledge, Evers and Meredith did spark a lot of controversy with KKK members. but what tilted the hand, was when Kennedy confiscated weapons my cousins were training with in Louisiana, to invade Cuba. It was the weapons that really got things heated up and plots boiling. Of course, Kennedy "shoving Meredith down southerners throats" made things all that much harder to swallow.
"How dare that niggah lovah force us to accept blacks in our schools and public places while taking our only means of protection away from us!" was more the attitude.
Hell, the NRA could have sponsored White Citizens' Councils for all I know. I am sure Mississippi was prime gun territory back then and probably still is. You don't mess with a Mississippian's guns. I would not be at all surprised if someone in the NRA is also KKK or some such group.
Fear factor. Gotta have the 'fear factor' to have it all makes sense to the people. Whites talked about what Blacks would do if they had an education, jobs, the vote, elected officials. Fear was whipped up thicker than a milkshake. People practically foamed at the mouth at the thought of guns being taken away. That hit their 'fear factor'. Not only was it having to accept Blacks in schools and public places, WITHOUT GUNS, but also the fear that the Cubans would invade them and they would not have weapons to defend themselves. If Kennedy had not taken away the weapons, he might still be alive, maybe not.
But then, I thought that was common knowledge anyway.
Response to INFORMANT
...It was the KKK that started the White Citizens' Council. It was Plan B.
Plan A would have been for whites to control the White House and segregation to continue as it always had. White Citizens' Councils were set up to keep schools segregated for one thing. Pools, for another. White Citizens' Councils were just another tool Whites came up with...a way the KKK could operate legally to make any federal laws whites didn't like, ineffective. It was just another tool up the KKK sleeve.
INFORMANT that's a very interesting theory. I would like to research this in depth to find solid evidence for your theory. It makes sense, of course, since the White Citizens' Council (WCC) was a white supremacist organization, like the KKK. Yet a direct link is needed for historians.
For example, the WCC was founded in 1954 by a gentleman from Indianola, Mississippi, named Robert B. Patterson. If somebody has material evidence (like a photo at an exclusive KKK rally) to prove that Patterson was a member of the KKK, then we really have something solid.
I mean, your theory makes sense, INFORMANT, but researchers need proof.
...What tilted the hand, was when Kennedy confiscated weapons my cousins were training with in Louisiana, to invade Cuba. It was the weapons that really got things heated up and plots boiling.
Of course, Kennedy "shoving Meredith down southerners throats" made things all that much harder to swallow. "How dare that niggah lovah force us to accept blacks in our schools and public places while taking our only means of protection away from us!" was more the attitude.
...You don't mess with a Mississippian's guns...
People practically foamed at the mouth at the thought of guns being taken away. That hit their 'fear factor'. Not only was it having to accept Blacks in schools and public places, WITHOUT GUNS, but also the fear that the Cubans would invade them and they would not have weapons to defend themselves.
Your words have a resounding ring of truth, INFORMANT. (In 1984 a movie was released about that 1962 fear of Cuba, namely, Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze. It's a classic. Incidentally it has been remade just this year, with North Koreans instead of Cubans as the invaders.)
Back to your point -- it was the twin fear of gun control along with school integration that shocked the South. You would emphasize the gun control, and I think you're right -- because most schools in the USA are now racially integrated, but gun control is still a major fear-factor in USA politics.
If Kennedy had not taken away the weapons, he might still be alive, maybe not. But then, I thought that was common knowledge anyway.
No, INFORMANT, I don't think your point is appreciated by everybody. I happen to sympathize with your point, but it seems to me that most JFK researchers don't place enough emphasis on the scandal of gun control politics that JFK caused.
Perhaps most JFK researchers think of JFK's ban on right-wing paramilitary training grounds as a simple demand for common sense, while the more right-wing citizens among us would classify it as a breach of our Constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Insofar as the South was quite rightist in 1962, we should finally recognize that JFK made *millions* of enemies in the South by banning paramilitary training camps during the Cuban Crisis.
I came across this book on EBay, allegedly signed by Hoover http://www.ebay.com/...r-/380401140740
ATTACK ON TERROR: THE FBI AGAINST
THE KU KLUX KLAN IN MISSISSIPPI
by
Don Whitehead
New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1970. First edition.
Hardcover book size is 5 1/2" x 8 1/2"
Hardcover book with dustjacket, book is in near fine condition
with price clipped dustjacket which shows some edge wear.
321 pages.
Inscribed by J. Edgar Hoover.
The FBI's attack on the Ku Klux Klan. This book
has been inscribed by J. Edgar Hoover, the only copy of this KKK
title that I've come across that is signed by Hoover.
Of course the book was written from a pro-FBI point of view.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Okay, so you want proof. I don't have it. But the funny thing is, that the FBI with all their "infiltrating" 'don't have it' either. If what I say is true, which it is, and the KKK had a hand in the assassination of Kennedy, then the FBI should damn well know. To me, the only answer is, that they didn't infiltrate; they joined.
So Hoover wrote a book about it. Does that mean everything Hoover says is fact? He also claimed the Mafia didn't exist. Maybe he infiltrated the Mafia, too.
And it's really strange that the FBI with all their infiltrating didn't know the KKK started the White Citizens' Council. In fact, it seems awfully odd that, in 50 years the FBI don't really have much to show for all their "work" on the case. It almost comes across as a serious omission of evidence. Either they are corrupt or I am just crazy. I believe there is enough proof that I am crazy, if you like. It's up to you to see the truth when it presents itself and if Hoover is your guiding light, then hey, the Mafia doesn't exist.
Response to INFORMANT
And it's really strange that the FBI with all their infiltrating didn't know the KKK started the White Citizens' Council......
It is a mistake to portray the Ku Kux Klan as a monolithic organization. It is a historical mistake to ignore the role of the White Knights of the KKK in the 1960s.
It is a mistake to claim that the KKK started the Citizens' Council.
According to an American Radio Works documentary by Kate Ellis and Stephen Smith (bold added):
When the Supreme Court handed down its landmark 1954 desegregation ruling, segregationists in Mississippi moved fast. A prominent planter and World War II veteran in the Delta, Robert “Tut” Patterson, had already begun organizing whites just prior to the ruling. A racist tract written by Mississippi Judge Tom Brady shortly after the decision outlined a platform opposing racial integration. With Brady for inspiration, Patterson got busy. On July 11, 1954 Patterson convened a group of prominent leaders in Indianola. Later that month they held a town meeting. Roughly 100 people came. They created the first Citizens’ Council, an organization that would grow to be the most powerful opponent of civil rights activism in Mississippi.
By 1956, the Citizens’ Council had chapters in a majority of Mississippi counties and had attracted some 80,000 members. The movement also spread quickly across the South. Membership tended to be highest in counties where the population was more than 50 percent black. Headed by the most prominent local businessmen, professionals and governing officials, the goal of the Citizens’ Council was to use every possible means to lawfully resist desegregation.
......For all its economic and social force, the Citizens’ Council denied having any hand in violence against African Americans. Indeed, the Council explicitly rejected any association with the Ku Klux Klan. The Council dismissed Klan members as low-class troublemakers who would tarnish Mississippi’s reputation. According to Neil McMillen, Judge Tom Brady warned, “Unless we keep and pitch our battle on a high plane, and unless we keep our ranks free from the demagogue, the renegade, the lawless and the violent, we will be branded, as we should be branded, a fearful, underground, lawless organization.”
Nevertheless, historian John Dittmer observes, “Through its unrelenting attack on human rights in Mississippi, the Citizens’ Council fostered and legitimized violent actions by individuals not overly concerned with questions of legality and image.” McMillen says this was one reason, at least, that the KKK did not organize extensively in Mississippi until the early 1960s. The Klan wasn’t needed -- yet. The Citizens’ Council provided adequate cover for white vigilantes.
Since the end of the 1920s, the Klan had been largely inactive in Mississippi. Historians say the Klan simply wasn’t needed to maintain white supremacy. But as the civil rights movement gained momentum in the state, a man named Edward L. McDaniel was recruited to revive the Klan. McDaniel was born and raised in Natchez, Mississippi, near the border of Louisiana. He grew up in Depression-era poverty and dropped out of high school to help earn money for his family. He was mobilized to fight civil rights activists by the Ole’ Miss crisis. McDaniel was especially embittered toward the federal government. “We had witnessed what happened in Little Rock under the Eisenhower administration,” McDaniel said in an oral history interview. “And then this happen[ed] here at home. It really upset me and it upset a lot of other people. But it seemed like every way you'd go your hands were tied.”
In 1963 McDaniel was working as a truck driver and made frequent deliveries in Louisiana. One day when he was discussing the Ole’ Miss crisis with a friend in Louisiana the man invited him to a meeting. “We sat there and talked a while, and then about that time a guy come out and he was robed out [wearing a Klan robe],” McDaniel said.
“He went through the process of wanting to know if I wanted to join the Klan and how I felt about the situation with the Klan,” McDaniel continued. “I made a decision that evening. I went in, was sworn in the Klan, and I guess thirty or forty guys that was robed out and everything. It was a real experience. And when they took the robes off, I knew half of them or more.”
McDaniel worked relentlessly to build up the Klan in Mississippi. Within six months, he had organized chapters in 76 counties in the state. In 1964, McDaniel became Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America (UKA). Like the Citizens’ Council, the UKA disavowed violence, while secretly condoning it. But a rival Klan emerged in Mississippi at the same time, the White Knights of the KKK. They were more secretive than the UKA, but more deadly. According to sociologist David Cunningham: “ The White Knights were responsible for most of the highly visible acts of violence in MS throughout ‘60s,” including at least ten murders.
http://americanradio...ippi/index.html
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Ooops! I reiterate, Ooops!
“ The White Knights were responsible for most of the highly visible acts of violence in MS throughout ‘60s,” including at least ten murders.
It was the White Knights that I grew up surrounded by. They were most deadly. My grandmother drove my brothers and I out to see a couple of lynchings when we were young (around 55-59). The White Knights ruled the roost in my neck of the woods. Even on the Gulf Coast, where I spent my summers with my other grandparents, the White Knights reigned supreme. Another uncle of mine, my father's brother, was in the White Knights. He lived in Gulfport. He was close with the Dixie Mafia, probably a member.
The principal who came around to tell us that the president had been shot, his name was Mr. McDaniel.
To join the White Knights, usually aimed at young teens, one had to do something nasty to someone the Klan didn't like. Since I was considered a "nigger lover", when my cousin, a few year older than me, wanted to join (at the age of twelve, late 50's) she was accepted after she bullwhipped me, with a full length bullwhip.
Of course my great grandparents were upset about it, but they had no power to stop her from joining the Klan. They could even see why she wanted to. We lived around the most violent Klansmen, they were all over the place, especially next door, across the road. I know that in 1967, when I had returned from another 18 month stay in Syracuse, NY, the White Knights were in a frenzy about integration. That's when I first heard of the White Citizens' Council. Much talk was going around about how to keep blacks out of public places. They were really concerned about having to swim in a mixed pool and sending their kids to school with blacks, let alone sitting in a library next to a black person or standing in line with blacks to vote.
So the "Academies" (private white-only schools) started springing up. Terry developed the Terry Academy for all the good white Klankids. That was the next trick up their sleeve to stop integration. My grandmother wanted me to go to the academy, but I refused and threatened to drop out of school if she sent me there. In August of 1968 or 9, the school my great grandmother, my grandmother and mother had attended, that had always been pure white, was then mixed.
There were some Klan kids in attendance. They were the ones who didn't have the money to go to the private school. They were considered poor white trash. My grandmother was livid that I wanted to attend at a school with poor white trash, let alone black children.
It was not new to me. In New York I had already gone to, not only school, but church with black people and they were my friends. They were decent people, not at all like the Klan had portrayed blacks to be. I even had a black boyfriend.
But back in Mississippi, it was an entirely different scene. There was no going anywhere with black people, if you were white, even if you wanted to. The Klan made sure no one stepped out of line without retribution. It was scary.
By 1970 I was quite fed up with being afraid of the Klan. I started rebelling.
My mother had moved us all back to New York in September of 1965, a year after my friend Junior was murdered. We lived there until the end of 1966, then went back to Mississippi. There was much talk about integration and the Klan kids were in a frenzy. I hopped on my horse and rode out to a white friend's house one afternoon, after school. She was upset about blacks coming to Terry School. I told her about my experiences in New York, that blacks went to church, school and everywhere with whites.
She was horrified. I went on and told her that I even had a black boyfriend and was trying to tell her what a nice person he was when she jumped up, said, "Excuse me" and left the room.
It was when she close her bedroom door that I saw the Klan robes hanging on the back of the door. The next thing you know, her father was standing in the doorway. Fear shot through me. I had no idea Joyce was Klan. Her father owned the grocery store where the town's black people mostly shopped, so I thought he was not Klan. But that was a big mistake. He was high up in the White Knights.
He told me in the very same voice, the same words that Mr. Lewis had told me a decade earlier, "You gonna hafta leave here now and don't come back here no mo'". I jumped on my horse and rode back into town as fast as I could. I was very afraid, since I was on a back road.
And if you seriously think that only 10 people lost their lives at the hands of the White Knights, you are dead wrong. Lynchings were not an everyday occurrence, but they happened often enough and in enough places, that there was probably more like hundreds of people who lost their lives in lynchings. In fact, the only time I remember the rest of the USA making a big deal about anyone who was lynched was ONLY when the two whites boys were killed. You would not know Chaney's name if he hadn't been with the white boys.
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Even New Orleans was all Klan, as far as I could tell. I know that when my grandfather, (mother's father, piano player) played in clubs in New Orleans, he would, like most musicians, jam with the band members (some were black) afterwards. His family, who lived in Old Spanish Town, were informed by the Klan, that he had been "cavorting" with blacks. They were urged strongly to have him committed, which the family did. Same with my mom. White folks, of prominent families, were shipped off to the nutward, by the family, at the insistence of the White Knights. Granpop eventually killed himself, so the story goes.
Since the end of the 1920s, the Klan had been largely inactive in Mississippi. Historians say the Klan simply wasn’t needed to maintain white supremacy.
This may have been the case. I remember, before Rosa Parks and in the earlier fifties, that we used to go visit the Taylors, the black family who helped out my great grand parents. My great grandparents and even grandmother would sit on the porch with Ruth and Lem and have a friendly conversation, while all us kids had fun playing together in the front yard (at the black folks's house). It was like a party and I got along better with the Taylors than I ever did with the Lewis'. Then after Little Rock and especially Rosa Parks, we never did that anymore. I kept asking to go visit and my grandmother would get furious. I never really understood why.
We used to go to the Ransom's and play, too. I used to play with Martha's children and Junior was a playmate. I like Junior because he was strong and gentle. I did not have a crush on him, I merely thought he was a fine human being; I thought of him as a good friend, someone I could trust. Then after the mid fifties, we were not allowed to go visit anymore. For most of the time that I lived in Mississippi, the scene was quite surreal. I guess because I moved around so much and because I saw the situation more from a Northern perspective. I found it hard to take the White Knights seriously. It was a big mistake. I was then labeled "carpetbagger" and called a "traitor". But nothing they did ever bent my will.
I knew they were wrong, that all their talk of the dangers black people presented was 'hyperbole'. I knew it wasn't true. There was nothing on Earth that could have made me join the Klan.
This upset my grandmother. I don't know how many of you have done your research into the Klan enough to know about the Royal Titles that were granted to Klan members back then. Not that the Crown and the KKK were in bed together, just that one was descedent from another, down from the Magna Charta, as my family is.
I am not bragging, nor am I trying to incriminate the Royal Family, just saying that it is a fact that some White Knight members had Royal titles. The men would have had titles of 'Baron' or 'Knight' and the women 'Dame'. Well my grandmother was one of them. In order to be granted a royal title, one had to prove they were directly descedent from the families of the Magna Charta (oddly enough). Many southerners were descendent from royal Scottish families, as mine is. My grandmother managed to obtain the proof she needed and helped other southern families do the same. The titles meant a lot to them and descendants were expected to fall into line, Klan line.
My grandmother had tried to entice my mother into line with the title, after Mom's bus thing. My grandmother wanted desperately for my mother to be her successor. but Mom would not have any of it. So my grandmother then turned her sites towards me. I was to be the successor, since I was the first born daughter of her first born, a daughter.
So it was important to my grandmother, that since she failed with her own daughter, that she succeed in making me into the her "little princess". I had a protocol to follow and I was fucking up big time by the end of the 60's.
The White Knights in my hometown, gave my grandmother an ultimatum. Whitfield had not worked to whip my mother into line, nor my grandfather. The title business wasn't working on my mother or me, I was, at the age of 17, according to the Klan, ruined beyond hope.
So, they called her up and said, "We can't protect her no mo' (meaning I would finally be taken to the woods). You gonna hafta send her to Bubba." So off to live with uncle Bubba, my mother's younger brother, I went.
The titles were important to the Klan, I believe. My grandmother had no lack of work coming up with the documentation and coats of Arms for them.
My grandmother was from the family that had given the land the town was built on, to the town, so long as they named it after him, Robert Terry, my great grandmother's uncle. The Terry's had not always been favoured, however, because the Patriarch of the family had bought slaves, merely to set them free. So my family was under a lot of pressure, that I was unaware of at the time, to tow Klan lines. My family's money and land had dispersed over the century since the days of Robert Terry, so we were not as powerful as we once were. My grandmother, I think was trying to relive old days of glory or something and often bragged that her first cousin was senator Sam Ervin.
So it was tremendoudly important to her that I tow the line, and since I was considered ruined by 17, I was disposed of, so everyone thought.
Sorry for rambling on so, but since there is not much literature on the history of the White Klansmen South, I feel it is important that you understand the headspace they were coming from. What ever sort of Klan were in the rest of the country, the White Knights ruled our neck of the woods, and I believe, most of the south back then.
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Having only tolerated their children's comments in school, over heard details of Klan rallies, witnessed crime galore, not to mention what was going on across the road, being threatened by them, watching my friends get killed by them, are the only dealings I had with them, outside of sitting in their classrooms, churches and shopping in their grocery stores. I didn't have to know the history of the Klan to grow up around them; it just came naturally.
No, I don't know the history of the White Citizens Council. Maybe they were the more genteel of the Klan members, or maybe they were all those Klan friendly nice, white people who just never stepped out of line. There is no way on Earth, that the Klan had no hand in the White Citizens' Council in Terry, Mississippi in 1963. There weren't that many other kinds white people to go around. And if there was, you can bet your boots the Klan had the controlling hand in Mississippi in 1963.
Were there other kinds of Klan in Mississippi, or were the White Knights the only ones? I didn't know there were different kinds. One of their slogans is, "Mississippi: realm of the KKK".
If you really want to know if the Klan are still active in Mississippi, what you do is drive through the state, starting from just south of Memphis, wearing an anti-KKK t-shirt. If you make it to Clarksdale, then it's not too bad. If you make it through Jackson, then you doing all right. Detour and check Terry out. Then, if you make it to Gulfport, there is no KKK. If you are too afraid to try such a thing, then chances are there are still very active KKK in Mississippi. And frankly, I can't see them giving up target practice.
Response to INFORMANT
Perhaps they might have thought of their-selves as that, after all the myth of the knight on a white steed is an old fascist type symbol ( to wit the well known poster of Hitler as a knight on a white horse which in itself is based on an older image again ) , however the White Knights were formed in 1964., likely with people who 'were in on it', on some level. I think the Klans in Alabama and the ones in Mississippi connected with them and connected with the Highway Patrol and therefore with Colonel Birdsong and all that that implies ( partly the MHP's role in facilitating the Walker insurrection but much more than that, it's a story of gun-running that MAY lead to Robert Brown and to Costa Rica Contra figures and of course back to the CIA. ) are some of the ones to focus on. Then also New Jersey, Columbia, Oklahoma, Louisiana (particuarly Shreveport and New Orleans, there looking at those most in the NOPD, etc..
I'd like to know more about the White Camelias.
also careful reading of Drabble's article would show that he also relied on the FBI's MIBURN documents. I have spent hours
looking through them; they (and the COINTELPRO documents) are available at the FBI's website.
Drabble originally obtained them via the FOIA act. Historians and authors have written extensively on the Klan in Mississippi using these documents as sources.
You can be sure that Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler have reviewed each and every one of them under a researcher's microscope. But the more research here may find more w emay have missed
As mention above FOIA does not give you everything as proven now by MLK murder has shown,,
Although they were researching a book on the assassination of Dr. King, you can be sure that if there was anything there even peripherally pertaining to President Kennedy's murder
But this I feel needs more research, more Eyes
Furthermore
Lots of interesting things at this site :
https://acriticalreviewofthehelp.wordpress.com/real-housewives-of-jackson/
Some background info on The (White) Citizen’s Council
Unlike the KKK, the CCA groups had a veneer of civic respectability, inspiring future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to refer to it as the “uptown Klan.” While there were plenty of bare-knuckle racists attracted to the councils’ anti-integration slogan, “Never!,” the members also included bankers, merchants, judges, newspaper editors and politicians — folks given more to wearing suits and ties than hoods and robes.
During the White Citizens Councils’ heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members. Although they weren't immune to violence — Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member — the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of “forced integration.”
Once the segregation battle was lost, the air went out of the White Citizens Councils. The councils steadily lost members throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Sensing the need for a new direction, Baum, formerly the CCA’s Midwest field director, called together a group of 30 white men, including former Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox and future Louisiana Congressman John Rarick, for a meeting in Atlanta in 1985. Together, they cooked up a successor organization: the Council of Conservative Citizens.
http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/groups/council-of-conservative-citizens
Quote
During the White Citizens Councils’ heyday, the groups claimed more than 1 million members. Although they weren’t immune to violence — Byron De La Beckwith, who murdered civil-rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963, was a member — the councils generally used their political and financial pull to offset the effects of “forced integration.”
In January 1994 Byron De La Beckwith was brought to trial for the third time for the murder of Medgar Evers. One of the prosecutors was a man by the name of Bobby DeLaughter.
DeLaughter's successful prosecution inspired him to write a book which was later made into the movie Mississippi Burning.
http://www.amazon.com/Never-Too-Late-ebook/dp/B000FC0S78
DeLaughter attended law school at the University of Mississippi and was a graduate of the FBI's National Law Institute. As a life-long Mississippian, he obviously was very well connected when it came to understanding the hate climate of Mississippi in the 1960s. He decided to become a lawyer when his ninth grade civics teacher took the class to a trial held at the Hinds County courthouse circa 1968.
For the Evers case DeLaughter immersed himself in FBI and Jackson Police records, old trial transcripts, newspaper articles and taped interviews. His closing argument is considered by some to be one of the greatest in the annals of law.
In 1999 DeLaughter was appointed Hinds County Judge and in 2002 he was appointed Circuit Court Judge for Hinds County. He became a resident of Terry, MS.
Born in 1954, DeSlaughter is close to the age of EF member Terri Williams. Consider her account that it was common knowledge among grade schoolers in Terry, MS in the summer of 1963 that President Kennedy was going to be shot when he traveled to Dallas in November and, upon hearing of the shooting, they immediately knew the identity of the man that fired the fatal shot.
Living in Terry, MS, it's hard to imagine that Bobby DeSlaughter never ran into anyone in Hinds County that remembered those events.
(In 2009 DeSlaughter pled guilty to obstruction of justice in a fellow lawyer's bribery case. He spent a little over a year in prison.)
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Hell, the man must be smart. I guess someone with those credentials would have to be. He lived in Terry and never heard anyone talk about Dallas. Amazing. Smart man.
I can't remember any other kind of Klan in Terry. The Klan were in Terry long before the turn of the twentieth century. So if there was no White Knights before 1964, who were those Klansmen who bombed the church in the late fifties? Whatever Klan they belonged to before the White Knights, they were White Knights afterwards. I do not remember ever hearing about any other Klan than the White Knights. Not saying your information is incorrect, but that the same men who were in the Klan, lynching people and bombing churched before 1964, were the same men who WERE lynching & burning after 1964. And that they did do.
I suspect DeLaughter was a Southern Baptist.
My mom worked for Lamar Life for a while when I was young. They were very sexist there. But that was life back then. The white, racist, sexist, bigots reigned supreme.
I can't imagine anyone in Terry talking to DeLaughter about Dallas. It isn't like the Klan to advertise. They know who to keep quiet around (lawyers) and who they can talk around ("crazy" little girls).
But, if that man lived in Terry, peacefully, I gotta wonder about him. I betcha he was Southern Baptist.
I have friends still in Terry. I will ask them about the man.
My cousins know all about Dallas and ------ --- -----. They live across the road from his old place and lived next door to him in the 50's & 60's. You'd have to chop their hands off to make them talk about it. They for sure clam up if I mention anything, especially ------- --- -----. I just can't see them opening up to some lawyer who prosecuted Byron De La Beckwith.
It is no big deal for me to talk about it. I don't live in the "Realm" anymore. But I just can't see anyone else in Terry talking to the man. I might have if I was living there, maybe. But just only before I heading out of state.
Living in Terry was always a struggle for me. I hated it when we had to go back there and loved it when we left. It is my hometown and I know it so well. I love so many things about it, especially my great grandparents' property, but have so much more to fear about it.
The men who were in the Klan back then had children who grew up to be just like daddy. There was a fellow who I went to school with, Steve Gardner. He joined the MHP after high school. He was not an officer, but a communication technician who worked in an office in Meridian, I believe.
Steve was a Klansman. His whole family were deeply rooted Klansmen. Steve loved to harass black people and over stepped his bounds, since he was not an officer, when he stopped a black man traveling on highway 55, one day, for speeding. The black man blew his face off. That was the kind of thing that caused the KKK to lose power. Black people were standing up and fighting back. It also angered them mightily, but made them stop and think. That was sometime in the late eighties or early nineties.
Once in the early eighties when I was visiting Terry, two black men picked me up on Green Gables Road. I had been kicked out of my friend's house, by her aunt & uncle, for smoking pot. So I was walking a long long way back into town. It was mighty hot that day and not much shade along the road, so I was wilting. No white people would pick me up. Then two black guys in a car stopped and let me in the back seat. They found out I was from Canada and instead of turning right at Terry Road to go back into Terry, they turned left and went to Wyndale road.
They pulled the car up behind the church into the woods and said they were gonna rape me. Well, hell, that was the funniest thing I ever heard. I started laughing and asked them if they were aware of who my relatives were. I started rattling off some prominent Klan names and they backed that car up so fast, drove me straight home and threw flower petals on my path as I exited the car. I thanked them for the ride and we all had a nice day. I did not tell the Klan what the guys were attempting to do, because that would have gotten them killed. After all they decided not to rape me and they did rescue me from the heat and did drive me home. I bet that cured their urge to rape white women for a while.
When I go back to Terry, those guys remember me and warn anyone who might want to mess with me, not to do it. AND they give me a ride anywhere I want to go, most safely.
And on my trips back home over the years, I have noticed that the racist grip is far looser than it used to be. I suspect that is because blacks now out number the whites and blacks are not afraid anymore.
But I have no delusions about the Klan, nor does anyone who is black living in the state. We know the Klan are still there and still dangerous, even if fewer in numbers. Those kids I went to school with are my age and are the ruling class in Terry now. There ain't no way they have changed their stripes.
One more thing, if you are looking for white people in Terry, who can confirm the story I tell about the day JFK was killed, you'd have to talk to someone who went to Terry School in November of 1963, who was born in 1951 or earlier. The school was divided into two parts. It was called 'Terry Consolidated School' back then, because it held classes for grades 1 - 12. The elementary classes were traditionally held in one of the three buildings that made up Terry School. The high school building traditionally housed grades 7-12. But that year, there were so many younger students that the sixth grade class, Mrs. Austin's, was forced to move to the high school building. So anyone born after 1951 or 2, would not know of the events that happened that day in the high school building, unless their siblings had been in the high school building.
Need some names?
Response to INFORMANT
...
I don't know how many of you have done your research into the Klan enough to know about the Royal Titles that were granted to Klan members back then. Not that the Crown and the KKK were in bed together, just that one was decedent from another, down from the Magna Charta, as my family is.
I am not bragging, nor am I trying to incriminate the Royal Family, just saying that it is a fact that some White Knight members had Royal titles. The men would have had titles of 'Baron' or 'Knight' and the women 'Dame'. Well my grandmother was one of them. In order to be granted a royal title, one had to prove they were directly decedent from the families of the Magna Charta (oddly enough). Many southerners were descendant from royal Scottish families, as mine is. My grandmother managed to obtain the proof she needed and helped other southern families do the same. The titles meant a lot to them and descendants were expected to fall into line, Klan line...
INFORMANT I continue to find your account to be plausible and even riveting. I'm learning more about the KKK on this thread than in a dozen history books. The literature about the Klan in history books is sparse and one-sided. You are offering personal anecdotes of rich detail. Please keep sharing here on the FORUM.
In one of your earlier posts you made a strange double-point: many Northerners believe the KKK died out in the 1920's, and many Northerners believe everybody in the South is KKK.
I totally agree -- this is typical of the one-sidedness of the Northern naivete; "either the KKK is gone or the whole South is KKK and there is no middle term."
But reality is just the opposite of this one-sided view. Reality shows us innumerable nuances of gray. The KKK is absent in one county, but is wide-spread in another county. There is no Either/Or situation -- both Northern opinions are dead wrong.
Also, INFORMANT I agree with you on sociological grounds about the White Citizens' Council (WCC). Even though Michael is correct to point out that the WCC was founded by Patterson to be non-violent (and therefore to be separate from the KKK), and that this stipulation is part of the original WCC by-laws, it would be naive to imagine that the KKK members would simply stay away.
John Dolva made a perfect example by pointing out that Byron de la Beckwith, the convicted murderer of black Civil RIghts organizer, Medgar Evers, was also a member of the WCC. So here is a famous example of one person who was a member of both the WCC and the KKK at the same time -- regardless of the by-laws of the WCC.
In those counties where the KKK did not rule, I can imagine that the WCC were mild-mannered, middle-class and orderly. However, in counties there the KKK were the majority, I can more easily imagine a WCC meeting to be loud and authoritarian. It simply makes sense to see two white-supremacist organizations in bed together politically. John Dolva has given us one concrete example, and I'm interested in finding more of them.
Furthermore, Terri, your personal accounts of the days of the KKK -- in the 1970s, not the 1920s -- are riveting. I believe that you could string 40 anecdotes about your personal life together, find a publisher and have a best-seller on your hands.
By the way, your descriptions of the White Knights remind me of urban gangs like the Crips and the Bloods in Los Angeles, California. Turf wars were the most important battles; and neighborhood loyalty was often a matter of life-or-death. To think of the White Knights in gangland terms gives more substance to our understanding.
The stories historians read about the KKK tend to be stories from the 1920's and earlier. Michael is right that the KKK tended to fade away after 1920's news accounts of internal murder in their ranks came to the public notice. However, you are also correct to update the story -- after Rosa Parks challenged the all-white dominance of the South in 1955, it only makes sense that the sleeping dog would come awake -- and bark and bark.
As for DeSlaughter, he was a great lawyer who cracked the Byron de la Beckwith case 30 years after the crime (because de la Beckwith had escaped conviction twice before). Americans owe DeSlaughter a debt of gratitude, but that does not make him the final expert on the KKK in Terry Mississippi. Since DeSlaughter wore a suit and tie and was not a member of the KKK, it is just as likely that the KKK withheld mountains of evidence from him. DeSlaughter was an expert in mainly one thread -- the Medgar Evers thread.
Again -- what has this got to do with the assassination of JFK? The closer we look into the social connections of ex-General Edwin A. Walker, the closer we come to the WCC. As it turns out, the WCC produced slick, expensive propaganda films for many years, and tried to sell them in the North. Edwin Walker was a featured speaker.
I want to look closer. I suspect that Guy Banister was another featured speaker. Was Robert Allen Surrey? How about Loran Hall? Robert Welch? Billy James Hargis? H.L. Hunt? I want to know!
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Again -- what has this got to do with the assassination of JFK? The closer we look into the social connections of ex-General Edwin A. Walker, the closer we come to the WCC. As it turns out, the WCC produced slick, expensive propaganda films for many years, and tried to sell them in the North. Edwin Walker was a featured speaker.
I want to look closer. I suspect that Guy Banister was another featured speaker. Was Robert Allen Surrey? How about Loran Hall? Robert Welch? Billy James Hargis? H.L. Hunt? I want to know!
Man, I just don't know. I wish I did and if I did, please know I would tell you. There is much more to the situation than meets the eye. Like zooming in on a particular area in google maps, the closer you get to ground level, the more the things you see get in the way of your vision. You have to know where to look. Lots of places to hide things you know, not as many as De La Beckwith thought, though, I guess.
Response to INFORMANT
This is where I am at so far ---
1. I do find it plausible that for part of the summer of 1963 that many of the people in her grade school strongly believed that JFK was going to be shot in Dallas in November, and that INFORMANT wrote JFK a letter trying to warn him. Terri has offered to share this letter with us. Wouldn't you like to see it? I would.
2. I do find it plausible that the many in INFORMANT school strongly believed who actually fired the fatal shot, and that he was one of their own.
3. I do find it plausible that part of her town had that advanced strong belief and managed to keep it a complete secret from their neighbors in surrounding towns and the rest of Mississippi and federal and state investigators for 50 years.
I disbelieve, however, that nobody has ever spoken about it before INFORMANT -- but I do believe that anybody who did speak of it before was probably laughed out of town by everybody who heard the claims.
The Warren Commission never mentioned the KKK (or the WCC) even once. Nor did Jim Garrison. Nor did the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Since these "experts" didn't mention the KKK, naturally the average person would reject such a story out of hand. For many years, as many will remember, anybody who disagreed with the Warren Commission could be socially ostracized.
Many who merely brought up Jim Garrison's name in a social gathering could be socially ostracized. Jim Garrison was considered to be progressive. A KKK theory, in those days, would simply seem outlandish. Even today many people wince when the topic of the HSCA is mentioned.
These are the three official trials, and they are still offensive to talk about in polite society where I live. Yet these three trials and their spin-offs failed to solve this case after half a century. Isn't it time we admit that they might have missed something right under their noses?
Also, as historian Clive Davis mentioned in his book, Massive Resistance (2002), books on the Civil Rights era are overflowing about the advocates, but books about the resisting masses are scarce. This was a historian speaking, so I'm not alone in my perceptions.
Perhaps, some criticizing INFORMANT because not a historian. Yet INFORMANT trying to convey the fact that INFORMANT is an American who lived in a vastly different cultural milieu than the rest of us. INFORMANT home culture was so private and closed that it is not surprising to me that it could remain hidden for half a century. I myself would never dare to test her experiment of walking through her home town today wearing an Anti-KKK T-shirt.
So please like to here more
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I did not come here to see what kind of bullshit I thought I could pull over on all the vastly more learned people The topic is: JFK & the KKK. We are all here because we want what really happened to Kennedy to come to light. And because we don't buy the final conclusion reached by the government.
What should I do, keep keeping the secret secret? I guess I was waiting for the man to die first, I was that afraid of him. He died within the last five or six years, as did some of his more dangerous friends. I feel safe enough from him now. But Michael Hogan, you make me feel worried, like I was afraid would happen if I said anything.
"3. I do find it plausible that part of her town had that advanced strong belief and managed to keep it a complete secret from their neighbors in surrounding towns and the rest of Mississippi and federal and state investigators for 50 years."
Well, actually, that is not quite true. There are those that know of what I write. They would be select people in racist groups. The racists already know.
It was not necessary to keep it secret from our neighboring town, Bryam. That was where the majority of rallies were held that summer. Bannister DID speak at those rallies and at least one in Terry. That's where the plan was hatched.
If most Klansmen, who were the rulers of the South, didn't know what was being planned in Mississippi that year, then I would be most greatly shocked. The Klan knew and the whole South was the realm of the KKK at that time, believe it or not, even in those counties where they were soft Klan, they WERE KLAN.
I find it confusing when you try to separate the Law enforcement and judges and such, from the Klan, because that is not the way it was back then. There must be plenty of books that make that claim as well. They were the Klan, them and a lot of angry white men and boys, not to mention women and girls, babies too.
"I disbelieve, however, that nobody has ever spoken about it before INFORMANT -- but I do believe that anybody who did speak of it before was probably laughed out of town by everybody who heard the claims."
In the South they would have been shot. They only share secrets with people they can kill, if necessary.
Also, I find it curious that a guy named Patterson started the WCC. I do remember hearing talk of it, but I was more interested in playing back then. It wasn't a heavy topic at the table until the latter sixties, when it came back with vigor, making plans to create "Academies", private schools for whites only. Another part of the discussions was how to keep blacks out of the town pool they wanted to build. I think the decision was reached that a fee should be charged to blacks that they could not possibly afford. It was a real big problem for them.
There was a prominent Klan family in our town named Patterson. They were the more violent type. Not sure if they were related to Robert Patterson, but it is likely. Robert Patterson's branch might have moved further north to get away from their violent cousins.
And I do recollect talk about the more violent faction being kept out of the limelight. The White Citizens' Council was invented by the Klan, soft Klan maybe, but Klan. I doubt that a soft Klan branch in South Carolina for instance could get away with deciding to totally eliminate segregation if they wanted to. I mean they all had the same agenda, and the evil side created and used the good side. Whether or not it was intentional, the White Citizens' Council was the face the Klan put on when trying to win public support for their cause.
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The Klan held royal titles of Baron, Knight and Dame. If not, too bad, it's true. My grandmother was the town's genealogist. It was her hobby. She had family connections in Scotland who aided her in obtaining all the documentation she needed to help many Klan families (and non Klan) obtain royal titles. It can still be done today.
Maybe that's where the 'White Knights' business came from.
It constantly amused me how the Klan could go out on a Saturday night and kill someone and then get up and go to church the next day and have the whole town make such a fuss over them. I suppose it annoyed the soft Klan. I mean you could see them there sitting in church, the ones that went to church, looking so damn saintly, and you knew that they either knew of or was part of something tragic the night before. It just made me laugh, while making me sick.
The first lynching I ever experienced, was one night at my great grandparents' house, in the late fifties. My brother and I were in the middle room, in bed. He had told me there would be something happening across the road that night. He really wanted to get up and go over there, but Papa had made an explicit point of telling him he was not allowed. So we lay there and listened.
There was a lot of shouting and yelling, hooting and hollering going on, sometimes with loud cheers thrown in. Then the pitch got serious. The Klan scream at people a lot. They scream at each other, they like to scream.
You can tell when it is not the Klan making the noise, because you can hear the fear in the voice. Many scream gleefully and one screams in terror and pain, until it stops.
You are perfectly right about the Klan not being all that active until the Little Rock/Rosa Parks era. That's when lynching became an every weekend occurrence. We were no longer allowed to visit with the Taylor's or the Ransom's. Even if things hadn't heated up, we were never allowed to go to the Taylor's or Ransom's on our own anyway; that would have gotten a big whooping, at any time, even in a soft Klan family. Besides, no good Klan would have ever dreamed of doing such a thing. It wasn't everyone who visited with black families; ours' did, but not after the earlier fifties.
We were not supposed to play with black children in town either, but my brothers did, so of course I followed. I had more fun with them, than with the white kids.
Black kids were mostly from poor families and most of them spoke a form of English that was foreign to me. I imagine it was a language developed by slaves to talk about their masters and discuss plans without their masters knowing. The 50's/60's south is the only place I ever heard that language. I was so intrigued by the way they spoke. I wanted to know more.
My brothers soon learned, if they wanted to get away with stuff, they should not let me tag along. It wasn't that I told on them or anything, it's just that the town is small, so if a neighbor looks out his window and sees a white girl playing with black children, calls are quickly made and the girl sent home. Neighbors were not as concerned if the boys were spotted playing with black children, but girls doing that got their attention but quick. So I was left out of a lot, probably, fortunately, because if I had kept doing that, someone black might have died
The black kids knew that. That's why they were reluctant to play with my brothers. Of course even my older brother had to give up going to that side of town not long after I was banned, because the pressure the Klan was putting on my grandmother was becoming unbearable. It just was not kosher activity for young white boys. If my sibling had persisted, it might have gotten someone killed.
Fortunately, I liked to ride my horse and just headed away from prying eyes when I got old enough.
Please allow me to clarify something.
There were people I knew for absolutely sure, were in the Ku Klux Klan, White Knights. Then there were people who were in that group, but I didn't know for sure. Those people I just considered Klan by their actions. It was important for anyone to make the distinction because one did need to know who the Klan were, if one did not join them.
The Klan knew who everybody was, so they had the upper hand. Those who did not join the Klan were watched. anyone who stepped out of line, like my grandfather and mother did, were dealt with -Klan would approach the family and make it clear the family has to send the 'radical' member for shock treatment or some such. That happened in the 40's & 50's, at least in my family. This of course is the way Klan did things if the white family with the radical member were wealthy or of importance, someone whose death could not be easily hid.
If the family was poor, well that was it for the radical member -back to the woods with them.
So knowing who you felt you could trust involved watching people yourself, if you were not Klan. You had to be very careful how you approached them, cause if they were Klan friendly, you could be in trouble. People of conscience did manage to know instinctually who was Klan and who was not. Back then, most people were not Klan. Most White People were, but not all. And the ones who were not, along with Black People, made more people who were not Klan. So most people had to know who they are talking to and usually they did.
Of course I do not know of any poor white people who stepped out of line. They ceased to exist before I could meet them. Most poor were Klan out of necessity.
Most Klan boys were obsessed with the Civil War, so they were easy to spot. Most Klan children would go out of their way to be nasty to a person of colour. Some did not, and were polite to the face, but would make disparaging remarks about the person behind their backs. By the time anyone hit ten, it was pretty clear who Klan were and who were not. Having them around watching, always watching was like living under some savage, military dictatorship. It was Apartheid.
Because I was sent away at the age of 17 and never returned to live there, most of my recollections are from the 50's & 60's. Having been back to visit, I noticed the changes over the decades. My hometown is still not a place I would feel safe living in. Not only has the family land and fortune dwindled into the control of my cousins, they are heavy duty Klan.
You might even be surprised that the racists and the Klan have branched out into places you'd never suspect.
Response to INFORMANT
Overlap in the context of political murder, is a slippery slope. I have always had an acute interest in the goings-on of the Ku Klux Klan in 1963, for reasons which I do not believe need to be enumerated.
INFORMANT your account of the Klan and your personal memories deserve to be given at least the respect accorded even by conservative standards, the respect given to someone who is sincerely given 'the benefit of the doubt.'
But my purpose to point out that there is a large amount of those who have made their life's journey, or a great part of it getting to the essence of the events regarding President Kennedy's death. One constant amongst those who have dug deeper is that a political assassination of the magnitude of a president in the "modern-era," is that there is no previous model to follow, the last presidential assassination resulting in the death of a President was that of McKinley, Truman at Blair House, obviously was botched and of-course no death.
So, regarding JFK there are "black-ops" of that time, particularly mind-control operations and other areas of importance; organized crime, the Cuba angle, evidence of nefarious activity even within the President's cabinet, the latter being so close to the epicenter of American government, and which have always generated the most controversy, as well as the most bitter media reactions because the smoke is there, and the fact that there are still classified documents only adds to the feeling of futility among those who tend to be open to realities that are not politically correct.
The point of all this in relation is to say that 50 years later, the areas of interest are intertwined on some level, I have repeatedly echoed my belief that one of the reasons, which accounts for the confusion, is that when scouring these various areas, I stipulate that we are not looking at one "massive plot" but, that, at least some of the factual information involves persons seeking JFK's death who were plotting, but were beat to the punch. Chicago, Miami, and Dallas are the telltale signs that one group was the mechanism for 11/22/63, but the analogy I would make is that in looking at all the events of 1963 involving the assassination of JFK as a whole, is like looking at a photo of a jigsaw puzzle one is trying to piece together and realizing that, you do not have too few pieces, but too many. Which is not to say that in the overall equation, there are no missing pieces, ostensibly there are by virtue of the fact there are still classified documents.
Concluding: If you have the belief that there is a "overlap" in the JFK assassination, the idea that organized crime figures, say with right-wing Klan figures, in this case Mississippi, should not be taken as a "reach," but as a reflection of the reality of the event being addressed:
So, take a look at the document below, from the Criminal Intelligence Program in Dallas, connecting to Mississippi. Even though it is not dated November 1963, it is evidence that there was an inter-connection, if you accept the premise I am trying to establish.
From this site you can see documents and the deleted information ,, why ,,,
https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=141360
INFORMANT RESPONSE
there is a large amount of those who have made their life's journey, or a great part of it getting to the essence of the events regarding President Kennedy's death.
Thank you. That is EXACTLY why I am here. I know something you don't know, so I am here to tell you what I know that you don't know and the records don't show.
Of course you have the option of considering what I say or not. While it could be true that I am just crazy and have made this whole thing up, chances are better that I am telling you the truth. What other possible motive could I have for , saying the things I am saying? Actually, if you are here to try to uncover some of the truth of what happened that day, then my message is for you and you are VERY lucky I have decided to talk.
Please consider what my telling you might do to me. I do get the feeling that not everyone here is on the same page, however.
Response to INFORMANT
Of course you have the option of considering what I say or not. While it could be true that I am just crazy and have made this whole thing up, chances are better that I am telling you the truth. What other possible motive could I have for being on this site, saying the things I am saying? Actually, if you are here to try to uncover some of the truth of what happened that day, then my message is for you and you are VERY lucky I have decided to talk.
Please consider what my telling you might do to me.
INFORMANT, I'm glad that you are speaking up and . Also, I'm sensitive to the pressures you face if you named your suspect -- or even if some people are worried that you might name him.
I will gently advise, however, that you try to be mindful of the details here -- they are seized upon by critics. And others who have hidden this information for many years,
For example, Robert Patterson, following Tom Brady, founded the White Citizens' Councils (WCC) in Indianola Mississippi on 11 July 1954 with the express provision of non-violence. They explicitly named the KKK as people to keep out. Thus -- from a strict viewpoint, we cannot claim that the KKK founded the WCC.
Your statement that the KKK founded the WCC is nonetheless interesting because (1) the KKK and WCC operated in the same geographical area; (2) the KKK was much older than the WCC; (3) The KKK was much larger than the WCC; and (4) the WCC expressed opinions about white-supremacy that were previously only expressed by the KKK in that geographical area.
It is plausible to speculate that the WCC was the phony face of the KKK. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall thought so. This is not a "crazy" idea. It's only that from a strictly factual point of view, some critics are going to hold you to the details.
Also, I realize that you cannot supply us with proof of the identity of the JFK assassin, as you often explained, and I accept that. That does not extinguish my interest in your anecdotes about the Klan in Terry Mississippi. Many Northerners need an "education to reality" when it comes to 25% of the States in the USA that comprise the South. I think this perspective on the South will help to resolve important points about Dallas on 22 November 1963. (Besides that, you did name Guy Banister, and your claims about his activities in Terry are subject to outside verification.)
Dallas is part of the South. The culture in Dallas 1963 would probably surprise most Americans. The system of white-supremacy cannot be swept under the rug in our JFK research; it should be held out in the open, and I think your thread goes farthest in making this happen than any other FORUM thread I know about.
You remind me of The Citizens' Council by Neil McMillen (1972). This classic book explains much about the perceptions of any citizen who grew up in Terry Mississippi in the 1950's and 1960's. For example, the WCC tended to thrive in Southern counties that had 45% or more Black people in the county. The WCC were especially active in Southern counties with more than 65% of Black people, because in those counties, less than .03% of Black people voted (says McMillen) and the status quo depended on keeping the Blacks from voting.
About 30% of the population of Mississippi was Black, but in Terry and Hind County, the number shot up to 45%. This is a very different culture to live in, statistically. People in the North can hardly understand that culture, because the US national average is 10% Blacks. Wherever the White majority status quo was threatened the most, the WCC rose up the strongest.
By comparison, we might easily apply the same pattern to the KKK. The KKK tends to be strongest in those counties with the highest percentage of Black Americans. (Besides that, McMillen admits that the WCC failed to keep the KKK out of its membership in some counties.)
This explains to me why you said, Terri, that the KKK system of white-supremacy in which you were raised was a "system of apartheid." This South African term reminds us that Democracy was devastating to South African apartheid because the population there was a large Black majority. Thus, the repression required to keep down a Black majority became simply inhumane.
This was the problem of the 1950's and the early 1960's in the South. It didn't so much start with Rosa Parks as with Chief Justice Earl Warren -- the judge who gave us Brown v. The Board of Education on 17 May 1954. Two months later, on 11 July 1954, the first WCC was born in Indianola Mississippi, which had a Black majority.
The KKK was awakened from its slumbers. The NAACP appeared suddenly to keep putting pressure on the South on behalf of Brown v. the Board of Education. MLK became their most effective exponent.
The KKK sorely needed an effective face. But what? The WCC emerged as a white-collar white-supremacist group in Mississippi, and it weilded considerable power. Though 1961, the Mississippi public school system successfully evaded implementing Brown v. The Board of Education. They avoided violence -- instead, they ensured that Black complainers lost their jobs and that banks would refuse their mortgages.
I look upon the relationship between the KKK and the WCC as similar to that of the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. While the more radical group drew the bulk of the fire from critics, the aims of both were advanced. So while one group tended to keep a level of separation from the other, they moved their agendas down the road in tandem...ironically, another form of "separate but equal,"
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I look upon the relationship between the KKK and the WCC as similar to that of the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. While the more radical group drew the bulk of the fire from critics, the aims of both were advanced. So while one group tended to keep a level of separation from the other, they moved their agendas down the road in tandem...ironically, another form of "separate but equal,"
Yes, that is a good comparison, only I do not remember any nice white people really 'ruling the roost' so to speak. Sure maybe they were 'Mayor', but their marching orders came from the Klan and they were not about to go up against them. My grandmother was a member of the WCC and she sure 'nuff did march to their command, as well as helped them get their titles, and 'called them up' when needed. So I cannot verify the accounts of Klan being kept out. Maybe they were not 'members', but they WERE in command.
I am not sure if Terry Consolidated School was integrated 1968 or 69. I went to school in Texas in '68, but the 69-70 school year was my last year at Terry School and it was the first year I remember integration. About the only thing that happened that year that ruffled white folks' feathers, was the election of the Queen and Princes of the year.
Traditionally, the prettiest girls got elected. Everyone knew who the candidates were, but that year there were black students voting as well. Since there were not enough black children in the junior and senior classes to actually nominate and vote for a black girl, the black children nominated the two nicest white girls, who were so ugly no one would have ever thought of them as Prom Queen material. The vote being split, the two nice, but ugly, white girls won. A real upset win. White kids didn't know how to take it or what to say. Couldn't say anything to offend the girls who won, but were visibly shocked when the results were in. I guess "dumbfounded" would describe it. As I remember, it was an awkward "Congratulations" from two pretty white girls.
Regarding your comment here
(Besides that, you did name Guy Banister, and your claims about his activities in Terry are subject to outside verification.)
About the only evidence I can think of, would have to be other eye witnesses who saw him there or Byram, Mississippi that summer. I sure wish some one else who was there would come forward. My neck looks so long out here all alone.
Maybe there is a way to trace Bannister's involvement with Terry, if he signed anything regarding the brand new green Ford pick-up truck he gave our town for free in either '62 or '63.
Actually, my grandmother's exact words were "A nice man named Bannister arranged for the town to get the truck for free".
Also, I am not sure, but maybe someone here knows if the wcc kept a record of membership? And I don't think the Klan ever kept records of their membership that they shared. Does anyone know if there is a record of membership for the Klan? Or would there be one for Terry? (which I kinda doubt)
Oh and my grandmother didn't suddenly join the WCC, she joined sometime in the mid 60's, I think. I am not certain that she was a member of the KKK, she was sympathetic to them and practically worshipped them. She did a lot of genealogical work for them and she did call them about Junior. It was she who got him killed by calling Klan on him, so the WCC were not so far removed from the KKK. I believe the WCC was a front for the KKK.
I had seen a Klan robe in her closet, occasionally when I was young, but I asked my brother (who was not in Terry that year; he was in Gulfport) about the robe and our grandmother's involvement with the Klan.
My brother says the robe was not our grandmother's; it belonged to another relative. He also agrees that the Klan ruled the roost in Terry, not the WCC, that they were just pawns more or less.
I am trying to wrap my head around how you think, that the WCC shunned the KKK? Or do you think that there was an animosity between the two groups? You think the WCC made absolutely sure no Klan members joined? They lived, as did I, surrounded by Klan... in the country. They went to church together. In many cases, they were quite literally in bed together. And as I said, sometimes a WCC member (anyone with a grievance the Klan could handle) would call upon the Klan for services.
Interesting statistic about the ratio of blacks to whites in Hinds county. Sounds about right. And I agree that it added more fuel to the fire on the seats of Klan pants back then, to keep schools segregated, as well as public spaces. They feared a mixing of the races, ultimately.
Response to INFORMANT
...I do not remember any nice white people really 'ruling the roost' so to speak. Sure maybe they were 'Mayor', but their marching orders came from the Klan and they were not about to go up against them. My grandmother was a member of the WCC and she sure 'nuff did march to their command, as well as helped them get their titles, and 'called them up' when needed. So I cannot verify the accounts of Klan being kept out. Maybe they were not 'members', but they WERE in command...
INFORMANT, your description here reminds me of the movie, George Wallace (1997), starring Gary Sinise and Angelina Jolie, which also portrays the career of presidential candidate George Wallace as deeply in the debt of the KKK in Alabama -- unable to attain office of any kind without bending to their politics.
Ace Carter, one of the most radical and outspoken of the WCC members, as well as a KKK member, wrote speeches for George Wallace. It was Ace Carter who coined Wallace's famous phrase, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"
In response to Brown v. The Board of Education, evidently, the KKK rose up again with a fresh energy. Evidently they pressed George Wallace into their service. That makes me suspect that they pressed Governor Ross Barnett into their service as well. This would fit into the history of JFK's military action against the rioters at Ole Miss University in 1962.
What information do we have about Governor Ross Barnett and the Mississippi KKK?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
What information do we have about Governor Ross Barnett and the Mississippi KKK?
Seriously, Ross Barnett's will was never that far removed from the KKK. I would be very much surprised if he was not Klan. He is one of those white people I just took for granted was in the Klan. Almost all white people in Mississippi back then were behind the Klan and anything the Klan did. But not ALL white people. The only white people who were for Meredith, would not have said a word back then. And those white people would have NEVER been on any White Citizens' Council.
The white people, who were what Northerners would call "good people", would never have joined the Klan nor the WCC. They knew it was all the same bunch.
Ross Barnett and George Wallace held racist views, whether or not there was a Klan. The Klan DID hold much power in the south and beyond I suspect, back in the 50's & 60's.
I was just a small child, but I remember how everything changed in the mid fifties. we could no longer visit the Taylors or the Ransom's and my grandmother made Martha walk to and from work after the mid fifties. I thought it was cruel.
At Christmas break in 1966, after having lived in Syracuse for about an 18 month stint, we moved back to Terry, Mississippi. My mother had bought all my clothes for the school year and they were to NY standards, mini-skirts. When I started back at Terry School, the principal (a new man whose name I forget, Mr Mc Daniel had been replaced) came up to me and sent me home to change my clothes. So I went home and changed, but I had no other clothes, so he was real mad when I came back to school in an even shorter dress.
He called my mother and told her I had to wear knee length skirts.
She told him she had already bought my wardrobe for the school year and that if he didn't like my clothes HE could buy me some new ones.
So Terry School had to let girls wear shorter skirts.
The Klan had put my mother through hell and she was never afraid of them. She DARED them.
As I have said before, my mother worked for NASA in the sixties. She worked for a company called, Brown Engineering based at Redstone in Huntsville. She had backup I suspect the Klan did not want to go up against. She was not the meek little twenty year old they had tortured in the fifties. She had gone out and made the right friends.
I admired the heck out of my mom and tried to emulate her every action. I was I think 14 or 15 then. The town was in an uproar about the coming integration. That's when I visited my friend to tell her that it would not be so bad. Thats when I found out she was Klan. Scared the hell out of me, that little incident, but I cautiously went ahead and was myself anyway. I just didn't go riding my horse outside of town anymore after that. I realized that all those nice white folks who live along the way, might not do a thing to help me if Joyce's father decided to have his way with me, not that he would have ever raped me, but he would have liked to have tortured and killed me that day I bet. Same with Albert Lee Lewis, the man who kicked me off his property when I was 5. I doubted those nice white folks would do a thing to stop those men from doing anything they wanted, to anyone. There was already plenty of proof that that was true.
Response to INFORMANT
...My brother says the robe was not our grandmother's; it belonged to another relative. He also agrees that the Klan ruled the roost in Terry, not the WCC, that they were just pawns more or less.
...I am trying to wrap my head around how you think, that the WCC shunned the KKK? Or do you think that there was an animosity between the two groups? You think the WCC made absolutely sure no Klan members joined? They lived, as did I, surrounded by Klan... in the country. They went to church together. In many cases, they were quite literally in bed together. And as I said, sometimes a WCC member (anyone with a grievance the Klan could handle) would call upon the Klan for services...
INFORMANT, when Tom Brady and Robert Patterson founded the WCC in 1954, two months after the Brown v. The Board of Education ruling, they explicitly wrote that to successfully fight the Supreme Court in Congress they would have to avoid violence.
Since the KKK was infamous for violence, they explicitly mentioned that the KKK must stay out of the WCC, otherwise they would not be able to challenge the Supreme Court successfully in the eyes of the USA.
That is a matter of written history -- it can be found in their first writings.
HOWEVER -- it is also a matter of history that the KKK actually did join the WCC in some counties (usually in those counties where the Black citizens were in the majority) and in those counties the KKK did succeed in taking over those WCC chapters.
Here's one well-known example -- Ace Carter was a WCC leader in Alabama, and after one of his speeches in April, 1956, the WCC crowd went out that night and attacked pop singer Nat King Cole. Other acts of severe violence against Blacks were reported about the Northern Alabama WCC, and one reporter said that the WCC in his county could not be distinguished from "the original KKK".
Here's another example: the Montgomery Alabama WCC's were outraged when 26-year old Autherine Lucy was finally permitted by a local court to register for class at the University of Alabama. The WCC protested so viciously that the court refused to uphold its own ruling.
Some folks in the WCC said that the KKK ruined the WCC chances at establishing white-segregation in public schools in States that refused integration. Others said that the WCC had no chance anyway, because white-supremacy ideals will always attract the KKK.
Besides, the white Baptist Church was divided on the issues -- many white ministers would undermine the KKK (and the WCC) every chance they got. On the other hand, the Black Baptist Church would support the Civil Rights workers almost unanimously.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes, our vicar did give sermons that had me snickering under my breath. My grandmother was raised a southern Baptist and had attended the Countyline Baptist Church with her parents, mainly her mother, my Granny (since Papa was not much into church) and I too attended that church when living with my great grandparents. Albert Lee Lewis' family went to that church I think. But after my grandmother traced our family back to the Magna Charta, she became Episcopalian (Anglican), in keeping with her royal bloodline.
A Grand Dragon's family attended the Anglican church as well. I cannot recall ever seeing the patriarch of the family in church, however. His family were distant cousins of ours.
It used to amuse me how many churches and how many different kinds of churches, both black and white, there were in Terry, everything from Holy Rollers, to fundamentalist, to several Methodist, several Baptist and a single, small, Episcopalian church. There were no Catholic churches in Terry. One had to travel to Crystal Springs for that. AND there were NO TEMPLES!.... at least not any I remember.
Not only would the WCC and the Klan have had infighting amongst themselves, but there must have been infighting due to all the denominations in the membership.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
My great grandfather was a kind, wise and gentle man. He would not have harmed a flea, although, just like in To Kill a Mockingbird, he did once shoot a mad dog dead, that was coming up the driveway towards us kids. He also would not have gone against the Klan. He followed the rules, yet in the mid fifties, he did not stop giving the Taylors a ride home and he went to pick them up anytime they were expected at our house. He truly cared for those people and knew the road they would have to travel was riddled with bad news. Albert Lee Lewis knew this about him, I suspect, and if he didn't, he sure found out the day Papa closed the door in his face. Albert Lee Lewis would not have gone up against my great grandfather because of who Papa's nephew was, Senator Sam Ervin. Besides, Papa was a good neighbour, for ANYone to have.
I doubt Papa joined ANY group and he made his displeasure known to anyone in the family who did join the Klan. He was not exactly thrilled with the WCC either and I suspect that is why my grandmother waited till after his death to join.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
"... an Intelligence Report investigation, publicized by national television and newspaper reports, made clear what the CCC really was: a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as "genetically inferior," complained about "Jewish power brokers," called LGBT people "perverted sodomites," accused immigrants of turning America into a "slimy brown mass of glop,"
That is so Mississippi!! What a Klan thing to say!
That was an interesting read about the CCC and how it came about, how it has transformed. I gotta wonder if that is a hard or soft CCC.
Response to INFORMANT
INFORMANT - there is useful story told in them, and there might be a book in this. I would keep it Kennedy/KKK focused, however, and leave California and Vancouver for a later book.
I have started to separate the events but am going to keep the info in tact ,,,
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Thank you so much for the advice. In the past I have found it hard to get anything published, it's so incriminating. And I will not change a thing. I want the world to know the truth, not some Hollywood version of it.
All in all, there are at least three books worth of true stories I have to tell, all three jam packed with stuff investigators have not seen and again, ALL TRUE. I suppose I am getting old enough now. At one time I felt cursed for having witnessed so much, but now, I am glad to know what I know and I feel it should be shared, since it is true, not some flight of fantasy and because the events effected so many people.
Everyone has a story for that day; mine needed sharing, too. Since everyone is wanting to know what happened, not just to John Kennedy, but Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy, where else would there be a better place to state what I know. Those of you who are truly wanting to get to the bottom of things, I have told what I know for you.
Maybe one of you can find that link from Bannister to the green Ford pick-up truck. Or maybe someone else from Terry will speak up too, I hope. There are at least two people I know of who were there that day, still alive, who were, like me, not happy about what they were witnessing. There were others in town who were sad that day, but for the most part, the Klan ruled that day in Terry, Mississippi.
And if anyone seriously thinks that anyone in the Klan or who was in the Klan, is going to speak up, well, "you gotta be shittin me man".
When I heard the news from Mr. MacDaniel, I just couldn't help it, my head hung low. One of the Klan kidz noticed and told me "Ha that's nuthin'! They're gonna keep goin' till there's a KKK". I think most people who were sad couldn't help their heads hanging low. The Klan took notice of who was and wasn't celebrating. They gloated whenever some of us were around. Their 'gloating' is usually taken as a threat in Terry.
I just checked the spelling of the principal's name in the 1964 Yellow Jacket, the school's yearbook, or annual. I kept that one and the 1965 Yellow Jacket. His name was R. W. McDaniel. I was a little confused about that, since at school, students referred to him as "Mr. Mac".
Response to INFORMANT
The most sellable parts here are the reminiscences of the racial climate in the south, plus the structure of the KKK groups. KKK interest in JFK's death could be used for the introduction and then elaborated on at the book's climax.
...
Quote
the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba.
Yes they were. Many who were training were young men and cousins of mine. They were furious when JFK confiscated their weapons. The white boys came to school ranting and raving about it. I don't know, but have been told by those who do know, that Dr ---- ------- ------- supplied some of the arms. He even had a training area on his property, but from what I heard back then, most of the training to invade Cuba was done in Louisiana. Not sure if it was a military operation at an army base or just back in the woods...
INFORMANT, I'd like to get back to your account about young men and cousins of yours in Terry, Mississippi training to invade Cuba.
This was the number one central goal of the Minutemen organization under Robert DePugh in 1962-1963.
Jim Garrison says that Guy Banister, with his associates, Hugh Ward, David Ferrie and Gordon Novel, conducted a Minuteman training camp in Louisiana, in Saint Tammany Parish, near Lake Pontchartrain (which was a property owned by Carlos Marcello, as I recall). Banister was responsible for supplying the arms and ammunition for all this training. Minutemen and Cuban Exiles supplied the manpower.
In the summer of 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald was in New Orleans (and offered to train the men of Carlos Bringuier) Gerry Patrick Hemming claimed that he saw Oswald at that training camp.
Also in the summer of 1963, JFK issued an order to close down all paramilitary training camps -- he was trying to broker a peace deal with the USSR, and all these paramilitary groups were not helping him. So, in obedience, the FBI (reluctantly) closed down the Lake Pontchartrain training camp, and confiscated all their weapons and munitions.
Now -- what you're saying, INFORMANT, is that young men from your neighborhood were also "training to invade Cuba". My question to you is this -- do you remember the name and/or the location of the training camp in which young men from Terry, Mississippi would have gone to do this training? Any recollection here could be helpful.
The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.
In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed
cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.
To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it
three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero
that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, " DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated.
He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."
"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."
"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based
on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."
From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.
In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed
cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.
the KKK in the 1960's were also "training to invade Cuba.
Well, from what my cousins told me, as well as gossip in town about the "invasion-trainging", all any of them would have told me is that there was training going on in Louisiana. They did not mention where exactly, although I got the impression that they were training in the woods. I knew my cousins were part of the training; they were proud of the fact. I cannot tell you where.
As to Bannister supplying the arms, it was my understanding that Doc helped in that regard. As well as some of the sniper training would have been carried out on Doc's property.
Response to INFORMANT
The year, 1963, closed on a somber note nationally, with the impact of President Kennedy's assassination still fresh in America's consciousness.
In many ways the assassination was to have particularly harmful effects on the Minutemen. Suddenly a political oriented organization that placed cross hairs in the "O" of their official newsletter's masthead did not seem quite as quaint as it had before November 22.
To the Minutemen themselves, however, the immediate effect of the assassination seemed more of a nuisance than anything else. Looking back at it three years later, DePugh observed: "Here you had a man you could say anything about and get away with it, and he's suddenly turned into a national hero that you don't dare say anything about without people taking offense at, "
DePugh said. "We were really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated. He was our number one whipping boy, so to speak....."
"It took a while before Johnson maneuvered himself into a postition where he became a legitimate target for adverse publicity. For quite a long while he rode along on John Kennedy's halo."
"So that (the assassination) was kind of a setback for us so far as our psy-war was concerned. All of our recruiting literature was written up and based on the Communist infiltration of the Kennedy administration, and suddenly, the literature was of no value."
From J Harry Jones' seminal 1968 book The Minutemen.
The Minutemen (1968) would be useful in making a case that the Minutemen would take no part in the assassination of JFK. In fact, it would have been contrary to their wishes to have JFK eliminated, claimed DePugh, because JFK was useful to them as a "whipping boy."
Their incessant propaganda about paramilitary force as necessary to defend the USA from its own (allegedly) Communist leaders was supposed to have no impact, according to DePugh -- and the cross-hairs of a rifle's telescopic sight which formed part of their logo was only a clever and "quaint" marketing ploy.
The JFK assassination removed this radical, paramilitary group's "whipping boy," and this moved DePugh to bemoan the loss of JFK because the Minutemen were "really zeroing in on Kennedy at the time he was assassinated."
Yet that statement is rich with ambiguity.
I'm willing to admit that the JFK assassination might be interpreted as a "setback" for the Minutemen because all their literature that painted JFK as a Communist suddenly became useless. But another way to interpret that situation is that the JFK assassination made the Minutemen propaganda useless simply because it fulfilled the Minutemen propaganda.
A deeper criticism of DePugh's statement is that it tends to suggest that the Minutemen formed a centralized organization that marched to the orders of Robert DePugh. The real nature of the Minutemen, as told by eye-witnesses like Harry Dean, is that they were decidedly decentralized. Each State in the USA had its own Minutemen -- and in larger States each region had its own Minutemen organization.
No central file cabinet of membership for all of the thousands of interstate Minutemen members was ever found (although the FBI once found a list of a few hundred in the trash of one local organization). We really don't even know the exact number of Minutemen who marched State by State.
The loyalties of the Minutemen tended to be directed to their local leaders, rather than to their national headquarters. There was plenty of independence and individualism among the Minutemen groups. The Southern California Minutemen were different in character from the Minnesota Minutemen, for example.
Finally, nobody, to my knowledge, has ever accused Robert DePugh personally of involvement in the JFK assassination. Such suspects tend to be local members of the Minutemen, rather than the centralized Minutemen organization.
For example, the young Jack Martin who served under ex-General Edwin Walker in Augsburg, Germany in 1960, and who in the summer of 1963 filmed the bullet holes in Walker's window sill and wall with his home movie camera, and with the same film also captured the scene of Lee Harvey Oswald being arrested by police after fighting with Carlos Bringuier -- this young Jack Martin was a member of the Minnesota Minutemen.
Also, Guy Banister was reportedly a member of the New Orleans Minutemen. Also, Edwin Walker was reportedly a member of the Dallas Minutemen.
We must rely on eye-witnesses for information regarding this period -- for example, Harry Dean, who attended training camps of the Southern California Minutemen in 1962-1963, tells us that the assassination of JFK was a continual topic of discussion in those camps. Yet this was no centralized plot -- it was never explicitly described in the pages of the Minuteman journal. It was simply in the air.
It was the spirit of the Minutemen, rather than their organization, that radicalized already radical individuals with propaganda that Communists had infiltrated the White House, and that the fall of Cuba was proof, and that "the only way of removing the traitors from office was by shooting them out."
On a separate note, it is significant that Harry Dean also reports that he witnessed no KKK propaganda at all while he was in the Southern California Minutemen.
Yet if Terri's young cousins and neighbors from the KKK had indeed been training with the New Orleans Minutemen in the summer of 1963, and if KKK propaganda was also avoided in that camp, this would suggest that the KKK were not the leaders, but were guests who were following orders from others -- perhaps from somebody like Guy Banister.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
IMHO, the most sellable parts here are the reminiscences of the racial climate in the south, plus the structure of the KKK groups. KKK interest in JFK's death could be used for the introduction and then elaborated
Thank you. Yes I understand that all my accounts in life are a bit much for most folks. How could one person have come into contact with so much? Yet, I did.
I know how people see me. I am not stupid. If I had not been through all that I have been through I would not believe such stuff, either. But I have been, and I have stopped asking "Why me?"
The answer to that is, because "I will write only the truth of what happened and that I am able to write." That's what I figure is going on. But I understand the doubt, believe me. Living through it all has been quite overwhelming. I should have gone into law enforcement, I guess.
INFORMANT your cousins and neighbors from the KKK had indeed been training with the New OrleansMinutemen in the summer of 1963, and if KKK propaganda was also avoided in that camp, this would suggest that the KKK were not the leaders, but were guests who were following orders from others -- perhaps from somebody like Guy Banister.
Yes, that's sounds about right to me. Not sure how Doc was connected in the "giving orders", but he helped in the supply end. As well as having the space for target practice, from what I heard.
We must rely on eye-witnesses for information regarding this period -- for example, Harry Dean, who attended training camps of the Southern California Minutemen in 1962-1963, tells us that the assassination of JFK was a continual topic of discussion in those camps. Yet this was no centralized plot -- it was never explicitly described in the pages of the Minuteman journal. It was simply in the air.
Oh yes, it was in the air thick as molasses in the summer of '63. It was after the confiscation of weapons that talk turned from invading Cuba to the death of JFK and how "dare he leave us so defenceless, "What is he up ta?".
I suspect it also left a sizeable dent in someone's inheritance money as well. People kill over stuff like that.
Response to INFORMANT
A deeper criticism of DePugh's statement is that it tends to suggest that the Minutemen formed a centralized organization that marched to the orders of Robert DePugh.
This (invading Cuba) was the number one central goal of the Minutemen organization under Robert DePugh in 1962-1963.
I read The Minutemen (1968) by J. Harry Jones Jr. studying the Cold War under Dr. H.W. Brands As a side-note, it was republished in 1969 under the title, A Private Army.
Jones interviewed Robert DePugh at length, and I got the impression that DePugh was an ordinary bloke - nothing very special about him intellectually or ethically. He was a man of action, like his buddies. They were hunters, liked military games, and they believed the McCarthyist and John Bircher nonsense about Communists taking over Washington D.C.
They felt justified in their mood during the Cuban Crisis. From my reading of Jones' book, the psychology of the Minutemen founders can be approximately observed by watching the 1984 movie, Red Dawn, starring Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen.
Robert DePugh continually conveyed to Jones his constant fear -- his paranoia -- that Castro's Cubans were going to invade the USA because the White House allowed this to happen.
That is the fantasy that is portrayed in Red Dawn, which shows a country high school team (the Wolverines) using their hunting rifles to heroically defeat the Cuban Army as it invaded their home town. I think this captures well the DePugh mentality as portrayed in Jones' scholarly work.
I think all this dovetails quite nicely with your primary theory about the motivations behind the WC Report.
If JFK--whom the Minutemen considered a Communist--was killed by an alleged Communist, as the Warren Commission decided, then their predicted "revolution" against JFK and the Communists was defused, and a civil war was averted.
But by finding that the alleged Communist assassin had no connections to Castro, those who would have had us invading Cuba and tempting Russia to get involved in what surely would have been World War III was also averted.
So for the sake of "national security," the official story was that JFK was assassinated by an alleged Communist, but by one not aligned with any Communist nation. And for those reasons, the truth was to be buried for 75 years...at which time all the principals would surely be dead.
Adding in the Mafia and KKK to the mix may also have been intentional...just to sidetrack those who might have decided that the WC Report stunk to high heaven, and put them off on false trails...wasting precious time and energy that might otherwise have discovered the truth.
Don't get me wrong... critics will believe that the KKK may well have been involved in the training camps. But I think their inclusion had a purpose far beyond just getting some sharp-shooting country boys to take out Castro...or JFK. I think that the involvement of the KKK was to muddy the waters regarding just who was behind the assassination...which I think was at least being discussed in some quarters since the Bay of Pigs.
I am just giving you heads up on how things work
...Adding in the Mafia and KKK to the mix may also have been intentional...just to sidetrack those who might have decided that the WC Report stunk to high heaven, and put them off on false trails...wasting precious time and energy that might otherwise have discovered the truth....
I will agree this far -- when the HSCA under Robert Blakey spent enormous sums of taxpayer money from 1977-1979 to mainly track the anemic theory that the Mafia killed JFK, this was done deliberately.
I believe the USA National Security rationale for locking up the Lee Harvey Oswald files was still in effect in 1977, therefore it was still too early to unlock the Oswald files (because the Cold War and the USSR were still going strong at that time) and so Robert Blakey was positioned to waste everybody's time with a Mafia melodrama.
Now that the USSR is dead and gone, I suspect that the National Security rationale may no longer apply to the issue of unlocking the Oswald files. That is, if it's only an abstract problem of keeping the left-wing and right-wing from fighting, well, another 25 years will make no difference -- the left and right wings have fought for many centuries, and will continue to fight for another century at least.
So, I don't think that's the rationale. The USSR was the real National Security reason for keeping Oswald's files secret, IMHO. Now that the USSR is gone, lets ask President Obama to release the Oswald files or tell us why. Not Going to Happen we all know this , The Zionist Jews bankers own the white-house
As for the KKK, I believe they are less relevant to US history today than at any time since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. That said, the possible KKK participation with Guy Banister in Louisiana might supply empirical evidence (and eye-witnesses) to flesh out the US history of the Cold War and its JFK assassination. At least I hope so.
In his foreword to the last investigation Fonzi mentions that all groups that had been assigned to look at various hypothesis came up with supporting evidence. Still, he focused on one, Blakey on another and others on others. The one that has had least serious attention, in fact just about all lists exclude Civil Rights as an issue, and therefore necessarily the KKK and its ilk.
Until recently.
The KKK was not added to the mix in any way as all the other usual's were. Except in the first few moments. Then the sleights of hand started. It's only recently that a number have found reason to return to those earliest times and view the same data plus much else that has been gathering dust for decades with a new perspective and I think things are becoming clearer on many levels.
It's hard to accept that entities inside of 'normal' society were responsible. It's so much easier to accept a perspective that blames some relatively alien grouping. Greasy tomato merchants, cranky latinos, commies et.c. .
Sometimes the conspiracy hypothesis is the conspirators best friend.
"when after all it was you and me" - Sympathy for the Devil - Beggars Banquet - Rolling Stones.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
It's hard to accept that entities inside of 'normal' society were responsible.
The men I claim are the ones who carried out this plot, are not what normal society is, I hope. Although the way times have progressed, and given all the gun toting Americans who shoot people, maybe they are.
Many Americans believe that 911 was a terrorist attack. What I witnessed the Klan do was terrorism, so it is not something that is new to the USA. Personally I find it hard to believe the FBI were not involved in 911 because of the way they ignored so many good leads and tips. I also feel the FBI know a lot more about JFK's assassination than they have told. AND I feel that Hoover knew Doc, although I have no proof.
Truly I have not investigated this topic very much. I did see the movie JFK. I was struck by the info that Bannister traveled in a Sesna (like the one my pilot cousin flew while doing crop dusting), toward a point due north of New Orleans. Terry/Byram is nearly due north of New Orleans. I have always found it curious that people rarely connect Kennedy King Kennedy to the KKK, just like that Klan kid said, just before she congratulated the killer's son.
Also in that film, there was a character named 'Clay Shaw' or 'Bernard Shaw'. Does anyone on this forum, know if 'Clay/Bernard Shaw' was a fictional name? I have often wondered if 'Clay Shaw' is the name created for Doc.
The South I grew up in was full of fear. Fear of what the Cubans might do, fear of what would happen if schools and public places were integrated, fear of what would happen if blacks finally voted, not to mention the organic fear blacks had of the KKK. Black people were driven by hope, in the midst of fear, while white people were driven by the anger their fears provoked.
When a country lives so much in fear, it is difficult for peace to get a foot hold.
Response to INFORMANT
Clay Shaw was a real live human being
Clay LaVerne Shaw (March 17, 1913 – August 15, 1974)[1] was a businessman in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was the only person prosecuted in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and was acquitted.
Background
Shaw was honorably discharged from the United States Army as a major in 1946. He served as secretary to the General Staff and was decorated by three nations: the United States with the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star, by France with the Croix de Guerre and named Chevalier de l'Ordre du Merite, and by Belgium named Chevalier of the Order of the Crown of Belgium.
After World War II Shaw helped start the International Trade Mart in New Orleans which facilitated the sales of both domestic and imported goods. He was known locally for his efforts to preserve buildings in New Orleans' historic French Quarter.
Arrest
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison prosecuted Clay Shaw on the charge that Shaw and a group of right-wing activists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved in a conspiracy with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the John F. Kennedy assassination. Garrison arrested Shaw on March 1, 1967 Garrison believed that Clay Shaw was the man named as "Clay Bertrand" in the Warren Commission Report. Garrison said that Shaw used the alias "Clay Bertrand" among New Orleans' gay society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clay_Shaw
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Clay Shaw was a real live human being
Thanks, interesting read about him. I had family in New Orleans, whom I visited quite often when growing up. It has always been one of my favorite American cities.
Doc wrote this textbook, Concepts of Disease: Textbook of Human Pathology. I believe he was head of Pathology at the University Hospital in Jackson. He was definitely connected to Bannister and possibly more higher up. He did attend at RFK's autopsy, maybe even JFK's & MLK's as well.
From what I heard while growing up, he had a hand in much violence, probably explicitly through funding, as well as offering space for Klan activities. If he was a Klansmen, he probably kept it hidden. I wouldn't be surprised if he funded some of the White Citizens' Councils activities in Terry. He was a very intelligent, high society kind of man of the gay, yet "cold-hearted" variety.
Doc was in his forties when I was a teenager, so he would have been in the same age group as Clay Shaw. It would not have been that unusual for the two of them to have known each other. Wealthier people would have paid a crop duster to fly them down to New Orleans for the weekend, air taxi style.
My cousin who crop dusted, flew in Vietnam, three tours of duty, living north nowadays. His brother worked for Houston Central. Their sister lived and worked in DC for a decade back then.
On both sides of my family are military. They were most interested in fighting against Cuba and felt it the duty of every able bodied man to participate. Those who did not were castigated. Patriotism! The Klan felt they were the only true Americans and they were not beyond fighting "for 'their' country" and those who did not or who got in their way, were shoved aside or killed. That was just on a local level. Nationally the sentiment was magnified. They felt they were saving the USA by killing Kennedy and preventing him and his brother from going ahead with their plans, stopping them dead in their tracks.
Those who were most harmed by Kennedy, such as the FBI, CIA and Mafia MUST have helped out. The Mafia had/has a stronghold in the South, the Dixie Mafia as it is called. Some of them would have been Klan as well. There has been no evidence presented to me that proves the FBI are a reputable organization, so I can believe, especially in light of Hoover's relationship with the Kennedy brothers, that FBI had a covert hand in carrying out and covering up.
The CIA must have gone south and riled the Klan into action, you might figure. The whole coup d'etat was pulled off much like any other CIA operation anywhere else, so why is it not conceivable that they also had a covert hand. Covert IS their middle name. They certainly had cause enough to be angry at the brothers in power.
Heck, I even had relatives who worked in Bethesda, for Pete's sake.
Somehow, Doc knew someone in power. He aided and abetted in something he strongly believed in. If there was a connection between Bannister and Terry, his is one of the many names I would suggest as fitting the bill.
Response to INFORMANT
INFORMANT I'm now interested in the biography of "Doc", whom you've identified as Dr. Joel G. Brunson, one of two editors of the textbook, Concepts of Disease: Textbook of Human Pathology. I will take a closer look at this interesting character in the weeks ahead.
I'm especially interested in your claim that Dr. Brunson was "definitely connected to Banister," and also that Dr. Brunson "did attend at RFK's autopsy..."
It is my understanding that the membership lists of the White Citizens' Councils were not secret, so it will be interesting to attempt to find the WCC records on Dr. Brunson.
I appreciate your eye-witness account that the rich folks in Terry, Mississippi would "fly down to New Orleans for the weekend." Evidently that's where the action was in those days. If so, then it is surely plausible that Dr. Brunson, who was gay, might have met Clay Shaw (also gay) in New Orleans -- because a connection between Guy Banister and Clay Shaw has been established by Jim Garrison.
The period between 1959-1963 was unique in American politics, I believe, because of the Cuban crisis. It is easy to imagine patriotic families rising up to fight Castro if he dared lift a finger against the USA.
I appreciate your eye-witness account that the KKK "felt they were the only true Americans." That is a common sentiment among other groups in the USA, too. Historically, the White Citizens' Council (WCC) sprang up exactly two months after the 1954 Brown v. The Board of Education decision. It was a direct reaction. School segregation for the WCC meant American patriotism.
This was when we first heard demands to "Impeach Earl Warren," the Chief Justice who gave us Brown. Senator Joe McCarthy was stile very strong in 1954-1956, and terrified many Americans with his nonsense that the Communists had already infiltrated Washington DC. His Catholic paranoia played right into the hands of the segregationists in the South who immediately blamed the Brown decision on the Communists. This was when we first heard the slogan, "Integration is Communism."
That slogan, "Integration is Communism," rang like a bell through the South, and in Mississippi it was broadcast in marches waving the Confederate flag. After 1957, when McCarthy was discredited and died, a new ideological right-wing force emerged in 1959 named the John Birch Society (JBS). Building on the theories of Joe McCarthy, the JBS taught that FDR was a Zionist, Truman was a Zionist but in those day they were called Communist, and that the Brown decision proved that Eisenhower was a Zionist (Communist)
The first slogan of the JBS -- their first bumper sticker and highway billboard -- was the slogan, "Impeach Earl Warren." This was no longer just an issue for the South. The JBS kept the myth alive that Washington DC was full of Communists.
But as you noted, Terri, the KKK probably thought of themselves as the leaders of this movement (and perhaps they were).
The JBS gave a clear message when JFK began his term as President -- namely, that JFK was the most Communist president of them all. After the Bay of Pigs, which occurred soon after JFK took office, the Cuban crisis became the rallying point of the right wing. The Minutemen, the WCC and the KKK all joined the JBS in blaming a "Communist JFK" for the mess. At this point, from 1961-1963 the right-wing was united in their belief that removing JFK from power by any means possible, was a patriotic act to restore America to freedom and glory.
I tend to agree with you 100% on this issue, INFORMANT; that those groups who participated in the JFK assassination (the accomplices of Lee Harvey Oswald) believed that they were justified in their actions; they believed that they were doing the USA a favor; they believed that they were acting as the only true patriots.
With this sort of grass-roots movement from coast to coast (although much of it was underground) it was not necessary for the FBI or CIA to participate in the assassination of JFK -- it was only necessary for them to step aside and look the other way for a few hours. If they did so, they did because they also believed that they were "the only true patriots."
INFORMANT RESPONSE
What was Bannister's role? Why did he come to my home town and Byram in the summer of 1963? What was his part in all this? Why did he say Mr. Lewis was a Champion of Freedom? Did he find bed and breakfast with Doc when in town? If Bannister was part of black ops, then the CIA didn't just step aside and watch, they directed, orchestrated, most eloquently.
Did I mention that I also had an uncle who worked in Bethesda? My father's oldest brother, MJ. I liked my uncle. He was a kinder man than most others in the family and I liked his children. Many southerners had relatives who worked in Bethesda, and beyond.
Did I mention that I also had an uncle who worked in Bethesda? My father's oldest brother, MJ. I liked my uncle. He was a kinder man than most others in the family and I liked his children. Many southerners had relatives who worked in Bethesda, and beyond.
Response to INFORMANT:
What was Bannister's role? Why did he come to my home town and Byram in the summer of 1963? What was his part in all this? Why did he say Mr. Lewis was a Champion of Freedom? Did he find bed and breakfast with Doc when in town? If Bannister was part of black ops, then the CIA didn't just step aside and watch, they directed, orchestrated, most eloquently...
INFORMANT, the work of Jim Garrison (as dramatized in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK) is the only major work that I know about which clarified the role of Guy Banister.
Guy Banister was born in Louisiana in 1901, and after he got out of college he joined the Lousiana Police Department. When he was 32 years old he was accepted into the FBI. He was present when John Dillinger was killed. Banister helped J. Edgar Hoover investigate the Communist Party USA, and Hoover promoted him to Special Agent in Charge.
After he retired from the FBI in 1954, Guy Banister returned to Louisiana to become Assistant Superintendent of the NOPD. In this office he became obsessed by the McCarthyist idea that the Civil Rights movement was Communist. He quit the NOPD in 1957 and started his own Private Eye firm to spy on students in college.
Guy Banister went mostly underground at this point. He began to investigate the FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) in 1960, and spied on college students that he believed were friendly to the FPCC. Rumors abound that he himself became corrupt during the early 1960's period, and he joined David Ferrie to work for the famous Lousiana mobster, Carlos Marcello. (Marcello, also a rabid racist, was friendly to the KKK, and evidently Banister was also a member of the KKK and any other white-supremacist organization that sprang up in his neighborhood.)
In the summer of 1963, Guy Banister (allegedly) hired Lee Harvey Oswald to infiltrate the FPCC, and pretend to be a leader of the FPCC in New Orleans, in order to entrap college students who were friendly to the FPCC.
On some of the FPCC fliers that Lee Harvey Oswald handed out in New Orleans, Oswald had stamped the address of 544 Camp Street, which turns out to be the office above Guy Banister's office, and next to the offices of Cuban Exile radicals in the DRE, INCA and the CRC. Oswald spent his time with Cuban Exiles during this period, and we have plenty of film, radio and newspaper clips to prove that obvious fact.
Jim Garrison was the guy who first pointed all this out in his publications to the world. Unknown to Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald was also being betrayed by these same operators -- they were going to use Oswald's FPCC disguise as "proof" that Oswald was really a Communist, in order to blame Oswald for the JFK assassination -- Oswald was going to be the patsy.
That is, Banister was aware of, and directly involved in, the JFK assassination, and deliberately set-up Oswald as a "Communist" in the newspapers, radio and television, "proving" that Oswald was a Communist, while at the same time Banister coordinated the actual shooters to appear in Dallas (or some other city, as needed).
Banister's goal, according to Jim Garrison, like the goal of all others involved in the JFK assassination, was to convince the USA to invade Cuba right away.
Also
Jones' book?
The Minutemen (1968) by J. Harry Jones Jr. last year while studying the Cold War under Dr. H.W. Brands at UT Austin. As a side-note, it was republished in 1969 under the title, A Private Army.
.......Robert DePugh continually conveyed to Jones his constant fear -- his paranoia IMHO -- that Castro's Cubans were going to invade the USA because the White House allowed this to happen.
Jones' book and I have searched in vain for corroboration that DePugh continually conveyed this constant fear to Jones.
Of course Cuba is mentioned several times in the book, but not in the context you describe. Maybe you can show me something I missed.
Michael, in chapter two of The Minutemen (1968), J.H. Jones describes his interviews with Robert Bolivar DePugh, founder of the Minutemen of the 1960's. When the group started, they collected ideas from, among many sources, including the John Birch Society, which proclaimed that all the Presidents of the USA since FDR were Communist affiliated.
That's the original anxiety that underlies all of DePugh's later ideas -- DePugh always takes this orientation for granted.
Still in chapter 2, on page 50, Jones cited as "the first real Minuteman fear" the threat of nuclear attack, and cites this as the reason that DePugh moved his home and business from Independence, MO (so close to the major center of Kansas City) way out to Norborne.
Then, Jones adds on page 51: "The fear of nuclear attack was only short-lived, soon to be replaced by fear of alien troops hitting America's beaches or dropping out of the skies."
To combat this new fear, DePugh offered a new solution -- guerrilla warfare. DePugh, as it turned out, had been duly impressed by Che Guevara's 1960 manual entitled, Guerrilla Warfare, which had gone into some detail. DePugh, allegedly, used this same manual as a model for his own manual, which he sold to his Minutemen.
These initial images are reinforced in page after page. Jones provided this excerpt from a Minuteman training pamphlet (page 57): "The Communists already have such complete control over the American news media and political processes...that a life-and-death struggle is waging right now between the forces of freedom and the advocates of world slavery...that if the American people expect to be saved from slavery they are going to have to do so themselves...that the Minutemen are the most experienced, most dedicated and best disciplined organization that is involved in this fight at a grass-roots level."
On page 72, DePugh is quoted as saying: "...The true guerrilla...can fight on for years, even generations. Guerrilla bands can fight in the city, country, forests, deserts or mountains. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. They strike without warning and vanish without a trace. They take with them the arms, food and ammunition they will need to fight again another day..."
This, obviously, is the language of resisting an invasion.
DePugh regularly "couched his language in terms of a future take-over by the Communists," said Jones. For example, here's another snappy DePugh message from page 92: "...We have studied your Comunist Smersh, Mao, Che, Bucharin. We have learned our lessons well and have added a few Yankee tricks of our own...These patriots are not going to let you take their freedoms away from them. They have learned the silent knife, the strangler's cord, the target rifle that hits sparrows at 200 yards. Only their leaders restrain them..."
And on and on. This context of invasion and take-over continues to color all of DePugh's bizarre opinions.
What was Bannister's role? Why did he come to my home town and Byram in the summer of 1963? What was his part in all this? Why did he say Mr. Lewis was a Champion of Freedom? Did he find bed and breakfast with Doc when in town? If Bannister was part of black ops, then the CIA didn't just step aside and watch, they directed, orchestrated, most eloquently...
INFORMANT, the work of Jim Garrison (as dramatized in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie, JFK) is the only major work that I know about which clarified the role of Guy Banister.
Guy Banister was born in Louisiana in 1901, and after he got out of college he joined the Lousiana Police Department. When he was 32 years old he was accepted into the FBI. He was present when John Dillinger was killed. Banister helped J. Edgar Hoover investigate the Communist Party USA, and Hoover promoted him to Special Agent in Charge.
After he retired from the FBI in 1954, Guy Banister returned to Louisiana to become Assistant Superintendent of the NOPD. In this office he became obsessed by the McCarthyist idea that the Civil Rights movement was Communist. He quit the NOPD in 1957 and started his own Private Eye firm to spy on students in college.
Guy Banister went mostly underground at this point. He began to investigate the FPCC (Fair Play for Cuba Committee) in 1960, and spied on college students that he believed were friendly to the FPCC. Rumors abound that he himself became corrupt during the early 1960's period, and he joined David Ferrie to work for the famous Lousiana mobster, Carlos Marcello. (Marcello, also a rabid racist, was friendly to the KKK, and evidently Banister was also a member of the KKK and any other white-supremacist organization that sprang up in his neighborhood.)
In the summer of 1963, Guy Banister (allegedly) hired Lee Harvey Oswald to infiltrate the FPCC, and pretend to be a leader of the FPCC in New Orleans, in order to entrap college students who were friendly to the FPCC.
On some of the FPCC fliers that Lee Harvey Oswald handed out in New Orleans, Oswald had stamped the address of 544 Camp Street, which turns out to be the office above Guy Banister's office, and next to the offices of Cuban Exile radicals in the DRE, INCA and the CRC. Oswald spent his time with Cuban Exiles during this period, and we have plenty of film, radio and newspaper clips to prove that obvious fact.
Jim Garrison was the guy who first pointed all this out in his publications to the world. Unknown to Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald was also being betrayed by these same operators -- they were going to use Oswald's FPCC disguise as "proof" that Oswald was really a Communist, in order to blame Oswald for the JFK assassination -- Oswald was going to be the patsy.
That is, Banister was aware of, and directly involved in, the JFK assassination, and deliberately set-up Oswald as a "Communist" in the newspapers, radio and television, "proving" that Oswald was a Communist, while at the same time Banister coordinated the actual shooters to appear in Dallas (or some other city, as needed).
Banister's goal, according to Jim Garrison, like the goal of all others involved in the JFK assassination, was to convince the USA to invade Cuba right away.
Also
Jones' book?
The Minutemen (1968) by J. Harry Jones Jr. last year while studying the Cold War under Dr. H.W. Brands at UT Austin. As a side-note, it was republished in 1969 under the title, A Private Army.
.......Robert DePugh continually conveyed to Jones his constant fear -- his paranoia IMHO -- that Castro's Cubans were going to invade the USA because the White House allowed this to happen.
Jones' book and I have searched in vain for corroboration that DePugh continually conveyed this constant fear to Jones.
Of course Cuba is mentioned several times in the book, but not in the context you describe. Maybe you can show me something I missed.
Michael, in chapter two of The Minutemen (1968), J.H. Jones describes his interviews with Robert Bolivar DePugh, founder of the Minutemen of the 1960's. When the group started, they collected ideas from, among many sources, including the John Birch Society, which proclaimed that all the Presidents of the USA since FDR were Communist affiliated.
That's the original anxiety that underlies all of DePugh's later ideas -- DePugh always takes this orientation for granted.
Still in chapter 2, on page 50, Jones cited as "the first real Minuteman fear" the threat of nuclear attack, and cites this as the reason that DePugh moved his home and business from Independence, MO (so close to the major center of Kansas City) way out to Norborne.
Then, Jones adds on page 51: "The fear of nuclear attack was only short-lived, soon to be replaced by fear of alien troops hitting America's beaches or dropping out of the skies."
To combat this new fear, DePugh offered a new solution -- guerrilla warfare. DePugh, as it turned out, had been duly impressed by Che Guevara's 1960 manual entitled, Guerrilla Warfare, which had gone into some detail. DePugh, allegedly, used this same manual as a model for his own manual, which he sold to his Minutemen.
These initial images are reinforced in page after page. Jones provided this excerpt from a Minuteman training pamphlet (page 57): "The Communists already have such complete control over the American news media and political processes...that a life-and-death struggle is waging right now between the forces of freedom and the advocates of world slavery...that if the American people expect to be saved from slavery they are going to have to do so themselves...that the Minutemen are the most experienced, most dedicated and best disciplined organization that is involved in this fight at a grass-roots level."
On page 72, DePugh is quoted as saying: "...The true guerrilla...can fight on for years, even generations. Guerrilla bands can fight in the city, country, forests, deserts or mountains. They are everywhere and yet nowhere. They strike without warning and vanish without a trace. They take with them the arms, food and ammunition they will need to fight again another day..."
This, obviously, is the language of resisting an invasion.
DePugh regularly "couched his language in terms of a future take-over by the Communists," said Jones. For example, here's another snappy DePugh message from page 92: "...We have studied your Comunist Smersh, Mao, Che, Bucharin. We have learned our lessons well and have added a few Yankee tricks of our own...These patriots are not going to let you take their freedoms away from them. They have learned the silent knife, the strangler's cord, the target rifle that hits sparrows at 200 yards. Only their leaders restrain them..."
And on and on. This context of invasion and take-over continues to color all of DePugh's bizarre opinions.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
"Robert DePugh continually conveyed to Jones
his constant fear -- his paranoia IMHO -- that Castro's Cubans were going to invade the USA because the White House allowed this to happen."
That is exactly what it was like in my hometown during that time. I remember the school and town having 'air raid drills'. It was scary for me, since I was only in elementary school still. It all reached a peak in the summer of 1963 when it turned to anger at Kennedy for having left the south defenceless, or so Klan people said. Bannister came to town on more than one occasion that summer.
DePugh regularly "couched his language in terms of a future take-over by the Communists," said Jones. For example, here's another snappy DePugh message from page 92: "...We have studied your Comunist Smersh, Mao, Che, Bucharin. We have learned our lessons well and have added a few Yankee tricks of our own...These patriots are not going to let you take their freedoms away from them. They have learned the silent knife, the strangler's cord, the target rifle that hits sparrows at 200 yards. Only their leaders restrain them..."
When DePugh says, "Yankee tricks", he is referring to strategies learn from Yankees, by Rebels, during the Civil War, or at anytime from a Northerner. He means 'Northern Tricks', not necessarily 'American' ones.
Kids in my hometown, when I came back from NY a second time, called me a Yankee. That was meant as an insult, to show me that I was an outsider. Eventually I was also called a carpetbagger. Most Southerners passionately thought of themselves as Rebels. Yankees were the enemy.
Also
Thank you for all that info about Bannister. It makes me wonder if he ratted my grandfather out when he played in New Orleans and if he was friendly with anyone in my family (mother's father's sister), the Underwoods, there. My cousin was a New Orleans police officer in the early sixties.
My uncle (mother's brother) had been in the Merchant Marines during that time and had moved to Houston or somewhere in Texas, got married, had a son, abused his wife and got divorced, then went off to a mental facility somewhere in California I think, in '59, the year my grandfather "killed himself" and my mother was committed to Whitfield. Are there any records connecting Bannister to Albert Guy Hollingsworth, I wonder?
Response to INFORMANT
... My cousin was a New Orleans police officer in the early sixties...
INFORMANT, this would have been a reasonable time and circumstance for Guy Banister to have met your cousin. The New Orleans Police Department was Banister's current stomping grounds. The extreme right-wing politics of (presumably) both men would have also provided an occasion for them to meet and to find common ground.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
What you were saying about Bannister spying on people, I wonder if he spied on my grandfather. My grandfather supposedly killed himself in 1959. He had played in New Orleans, and then jammed with the other musicians in their hotel. Klan made sure he was going to go back to Whitfield and he just didn't want to go again.... supposedly.
My cousin (not the pilot) who was a police officer there, his father owned Underwood Glass. My cousin's mother was my grandfather's sister. The Klan usually pressured the family to commit the renegade, if the family had money, which mine did, otherwise it would have been straight to the woods.
My cousin came to live with my mom and us kids in 1967, in Terry. He had quit the New Orleans police, because he said they had become too corrupt, however that was nothing new. So I wonder why Eddy really did quit.
My uncle had come to visit that summer. He came to my mom's house to visit with Eddy. Mom was at work, the others were at their friends' houses, I was the only one home with Eddy when UncleBubba showed up. We all sat around the kitchen table and Eddy and Uncle Bubba discussed how to get away with murder, etc. Eddy told Uncle Bubba about all the women who had gone missing in New Orleans and how police 'did not have the evidence' to arrest anyone. They talked for hours about the crimes, what police looked for, how the murders were be interpreted, etc., before my Mom came home and the talk changed. It was the kinds of questions my uncle asked that made me wonder about him. Actually, I wondered about them both.
Eddy had gotten the job of 'Night Marshal' in Terry, a post traditionally held by someone either in the Klan or sympathetic.
Reece (or Reese) Lewis is the only Night Marshal whose name I remember, before Eddy got the job. I had tried, foolishly, to tell Reece Lewis about Albert Lee Lewis in 1965, before I left to live in Syracuse. He laughed at me and said, "Aw, you just a crazy little girl" then laughed some more. I remembered what Mrs. Long had said regarding the assassination, that 'There is no one you can tell. The men who just shot the president will never be caught and nothing will ever be done about them'.
Response to INFORMANT
...I remembered what Mrs. Long had said regarding the assassination, that 'There is no one you can tell. The men who just shot the president will never be caught and nothing will ever be done about them'.
INFORMANT, it just occurred to me that you might know about participants in the racial riots of Ole Miss on 30 September 1962.
Your home town, Terry Mississippi, is only 15 miles southwest of Jackson, and ex-General Edwin Walker went on the radio and television (I'm told) to call for "ten thousand strong from every State in the Union" to meet him in Jackson, Mississippi on 29 September 1962, to march on Oxford, Mississippi, the site of Ole Miss University, where Black American James Meredith (aided by his NAACP advisor, Medgar Evers) had successfully won acceptance.
It seems to me that the KKK in Mississippi would have been the first in line to support "General Walker". You might have some vivid memories of that night, since this was your own home State.
What can you remember about that time, INFORMANT? Do you remember interviews or speeches by resigned General Edwin Walker? Did your cousins say anything about "General Walker?"
INFORMANT RESPONSE
As I was quite young, I would not have been permitted to be in a riot. But as I stated earlier, I lived in Syracuse New York from June of 1962 - June of 1963, so I was not there, but when we came back in the summer of '63, the whole town was riled like never before. Their big concern was Kennedy, integration and Cubans. We had Air Raid drills at school and in town. The Klan Kidz were nastier than usual. My grandmother went on endlessly about politicians. There was a LOT of talk of every kind, but peace.
As I felt they were wrong, and since I was a supporter of Kennedy who felt he would save the south from itself, I tried to just ignore them. I remember my grandmother being frightened that blacks would riot. I was not allowed to go to the park without my brother. I was warned to stay away from "Niggertown", the area of town where black people lived. It irked her that I would follow black girls up the street if they walked passed the house, just so I could hear them speak. I was enchanted by the unique language they spoke. They also got nasty with me, because I guess they thought I was spying, which I guess I was. I would have rather just be able to walk up to them and speak to them instead, even maybe be friends with them.
My grandmother tried very hard to protect me from her imaginary fears, so I missed a lot. I remember her going on about Robert McNamara a lot in the sixties, maybe that was later. She did mention Walker, and with pride. Some of the prominent names from back then, she babbled about, off and on. I was at an age where it was important to her to steer me in the 'right direction', so to speak, Klanwise and, in defiance, I got to where I just ignored her, so I guess I missed a lot. She wanted me to be a racist, but it was clear that I was not. It irked her mightily.
The Klan Kidz were more obnoxious than usual. I did not let on how I felt on the matter, but it showed on my face when they talked. I remember trying to reason with some of the Klan Kidz, telling them about my experiences with black children in the north. Told them that there were other people whom we did not know, and who were not so bad as we were making out. Of course that kind of talk only got me castigated and ostracized. So after a while I just tuned it out. I was only ten.
But the closer it got to November 22, and at that time I did not know the exact date the KKK planned to kill him, just that he would be killed in Dallas. Too bad it happened so soon after he arrived there, with the Eyes of Texas Upon Him. Then on the date, there is no way I could forget what happened, although for decades I tried. I wished it wasn't true then and wish it wasn't true now, but those kidz jumped up and congratulated JFK's killer's son. I wish JFK had taken more caution, maybe given me some credit and heeded my advice.
The truth is, that all of 1963, the Klan and its offspring were either training to invade Cuba or practicing for a coup and they were mighty excited about it.
As for others who may have been present at the riots, if Mr. RW McDaniel wasn't there, then he had to have been too sick to move. Same with Mr. Patterson and his lot (not the one who started the WCC, but maybe a relative) and the Covingtons would have been there. The Gardners might have been there. My grandmother's family was not going to be there; they were too 'afraid', not of the Klan, but blacks. My cousin, the pilot might have been there, since he was older and from a military family. There were lots of people from my home town who might have been there. I doubt they all went, but they were Klan or Klan supporters. Some branches of my family were heavily laden-ed with Klan and might have been there. Other branches came from a more liberal side of the family.
It was a real affront to most that Kennedy sent troops to Oxford. My grandmother had graduated from there in the twenties. Mississippians were proud of Ole Miss and Oxford was a place of prominence in esteem to the state, so integrating THAT school was a particular affront to Mississippians. I mean people would have gotten riled over any school being integrated, but THAT PARTICULAR SCHOOL? That meant war. Take away a few weapons, leaving southerners in a state of what they would call "defenseless" and presto, a coup d'etat. Played like a chess game, eh?
This was when we first heard demands to "Impeach Earl Warren," the Chief Justice who gave us Brown. Senator Joe McCarthy was stil very strong in 1954-1956, and terrified many Americans with his nonsense that the Communists had already infiltrated Washington DC. His Catholic paranoia played right into the hands of the segregationists in the South who immediately blamed the Brown decision on the Communists. This was when we first heard the slogan, "Integration is Communism."
I remember the Sanctified Church Minister, Mr. Williams (no relation) had a bumper sticker that read: "I'd rather be Dead than Red!" And I thought it was funny that the word "Red" was written in red and faded away over time.
Response to INFORMANT
177 miles from Terry, Mississippi to Lake Pontchartrain on I-55. In 1963 that would take a little less than three hours to drive. just a note for later
I've been doing some digging about the KKK in general. In an old book entitled, The Invisible Empire (1880) author Albion W. Tourgee describes how the KKK became an integral part of Southern culture -- not just the low culture, but the high culture, too, just as INFORMANT you have suggested.
The first appearance of the name, Ku Klux Klan, is in 1868, in Tennesee. The idea of using white masks and horseback was to terrorize Black neighborhoods with the superstition that these were ghosts of fallen Confederate soldiers (from the battle of Shiloh) returned to haunt Black Americans. At first it got a laugh -- but the laughing only encouraged its darker side.
The KKK took on its key goals -- to reverse Reconstruction and to nullify the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution (which abolished slavery, mandated equal protection, and gave equal access to voting). The KKK goal was posed as a Constitutional battle.
The KKK was a reaction to the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, and a stubborn denial that secession was the same as treason. Without the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments, the KKK was happy to support the Constitution of the USA, they said.
The key problem was how to remain a Southern gentleman under these new Yankee laws. As Tourgee explains, however, being a Southern gentleman meant advocating laws of torture for Black people. The old laws permitting slavery meant unbounded freedom for the white caste in the South -- a white person could sell, buy, beat, whip, brand, rape or even lynch a Black person, all within the law. These were the "freedoms" that Southern gentlemen wanted to cling to.
Although the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments removed the slavery laws from Southern courts, the habits of the South would die hard. The KKK would continue in its traditional "freedoms" with the exception of buying and selling slaves. In general, the cruelty of the Old South would continue whenever the KKK was in charge.
INFORMANT your description of the murder of Black people in her home town -- murders that were never investigated nor will ever be investigated -- is a social fact that we Yankees tend to relegate to the 1800's. We block out the fact that this remained a 20th century social fact - even past World War Two. It's like a bad dream.
INFORMANT your attempts to remind us of reality - of the truth - from her own memories of the South, in Terry, Mississippi, when she, a baby-boomer, was growing up American.
There was a time when Southern white-supremacy was king in the USA. Even after the days of Lincoln, even after the Reconstruction, even after the turn of the century, the values of the KKK slumbered on in the backwoods of America. Yet the KKK was awakened suddenly with Black Monday -- when the US Supreme Court decided in 1954 (Brown v. The Board of Education) that US public schools must become racially integrated.
Then the KKK rose again, supported by White Citizens' Councils (which on the surface had deliberately excluded the KKK, but in reality gave the KKK a new vehicle for operation) starting just weeks after that decision. Reaction to the Civil Rights movement in the JFK administration gave a new life to the KKK. Towns in which the KKK had lay dormant now saw the KKK as a moving force in the halls of town government again.
Instead of physical brutality, the White Citizens' Councils would punish Black upstarts with economic sanctions -- getting them fired from their jobs, getting banks to deny them loans, and running them out of town. (Then the KKK would step in an finish up the job when nobody was looking.)
Add to the problems of Civil Rights the problem of the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, Communism, the Red Scare and the fall of free Cuba -- now the KKK had some meat to bite into. Race-mixing could now be worse than Satanic -- Race-mixing was now Communist.
With this new and unholy brew of racism and the acceptance of any vice in the service of Anticommunism, a new populist movement was stirred in Terry, Mississippi in 1963, led by Guy Banister of New Orleans.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Gosh, great research. Sounds about right to me. Race mixing was grounds for some pretty nasty reactions. My father's mother, a heavy racist, in 1980, took me to Morrison's cafeteria in the Edgewater Mall in Biloxi. Ahead of us in line was a couple. The man was white while the woman was black. I saw them and thought they looked so perfectly in love and sweet. They were both very good looking people.
I had forgotten what it was like in the south as I had been living in Canada for the previous ten years. Canada has its racism too, especially in Halifax where, at the time, lived Canada's largest population of black people. But I was living in Ottawa by then and racism was not so evident there, not in my group of friends. However, that said, there were not that many black people in Ottawa then.
So back in Mississippi with a grandmother who was a adamant racist, I quickly got a reminder. My grandmother turned to the older white couple behind her and said, loud enough for the mixed couple to hear, "Well isn't that the most disgusting thing you ever saw?" in a very disgusted tone of voice.
She and the white couple were going on quite loudly enough, that I was embarrased and ran ahead of them to select a few things. When I got to the cashier, paid for my meal and went to sit down. I sat at the table next to the mixed couple, kinda as a way to say I was sorry. I was about to speak to them when my grandmother came along and said to me, "YOU would sit THERE" and stormed off across the dining room to a white section. I jumped up and followed her, but looked back at the mixed couple as i walked and my face was flush with embarrassment. I had forgotten about all that, but it came back quick.
My grandmother also did something nasty to her neighbour while I was there. She had accepted a parcel in a large styrofoam container that had come for her neighbour while she was out of town. The woman came back later that day, but my grandmother did not tell her the parcel was at her house. She did not like that the woman was an older white woman who was apparently a music agents and some of the musicians that came to the woman's house were black. My grandmother was distraught that her neighbour was a "nigger lover" and refused to tell her the parcel was in her house. My grandmother became angry with me for skipping out the door, going to the woman and telling her the parcel was at my grandmother's house. the woman came and got it later, and of course, my grandmother became totally disgusted with me.
That was 1980. the older white folks were not going to easily let go of their ways. Younger white folks were a little less bigoted, but still had to sneak around to have black friends. And it still got people lynched, even then. The Dixie Mafia, which were all Klan, had the "honours" of carrying out lynchings. The dixie Mafia sorta ran the Gulf coast, while the White Knights ran Terry (and beyond I imagine).
In the 1980's things had progressed enough in Mississippi that the young mixed couple were able to do what they did. No one did that sort of thing in the 50's & 60's without being taken to the woods immediately. In the 50's and 60's they would have been lynched, Terry-style, even on the coast. I am not sure what ever happened to those people.
Lynching in Mississippi back then, were carried out with Middle Ages grotesqueness, disembowelling, and Star Chamber torture. Tire fires were the common 'clean up material' as they get hot enough to burn anything.
I am amazed you found this out! Kudos! Does it actually say that "a new populist movement was stirred in Terry, Mississippi in 1963, led by Guy Banister of New Orleans"? He was also in Byram a lot that summer, too. It is true, he was in Terry, a lot in 1963. I remember that we had air raid drills a lot, both in town at home and at school. It was a kinda scary time for many. Talk of an invasion was at every dinner table and at school.
It is unfortunate that I was unable to have black friends back then. I would have liked to have known what they were going through and if they were scared of an attack by "Communists". But that was a dinosaur bone of contention. Martha May Ransom, my (mother's mother) grandmother's "maid" never talked about it. If it is written somewhere that Banister was in Terry in 1963, I am totally shocked they would have ever let that cat out of the bag.
Kudos again, You are quite the researcher. :-)
Response to INFORMANT
...Lynchings in Mississippi back then, were carried out with Middle Ages grotesqueness, disembowelling, and Star Chamber torture. Tire fires were the common 'clean up material' as they get hot enough to burn anything.
I am amazed you found this out! Kudos! Does it actually say that "a new populist movement was stirred in Terry, Mississippi in 1963, led by Guy Banister of New Orleans"? He was also in Byram a lot that summer, too. It is true, he was in Terry, a lot in 1963. I remember that we had air raid drills a lot, both in town at home and at school. It was a kinda scary time for many. Talk of an invasion was at every dinner table and at school.
It is unfortunate that I was unable to have black friends back then. I would have liked to have known what they were going through and if they were scared of an attack by "Communists". But that was a dinosaur bone of contention. Martha May Ransom, my (mother's mother) grandmother's "maid" never talked about it. If it is written somewhere that Banister was in Terry in 1963, I am totally shocked they would have ever let that cat out of the bag...
INFORMANT, the research I did on the KKK didn't mention Guy Banister. Sorry I wasn't clear about that -- I added that part at the end by including your own eye-witness account.
Your memories of Guy Banister at your kitchen table in Terry, Mississippi in 1963 is what connects your account with current JFK assassination research. Your account further links a JFK assassination suspect with the larger movement of white-supremacy in the USA, in response to the Civil Rights movement in which JFK had taken a clear stand for Equal Rights for Black Americans, and therefore against the old culture of white-supremacy that still lingers on in the South.
I think the reason many Americans cannot picture this clearly is because LBJ immediately followed JFK, and our memories have been overwhelmed by the Vietnam conflict along with LBJ's massive Civil Rights legislation. Because of LBJ, we now live in a world of greater racial equality than ever before in the USA. It's a different world, actually, and I appreciate your account because it reminds us of how revolutionary LBJ has been for domestic issues.
If LBJ had done a better job with the Vietnam era, he would have been remembered on equal terms with FDR, I believe. But nobody's perfect. LBJ was able to push the KKK to one side as no other US President has been able to do. Truman and Eisenhower did not make speeches about Civil Rights. JFK was the first, but I would argue that JFK was personally unsuccessful with that.
it is right and proper to connect the assassination of JFK with the Civil Rights movement. I believe there is a direct correlation -- a straight line. For example, on 30 September 1962 Ross Barnett encouraged ex-General Edwin Walker to lead a racial riot of thousands at Old Miss University at Oxford, Mississippi -- in protest of the registration of James Meredith who was advised by NAACP leader Medgar Evers. On 30 January 1963, a Mississippi Grand Jury acquitted Edwin Walker, dropping all charges.
In the late hours of the night of JFK's first and last Civil Rights speech (11 June 1963) KKK member Byron de la Beckwith shot Medgar Evers in the back, killing him in his own Mississippi driveway. Within six months, JFK would also be lying in a pool of blood.
After JFK was killed and the Warren Commission began in January, 1964, ex-General Edwin Walker once again joined Ross Barnett in Mississippi, this time in a court house to shake hands with Byron de la Beckwith, to offer Beckwith encouragement in his murder trial. Beckwith was set free in 1964, due to a mistrial.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
With regards to LBJ and Cuba, if the aim of assassinating JFK was to invade Cuba and Johnson didn't, I can't think of what better evidence that he was somewhere near the top in the plot to kill Kennedy. I mean if he had not been somewhere near the top, and the Klan had just killed one president for not invading Cuba, why would they have not gone after LBJ for not doing what Kennedy did not do? There was more to it than Cuba. Next episode: Vietnam. Who profited from the Vietnam war? Powerful whities?
I think someone in the Federal Reserve might have had a hand in matters.
there are people at the Clarion Ledger who know Banister was in Byram (5 miles north of Terry) in the summer of 1963, so there must be some kind of documentation regarding Banister's visits in 1963.Not to mention the green Ford pick-up truck. Wouldn't there have been some documentation about that truck somewhere, something that connects Banister to Terry?
A couple of years ago I spoke with Jerry Mitchell, a reporter with the Clarion Ledger/Jackson Daily News. He said he knew of Banister's visits to Byram. He helped in the making of a documentary about the killing of the three civil rights workers.
I was hoping to have some justice for Junior Ransom. It actually perplexes me that Sheriff Tyrone Lewis (of today's Hinds County) does not want to seek justice for ANY of the many people who lost their lives to lynchings, even though I know exactly who killed Junior in 1964.
Interesting letter from Walker. Thanks for the link. I can hear the thick, pompous, southern accent as I read it.
I do remember how the south was up in arms about Cuba, but the thing I remember that caused the most angry reaction was the confiscation of weapons. That's what the Klan called it, confiscation of weapons. They felt that it left them defenceless and it really pissed them off mightily, more than Meredith. It was like throwing fuel on that fire.
No Klansmen (and I do mean the WCC, too) was at all comfortable with race mixing. Say what you will about the WCC keeping the Klan out, but I KNOW that was a ruse. They all acted in unison whatever the Klan did. No WCC ever investigated any lynchings, and they knew all about each one, nor would they have ever.
The Dixie Mafia was pissed about Castro's nationalizing of their casinos, hotels, prostitution rings and other illicit industries. I think the Klan and the US military were faking it when they claimed there was a danger of invasion, sold it to southerners who ate it up. It was mostly just a revenge they wanted. They wanted their money making illicit businesses back.
Response to INFORMANT
I appreciate the name of Jerry Mitchell, and I now want to speak with him. This is a breakthrough for my own theory. Many thanks for the name.
I believe the problem of obtaining justice for lynchings in the 1960's is immense, involving mobs of people and millions of dollars of legal fees which poor counties don't have. Some lynchings were revenge killings for race-mixing at a time when race-mixing really was prohibited in Southern statutes -- so the legal battles could take years, make headlines and be humiliating to hundreds or even thousands of people. Although there is no statute of limitations on the crime of murder, the public official who pushed forward such justice might be killed himself -- even today. The Confederate flag still flies high in some counties in the Deep South.
As for the "confiscation of weapons" in 1963, levied on the Cuban Exile training camps like Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, used by groups like Alpha 66 with help from Minutemen and the KKK, it was life or death for the Cuban Exiles, but it was even more serious for rightists in the USA -- it was a Constitutional question. Should the Federal government abolish the 2nd Amendment? These are fighting words beyond the KKK, beyond the WCC's, beyond the Minutemen, beyond the John Birch Society. Millions upon millions of Americans consider it tyranny to speak of abolishing the 2nd Amendment.
Even today, President Obama of trying to abolish the 2nd Amendment. This question mobilizes millions of Americans. . It wasn't true of JFK, either. JFK did not outlaw the possession of weapons -- he shut down Cuban Exile training camps, which is a different matter.
This was about the Cuban Missile Crisis and its aftermath, when JFK was trying to convince the USSR to back away from Cuba, after removing their missiles. The rightists claimed that JFK really let the missiles remain in Cuba. It was their very real paranoia that JFK was arming Cuba, Yugoslavia and the USSR and disarming the USA. The claims against JFK (like the claims that Sarah Palin made about Obama last year) said that JFK was a Marxist and a Communist.
The right-wing really hasn't changed much since the 1960's -- they still represent about 33% of the USA and still accuse their opponents of Communism. Still not a majority -- but they are trying like mad.
It's not just that the so-called confiscation of weapons angered the KKK more than the race-mixing at Ole Miss, but it angered millions of more Americans who had nothing to do with the KKK. And this gave the KKK more credibility and more power. I agree with you, INFORMANT, that it was like throwing fuel on the fire.
There is a book written by Judge Tom Brady called, Black Monday (1954), which was the first and most popular book that the WCC ever distributed. It is a protest against Brown v. The Board of Education, and against race-mixing specifically. Tom Brady believed in the science fiction fantasy that all great ancient Empires were white, and only fell because colored people took them over.
Brady wrote that Cleopatra was white. He even wrote that the Mayan kings were white. This was his science fiction fantasy, and he sold it to millions of people in the South, including Governors, Congressmen, Senators, Judges, Doctors, Lawyers, Professors, Bankers, Businessmen and Society Ladies.
The WCC said they wanted to keep the KKK and its thug violence out of their movement -- but the history of the Deep South proved that they could not make that happen. The KKK would come in anyhow and wreak violence. Even then, the WCC did plenty of damage by ruining Black people economically, by getting them fired from their jobs, and getting banks to call in their loans.
As for Cuba, while it is true that the Mafia -- including the Dixie Mafia -- wanted to get their old stomping grounds back from Castro, they were not the driving force behind the push to kill Castro. There is a problem with Communism that cannot be tolerated by the US Constitution. Western Law is based on private property -- and Communism undermines that. While it is true that private property is subject to abuses, for example, organized crime, the ancient institution of private property is the foundation of Western Law. The USSR was the great experiment to prove that people could live without private property, and the proof of its failure was in 1990 when the USSR finally collapsed upon itself.
We can't blame the Mafia for the drive against Castro. The vast majority of Americans wanted Castro overthrown. If not for the USSR protecting Cuba in 1963, I feel sure that Castro would have been overthrown. Even JFK and RFK held secret plans to to overthrow Castro -- but they had to be secret, and not out in the open like Lake Pontchartrain. Sadly, the right-wing failed to understand this.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
There are only two other people who were present at Terry Consolidated School on November 22, 1963 who saw exactly what I saw happen that day, and were not happy about it. I kinda doubt they will ever talk, though. I guess I am the only fool from Terry who would. I hope to some day to get in contact with them, but time marches on; they are in their mid to late sixties by now.
Response to INFORMANT
in my opinion it doesn't matter if anybody comes forward with their confirmation or not (aside from the fact that violence might be the result).
What matters is that you are courageous enough to stand up for your personal truth, despite critics and hecklers. Although you can't name the person you suspect, and so nobody can research that avenue, it is enough, in my opinion, that you have named the culture and the kind of person that killed JFK.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Actually I can name him since I know his name and where he lived. I don't really care if I am sued or killed. I would hate to die not ever having said a word. , that since I actually know his name, where he lived, who his buddies were and other crimes they committed, someone besides me (someone who can discern the truth) ought to be told.
And I doubt I can really be sued, since I would demand the records be unsealed and my letter to JFK coughed up, which I would like back anyway, since he didn't listen. The only way out of it is to call me crazy and slander the hell out of ME. Had a good life anyway. I wish I could tell ALL that I know, since there is so much more to tell. Glad I have had the opportunity to tell what little I have told.
Not bragging, but if anyone on this site really wanted to know, they are lucky I have spoken out at last. And I believe,, that you have the capacity to discern the truth. Lucky ME!
Response to INFORMANT
whether you name him or not, you are still providing valuable clues to the assassination of JFK, in my opinion. For example, I find that few people get the fact that within the USA itself, there is a subculture of Americans that celebrated when JFK was killed. I mean, they had parties.
These were the people of the Deep South who were in the KKK, surely, but even beyond the thugs of the KKK, there were many more Southerner who were deeply involved in the White Citizens' Councils and in the State Sovereignty Commissions, including Congressmen, Governors, Bankers, Civic Leaders, Military Leaders and Society Ladies.
For millions of people in the South, the Supreme Court decision to racially integrate public schools (Brown v. The Board of Education) was an Unconstitutional act -- and they were prepared to defy Washington D.C. to the bitter end.
These people went beyond the KKK at the ground level -- yet as you said, they always reverted to the KKK when they returned to the ground level in the South. I think that is an insight that is worth historical exploration.
You said that the day JFK was killed, in your home town of Terry, Mississippi, the kids in your high school joined the general celebration, and congratulated your relative whom they assumed was the expert marksman who killed JFK. They also exclaimed to you that "the KKK will not stop until there's a K-K-K", which meant that they would keep killing until they killed JFK, MLK and RFK (Kennedy-King-Kennedy).
When history played out exactly in that way in the coming years, you concluded that you had lived close to the center of the cyclone. I would think exactly the same thing if I had been in your shoes.
Furthermore, you shared with us that Guy Banister -- a man who was so close to the events at Lake Pontchartrain, Cuban Exiles, and the address Lee Harvey Oswald stamped on his fake-FPCC handbills, often visited your home town, and even had dinner at your grandmother's house, along with other relatives.
So, whether or not you decide to share that name with anybody, INFORMANT, you are still filling in many blanks in US History with your personal recollections of growing up in your home town in Terry, Mississippi, which has been dominated by the KKK for so long.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Oh I thought I had already given quite a list of names. I don't mind stating again the Albert Lee Lewis of Midway Road in Terry, Mississippi was the man who killed Kennedy, the man on the grassy knoll. He was not a family member; he lived across the road where the Klan rallies with guest speaker Banister, were held in the summer of 1963. There were also Klan rallies in Byram that summer, too.
There was a 'turkey shoot' in Dallas on November 22, 1963, three marksmen in a triangle formation. My uncle was on the other side of the limo. Someone else shot from behind Kennedy as well. But Albert Lee Lewis fired the shot that killed Kennedy; he won the 'turkey shoot'. Everyone, RW McDaniel (principal) most of the high school teachers and nearly all students, congratulated his son right afterwards (within 30 mins of the deed).
Mrs. Long, the seventh grade (civics) teacher who was also the niece of Huey Long, told me that there was no one to tell about it, since my initial reaction was to tell the law. Mrs Long said that the group of men who had just shot the president, were the same group of men who had killed her uncle, in much the same manner as it turned out. She said that nothing was ever done about those men then and that nothing would be done about them now. She was right.
Albert Lee Lewis is dead. He died a few years back, 2007 or so.
My cousins (who still live in the house across from the Lewis' old place) know it is true, but they would never say, because they are Klan. One forum member mentioned going down to Terry and into the back woods, to ask the man's family if it was true. That would be more than stupid, they are still Klan.
Of concern to me was the man we called Doc. Joel Garrett Brunsen. He was a wealthy, gay pathologist who participated in the autopsy of RFK, maybe even JFK. He supplied much of the means to carry out acts of terror on black people. He was a sly, but dangerous man.
I was never a Klansmen and although my grandmother was in the WCC, I was not a member of that either. The were all the same, racists. I abhorred those people, although I HAD to live around them, shop in their stores, befriend their children, pray in their churches and go to their hospitals. The WCC used the Klan to carry out their dirty work, lynchings and whatnot. The WCC didn't make life easy for Black people. They were not 'angels'.
It is unfortunate that it has taken so long to get anywhere with the Kennedy assassination alone. My uncle, Al Guy Hollingsworth, (with the help of another cousin and ex New Orleans cop) went on to commit murder like you wouldn't believe. And he never got caught, no surprise there since the FBI could not afford for him to be charged. My uncle died on May 1, 2007 in Idaho, without charge, although there is evidence that he committed murders in British Columbia Canada as well.
My cousin, the New Orleans excop, son of a wealthy New Orleans family, still lives in Jackson. He has been a long haul truck driver all these decades since.
Response to INFORMANT
although you'd previously named your childhood neighbor, Albert Lee Lewis (d. 2007), I know of no way to independently research his biography.
Your claim that A.L. Lewis was the man who killed JFK from the grassy knoll must now stand in line along with Lee Harvey Oswald, Roscoe White, Eladio del Valle, James Earl Files, Charles Nicoletti, Johnny Rosselli and others as possible suspects.
Klan rallies are virtually unknown to Yankees -- we must use our imaginations to reconstruct a gathering of thousands of KKK members at a rally in Terry or Byram Mississippi in the summer of 1963. Furthermore, the KKK is a secret society that does not publicize its membership list.
Yet it helps the researcher enormously, INFORMANT, when you say that Guy Banister -- a central character in Jim Garrison's investigations -- was a featured speaker at KKK rallies in your neighborhood.
Your fascinating historical claim, that your high school principal, R.W. McDaniel, along with many of the high school teachers and many students "congratulated his son right afterwards" on that same afternoon, helps us to envision a culture that is like a dream-world to the average American.
Whatever the actual situation, these allegations suggest that the JFK killing might have been a well-known plot in Terry Mississippi, that is, many people talked about it for a long time beforehand. To illustrate this I will quote from a flyer that I recently found while searching remotely for Guy Banister in the Lousiana Department of Archives and History, dated during the Kennedy administration years, that begins as follows:
------------------ Begin Extract from Kennedy-era KKK flyer ------------------------
Louisiana's Ku Klux Klan hereby calls upon the white christian manhood of the South to follow our leadership, without fear of death or persecution, to save our white race from annihilation, slavery, mongrelism and Communism. Death stalks our land with "Black Congo" anarchy and revolution inspired, promoted and financed by the Kennedy dynasty and the Communist party.
According to our records we believe that according to Article III, Section III of the Constitution of the United States, the President and his Kennedy dynasty are guilty of treason...While federal troops are used to invade Southern States and persecute, harass and intimidate southern governors and destroy the white race, Kennedy's new frontier federal dynasty promotes the black anarchist, Communist branded, Martin Luther King as well as "peaceful co-existence with the Godless conspiracy of Communism..." The peaceful "co-existence gift" of Cuba to Nikita Krushchev by the new frontier Kennedy dynasty...at a time when Kennedy's Federal Government is using all its power and resources to give the lowly, prideless, immoral, parasitical and worthless black race, "Supreme Civil Rights" causes us to believe that this is a betrayal of the white race, our Creator and our country...
------------------- End Extract from Kennedy-era KKK flyer --------------------------
I think it should be clear to the casual observer that this is the level of self-righteous hatred that actually killed JFK. It was a great misfortune that JFK himself underestimated the mood of the Southern States.
Mrs. Long, your seventh grade civics teacher (niece of Huey Long, who was also allegedly assassinated by the KKK) told you that there was no one to tell and that nothing would ever be done about it. It appears that she may have been right.
It is difficult for Yankees to further imagine that in the 21st century, in the year 2013, that the KKK still exists in Terry, Mississippi to this day.
By the way,INFORMANT, your reference to another neighbor of yours, "Doc," the nickname of Dr. Joel Garrett Brunsen, inspired me to find his book in our University Library -- it is a 1,134 page volume named, "Concepts of Disease," and it is an academic research textbook.
You claim that he was sympathetic to the KKK and that he "participated in the autopsy of RFK, maybe even JFK," and that is something I can research.
After reading the principle writings of the WCC, I must agree with you that they were not angels trying to make life easier for Black Americans. They only wanted to maintain segregation at any cost -- although they knew that publicity of atrocities against Black Americans would weaken their cause, rather than strengthen it, so they put on a civil face to the world, and they used economic means -- like getting NAACP members fired from their jobs -- to get their point across.
However, in counties where the Black population was over 50%, the WCC would often hand over control to the KKK. That is a matter of documented history.
Insofar as your account is more than rumor and heresay, INFORMANT, you have carried a tremendous burden all of your life. I, for one, encourage you to continue to share your story and seek justice -- which may still be decades away.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Not sure if you can research who was in the National Guard Reserves in 1963, but Albert Lee Lewis was a National Guardsman, as well as a White Knight. My uncle was in the Merchant Marines in the late 50's early 60's, boiler room, and in an old order of the Mason's. He was also the Chief Engineer of the boiler room at San Francisco State University in 1970. My uncle was also a pretty bad shot. I had found documentation a few years back, that Doc was involved in the autopsy of RFK, but now I cannot find it.
Response to INFORMANT
Thanks for these details, INFORMANT. I'll see what I can do.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
My brother has a photo of our uncle..... along side Castro. Must be around the late 50's early sixties.
Response to INFORMANT
I'm very curious -- what is your uncle doing along side Fidel Castro? Can you digitize and upload that photograph?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I am curious too. Have to get my brother to do that (the photo is his) and that is a TALL order. I will try.
Response to INFORMANT
By the way, INFORMANT, I have a theory that the Ole Miss riots of September 1962 were the preparation for the assassination of JFK in November 1963.
Do you remember anybody in your family and neighborhood circles who talked about the details of KKK participation in the Ole Miss riots of 1962?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
I was living in Syracuse, New York at that time. When I returned to Terry in July of 1963, the town was in an uproar over Ole Miss, Meredith and school integration. But the biggest uproar was over the confiscation of guns that the guys had been training with.
They were also busting with pride over Banister's visits. That summer talk was of killing Kennedy and it only revved up as the school year progressed. I thoroughly believed they (Klan) meant it, which is why I wrote to JFK to warn him. I knew Albert Lee Lewis was a good shot as I had seen him in action before, so I believed that if JFK went to Dallas, he would be a sitting duck.
Also, during the summer of 1963, I did not know about the other shooters. I did not learn about them until the day of at school and again when I was watching the news with my grandmother, who then bragged I should be proud of my uncle, indicating he was involved and one of the shooters.
Mrs. Webb, the 8th grade teacher of Albert Lee Lewis' son, was the one who told me it was a 'turkey shoot', right after it happened.
The guys had been training in 1962 for an invasion into Cuba, but I was not in the town when they started it up. until March of 1962, I had been living in the Methodist Children's Home in Jackson. In March my two brothers and I went to live with our grandmother, and she soon sent us off to New York with my step father.
Response to INFORMANT
as I understand this, you were not living in Terry, Mississippi at the time of the Ole Miss riots. If you had been living there, you would have seen things you could never forget, I'm convinced. But you were living in Syracuse, New York at that time.
Next, you returned to Terry, Mississippi in July of 1963, and by that time the national uproar over the riots at Ole Miss in September, 1962, was completely overshadowed by the latest development in US/USSR relations as it related to Cuba, namely, that JFK wanted to show the world that the USA would keep its hands off of Cuba.
To that end, JFK ordered that all Cuban Exile paramilitary training Camps (like the one led by Guy Banister at Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana) must be shut down. JFK ordered the FBI to confiscate all paramilitary weapons, which the Cuban Exiles and Minutemen -- and evidently the KKK -- had been planning to use for a new invasion of Cuba.
I can easily see how this would trump the news of the Ole Miss riots. The Ole Miss riots were now nine months in the past, while the Cuban Crisis was still big news. At this time also -- according to ex-General Walker himself -- the US right-wing was officially joining hands with Cuban Exiles to invade Cuba, with or without White House approval.
Therefore, when JFK ordered the shut down of all paramilitary training Camps, the radical right-wing (including the KKK) obviously thought that this was one more betrayal -- and one more proof that Washington DC was filled with Communists.
Why else would a US President shut down Anticommunist paramilitary groups? The easiest answer was that JFK must be a Communist -- and so Joe McCarthy was right -- and the John Birch Society was right -- and ex-General Walker was right: JFK was a Communist; a traitor; and all traitors deserve the firing squad.
So, INFORMANT, the big news in July, 1963, when you returned to Terry, Mississippi, was no longer the Ole Miss riots of 1962, but now it was the fact that the Lake Pontchartrain paramilitary training camp (coordinated by Guy Banister) was being shut down, and their large cache of war weapons was confiscated by the FBI.
The KKK would have framed this in terms of Constitutional rights -- JFK, they would have said, was breaking the Second Amendment to the Constitution -- proof of treason.
That is now much clearer to me. Yet imagine, if you will, what Terry, Mississippi was like nine months before this time, when the big news of the day was that JFK was sending thousands of federal troops to Mississippi to force the State of Mississippi to change its way of life, using threat of bayonets.
It seems to me that members of the KKK would never stay at home during the massive riots that occurred at Oxford, Mississippi in the autumn of 1962. I feel certain that your relatives in the KKK would have been there at Oxford.
In any case -- you weren't there during that period, and that answers my initial question. My next question to you, though, is this: you say that you had seen Albert Lee Lewis shoot on occasion. Would you kindly relate to us the occasion or occasions in which you had the opportunity to see Albert Lee Lewis shoot a rifle?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Yes of course Paul. I lived with my great grandparents while my mother was in Whitfield, after her solidarity action with Rosa Parks (sitting in the back of the bus, when she was sent for shock treatment). During that time, a snake was getting into the henhouse and Papa asked Mr Lewis to come shoot the snake.
The snake had been found in the outhouse, but had taken off across the field by the time Mr Lewis arrived. He shot the snake in the head, just by watching the grass move. The snake was not visible. Mr Lewis just watched the grass and shot, and the snake was dead with one or two bullets.
That was about the only use Papa had for the man.
Of course Mr Lewis went and got the snake and was showing it off that he had hit it in the head. That is pretty damn good shooting by anyone's standards.
Also
"Frustrated by the administration’s foot-dragging on JFK, AARC sent a letter urging the government to get off its duff. One signer was G. Robert Blakey, who served as a Chief Counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (which in its 1978 final report said that, um…it looks like an organized conspiracy was responsible for JFK’s death.)"
I hope he is not waiting until I can be droned or something. ii YiPeS !!!
Response to INFORMANT
Senator Richard Schweiker, who ran the HSCA along with attorney Richard Sprague before attorney Robert Blakey muscled his way in, would have done a better job with the HSCA investigation, in my opinion.
I personally doubt that Blakey was fooled -- I believe he was hired by the CIA to continue to hide the Oswald files at all costs.
See -- the obvious reason for hiding the Oswald files has little to do with Oswald -- he's dead and gone and no threat to anybody. This is one of the proofs that Oswald did not act alone or not even involved also pictures of Oswald have surfaced he was outside watching when the shooting occurred this is damaging
-- he was not the lone nut killer -- otherwise why make his CIA and FBI files into a National Security issue?
It occurred to me that the continuing threat of the USSR had made the Oswald files into a National Security issue. But since 1990 even the USSR has been dead and gone, and no threat to anybody.
So, then, what is the National Security issue?
Just like Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade and Chief Curry would pretend to be "fooled" by the Lee Harvey Oswald debacle, I believe Robert Blakey signed this new demand to release Oswald's files to make a pretense of being fooled. On the contrary. He was in on the deception during the HSCA period.
Will the JFK records be unsealed this year? I've written to the White House twice about this, asking for a reply. (During the elections last year I always received a reply to my White House queries.) No reply.
The only reason I can see for concealing the Lee Harvey Oswald files today, in 2013, must still be National Security. But who or what is being protected after half a century?
Surely, given the official USA Government's HSCA conclusion of a conspiracy in the assassination of JFK, we must admit that some people who were in their thirties in 1963 are still alive today. When Chief Justice Earl Warren announced that the Oswald files would be released to the American public in 75 years, he was probably protecting young men and women he knew to be involved.
Who were they? We can't be certain until we see the files -- but we can guess about specifics. The US Government did not believe that these people continued to be threats -- otherwise they would have prosecuted them. Instead, they are to be protected. Thus, they're not foreigners -- they're Americans.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Albert Lee Lewis' son was about 12 or so at the time JFK was killed. 75 years would be enough time for him to pass on first. It would be enough time for me to pass on, you'd figure. I'd have to live to the ripe old age of 86 to see the files unsealed.
By then, why would it even matter to the American public anyway? It almost seems like there is a method to the madness. I guess they want to make sure ANY eye witnesses are beyond the grave first, so the lie can become history, once and for all. Maybe 75 years gives me plenty of time to write about it, and then they can come along and open the files and once again, make me out to be a nutcase. What else would be new?
There ARE other people, besides me, who KNOW something. We all have to be discredited. 75 years is enough time to build a case against anything we might have said. I figure.
Even if the files are opened today, my money says the truth WILL remain hidden, forever. And I will be a nutcase forever. C'est la vie!
Response to INFORMANT
Just to correct the record here, Sen. Richard Schweiker (R. Pa.) was not part of the HSCA, but rather was on the earlier Church Committee - the Senate Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (SSCIA), which included the Schweiker-(Gary) Hart subcommittee on the JFK Assassination.
Richard Schweiker was born in Norristown on 1st June, 1926
http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKschweiker.htm
Schweiker hired Gaeton Fonzi as a Senate investigator and based on Schweiker's recommendation to Richard Sprague, the first chief counsel to HSCA, Fonzi was hired by the HSCA as well.
I know John Simkin's Sparticus Biography : Biography says Schweiker was HSCA, but I think John will correct that. In Sept. 1976 Schweiker was a Senator and the HSCA was composed of Congressmen from the House of Representatives, so he should correct that one statement.
Schweiker was not a member of the HSCA, but he did recognize the sketch of "Maurice Bishop" as being David Atlee Phillips, who had testified before Schweiker's Senate Committee.
In addition, I also had similar feelings about G. Robert Blakey, who didn't "muscle in" but was appointed to take over as chief counsel to HSCA after Sprague was forced out. My feelings were personified especially after Blakey declared the HSCA records "Congressional Records" and had them sealed, saying, "I'll rest on the judgement of historians in 50 years," which forced us to lobby Congress for a decade to pass the JFK Act and release the records.
But Blakey has come out in favor of Jeff Morley's suit against the CIA and has said he now believes the CIA duped him and the HSCA by inserting Joannides and holding back on records. Blakey is also a member of an email exchange group and has permitted me to post some of his comments to the group, which give you some insights into his thinking, that I have done here:
JFKcountercoup: Grey and Relevant ? By G.W. Blakey
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.ca/2013/03/grey-and-unrelevant-by-gw-blakey.html
I don't think the "CIA paid" Blakey to do anything, but he did steer the investigation away from the intelligence agencies that were manipulating the committee, and towards the Mob as the primary conspirators, but the CIA didn't pay him to do it. He still has to make up for his sins.
Ultimately, Robert Blakey was successful in keeping the truth -- the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald -- locked up and secret from the American public for another 30+ years after the Warren Commission's initial lock-up.
One can justify his actions on the grounds that the USSR was still brandishing nuclear warheads at the USA -- so that if concealing the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald was a matter of Cold War security, then the year 1979 was still too early to reverse the demand of the Warren Commission to seal Oswald's file away.
However, the USSR fell in 1990. It's been 23 years now, since the Cold War's been over. Can we please see the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald now? That's my plea.
more information from this site
http://vincepalamara.blogspot.ca/2007/07/secret-service-reads-just-about.html
(1) a blurb for Vince Palamara's upcoming book, Survivor's Guilt, due out this summer, which purports to be a more accurate account of the Secret Service bungling of their POTUS protection duty in Dallas on 11/22/63; and (2) an FBI document showing that a member of the KKK told the FBI on 15 November 1963 that the National States Rights Party (NSRP) had firm plans to kill JFK soon.
The second item is of great interest on this thread about the KKK and its possible involvement in the JFK slaying.
We should look at USA history very closely to see a direct relationship between the KKK and the NSRP. The buzz-word of the new KKK after the Supreme Court Brown decision that demanded the racial integration of USA public schools was "States' Rights."
The White Citizens' Councils that sprang up only two months after the Brown decision (17 May 1954) had a double slogan: "States Rights" and "Racial Integrity".
The term, "States' Rights" means that the Supreme Court has no right to tell the many States of the USA to integrate their schools. They based this on the 4th Amendment guaranteeing State Sovereignty -- immediately under the Federal Government. After the Civil War the States of the USA had total freedom to do anything they wanted -- except to keep and trade in human slaves. Otherwise, they were totally free.
Therefore, in the 1890's the South felt their oats again and established Jim Crow laws to prevent Black Americans from voting -- and to ensure they didn't vote, they would also make it nearly impossible tor Black Americans to learn to read. (This was a practice they mastered during the old slavery days.) Jim Crow arose in the 1890's to enforce racial segregation on an unprecedented scale after the Civil War, and the US Congress allowed them to do it.
US Presidents were powerless against Jim Crow. Even President Woodrow Wilson conformed to Jim Crow, and praised the first full-length motion picture, The Klansman (1917), and ensured that Princeton University remained totally segregated. President Calvin Coolidge himself failed to get anti-lynching legislation passed through Congress.
FDR was the first President to challenge the Jim Crow laws -- but his efforts were preliminary -- he formed the Fair Employment Practices Committee to ensure that the US government did not discriminate on the basis of race in its hiring practices. Truman added teeth to that Committee, and also successfully integrated the US Army in 1948. Eisenhower oversaw the passage of Brown v. The Board of Education in 1954, and he used Federal troops to integrate Little Rock high school in Arkansas in 1957.
In response to Brown, the KKK rose again in the form of the white-collar White Citizens' Councils (WCC) to oppose Brown, and when that failed, the KKK struck out again on their own. But the WCC feared that the atrocities for which the KKK was infamous would jeopardize their reversal of Brown. So the WCC spun off many other segregation organizations, including the States Rights Committee (SRC), the State Sovereignty Commission (SSC), and the National States Rights Party (NSRP).
The SSC became enormous in Mississippi, and soon became part of the State government itself. It collected State funds and financed the WCC organizations in Mississippi. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (like the Louisiania and South Carolina SSC organizations) made it illegal to operate an NAACP in their counties. (I salute the Mississippi Department of Archives & History, the MDAH, for its excellent historical web site on the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.)
The KKK saw this enormous advance in legal segregation, so they made a new push forward in the early 1960's. JFK was a traitor, they said, because he supported Civil Rights, and as the WCC had effectively argued, Civil Rights was controlled by Communists.
On the topic of Civil Rights for Black Americans, the entire right-wing of USA politics was united for the first time in decades. This all happened during the JFK administration, and it came to a climax when James Meredith, the first Black American to register to attend the long-segregated Ole Miss Univeristy. JFK upheld the law with thousands of Federal Troops, and ex-General Edwin Walker (who had ironically integrated Little Rock high school) confronted JFK on 30 September 1962 with thousands of protesters from the White Citizens' Councils, the NSRP, the SCC and the KKK.
Bits of this historical drama are now available for viewing on YouTube at this URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ1CTuQgcMo&feature=youtu.be
So, I find the claims of this witness from your second item, to be eminently believable. It is a historical document of the first order.
Ultimately, Robert Blakey was successful in keeping the truth -- the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald -- locked up and secret from the American public for another 30+ years after the Warren Commission's initial lock-up.
One can justify his actions on the grounds that the USSR was still brandishing nuclear warheads at the USA -- so that if concealing the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald was a matter of Cold War security, then the year 1979 was still too early to reverse the demand of the Warren Commission to seal Oswald's file away.
However, the USSR fell in 1990. It's been 23 years now, since the Cold War's been over. Can we please see the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald now? That's my plea.
to an earlier point. The Bill that passed in '65 was not the bill prepared by JFK. It was revised and then after its (opportunistic) passing LBJ set about along with rulings by people like Hugo Black to stall its implementation.
LBJ simply did not give it the teeth that JFK seemed to promise, in fact in various ways he oversaw a dismantling of its powers. (privately I've speculated that the defeat of the ERA became possible as a result). Hugo Black redefined 'individual' and therefore gave groups the right of individuals re association.
Old schools closed and new non integrated ones sprung up. The discontent continued through the hot summers of the 60's. Goonsquads were assassinating blacks well into the late sixties and seventies to today.
The same squad that shot four white students at Ohio had previously shot many more blacks not long before that.
What it tells us today is that racial-integration was not a great success in the USA -- and that attacks on (integrated) public schools (i.e. trying to de-fund them or otherwise shut them down) continues to this very day.
I also agree that extreme rightists assassinated Black American leaders in the sixties and seventies, and that those responsible for more recent shooting (e.g. Ohio) are from the same ilk. (And this is what INFORMANT has been suggesting all along as well.)
This leads you to conclude that the rightists actually did achieve some of their their goals; and I can find no other conclusion to fit the facts.
It seems to me that after 60 years of Brown v. The Board of Education, we must finally agree that it was not a roaring success. It met massive resistance in the 1950's, and that massive resistance still shows itself in nationwide Tea Parties today.
American schools have suffered -- some high schools are surrounded with barbed wire and have armed guards at their gates -- they are little more than prisons. Some American public schools are hell holes from which we would hope to protect our own children.
Despite billions of dollars of investment, we still have American high school students graduating with near illiteracy levels, and American test scores continuing to decline in comparison with the rest of planet Earth.
I suspect that this public school disaster is probably the result of the American people continuing to massively resist Brown v. The Board of Education. This issue runs far deeper than we like to collectively admit. Here is a true collective engram.
The massive resistance to Brown -- even today -- suggests to me the sort of social energy with the actual power to kill JFK.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
Is there anyone on this thread who would know how to track down the green Ford pick-up truck, that my grandmother claimed Banister bought for the town of Terry, and trace it to Banister?
In the movie JFK, there is mention of Bansiter having bought a fleet of Ford Pick-up trucks, wasn't there? Anyway, when I got back to Terry in the summer of 63, the town had a new green Ford pick-up truck that the town marshal used. My grandmother said, "A nice man named Banister arranged for the town to get it for free".
I was just wondering if anyone would know how to trace that truck. It was used by the town for at least a decade afterwards. I'll pose this question in the KKK thread as well.
In the movie JFK, there is mention of Bansiter having bought a fleet of Ford Pick-up trucks, wasn't there? Anyway, when I got back to Terry in the summer of 63, the town had a new green Ford pick-up truck that the town marshal used. My grandmother said, "A nice man named Banister arranged for the town to get it for free".
I was just wondering if anyone would know how to trace that truck. It was used by the town for at least a decade afterwards. I'll pose this question in the KKK thread as well.
Response to INFORMANT
This is a great question, To help researchers, please tell me the names of the top three newspapers in Terry, Mississippi, and specifically in your home town. This would be the first place I'd start.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
The Clarion Ledger and Jackson Daily News are the two most widely read newspapers in Terry, but the town has a local paper, the Terry News. It is mostly just gossipy news, though. I guess if the truck was used by the town marshal, then it would qualify as public records, right? Just submit a freedom of information request, or whatever its called in the States
Response to INFORMANT
Insofar as Guy Banister was in Terry, Mississippi, soliciting help in his cause from the KKK, that is important historical information. may be controversial, but if this turns out to be correct history, then she should be appropriately rewarded.
We have written evidence from the New Orleans Times Picayune in February 1961 that Guy Banister ran for Councilman in New Orleans on the platform of "the segregation of races." This is a matter of record. This historical fact, all by itself, justifies research into Informants claim that Guy Banister went to towns where the KKK was strong and openly operating, to recruit members for his cause.
important item in JFK assassination research -- namely -- that Guy Banister (who was amply identified by Jim Garrison in 1968 with complicity with Lee Harvey Oswald) also worked with the KKK to advance his racist politics.
The KKK angle in JFK research is ugly -- no doubt. Violence and atrocity are the legacy of this underground, secret organization. It is dangerous, even today, for non-members to attempt to interview members of the KKK.
It is difficult -- but this should not dissuade the historian from research.
Validate or invalidate this single point, Did Guy Banister recruit the KKK in Terry Mississippi in 1963 ?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
do you mean that Banister was in Terry to recruit assassins or racists? What I heard across the road from the Klan rally that Banister attended in Terry in the summer of 1963, was that Banister was talking about what was going to happen to Kennedy. He said that Mr. Lewis was a "Champion of Freedom" and JFK was called a "communist puppet".
They were planning the assassination at those rallies. Their children filled me in at school, with all their bragging. The children of the Klan were so pumped that summer and rather cocky to anyone who didn't agree with them. The children made it clear, in October that if JFK went to Dallas, he would not walk out. Then the Texas children sang, "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You till Gabriel blow his horn".
I knew by the end of October Kennedy would be killed in Dallas, that's why I wrote him to warn him. Too bad he didn't listen.
Response to INFORMANT
it seems fairly clear to me that Guy Banister traveled to Terry, Mississippi in 1963 to recruit paramilitary fighters to support his personal politics of race segregation. What better place than a county that was dominated by the KKK (and was only 3.5 hours away from his Lake Pontchartrain paramilitary training camp) than Terry, Mississippi?
It makes further sense that Guy Banister would attend a KKK rally while in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963. It makes further sense that Guy Banister would be a featured speaker there -- after all, Banister was a political candidate in New Orleans, running on the race segregation platform.
Like nearly all US race segregationists in 1963, Guy Banister believed that Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren should be impeached (or worse) for hisBrown ruling of 1954 that mandated the racial integration of all US public schools. JFK's enforcement of that law with thousands of Federal troops at Oxford, Mississippi in 1962 was the last straw for many.
We have a handbill published by the KKK in the early 1960's that reads, "Wanted for Treason: Earl Warren". It reminds us eerily of a similar poster that circulated in Dallas on 24 October 1963 (during the Adlai Stevenson humilitation) and on 22 November 1963 when JFK was killed, namely, the "Wanted for Treason: JFK" handbill.
The new ideological development inside the race segregation movement after the Brown decision was that race integration was a Communist plot. "Race mixing is Communist!" was the KKK slogan. This slogan united Racists and Anticommunists into one big blob. Here is the level of hatred that carefully organized the JFK assassination, IMHO.
Therefore, it makes further sense that the topic of Guy Banister's speech in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963 would be that JFK was "a communist puppet." That made JFK into a traitor. And the just reward of all traitors is the firing squad.
I find it very easy to believe -- given all this evidence -- that the KKK rallies in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963 were full of talk about killing JFK.
(Harry Dean says that in California, inside the Minutemen organization training camps, although there was no talk about race segregation, nevertheless rumors about killing the Main Communist, JFK, were heard every hour.)
Your eye-witness, INFORMANT of this historical period in Terry, Mississippi, could become a valuable part of resolving the case of the JFK assassination, which has remained open in the public mind for 50 years now.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
INFORMANT RESPONSE
The Clarion Ledger and Jackson Daily News are the two most widely read newspapers in Terry, but the town has a local paper, the Terry News. It is mostly just gossipy news, though. I guess if the truck was used by the town marshal, then it would qualify as public records, right? Just submit a freedom of information request, or whatever its called in the States
Response to INFORMANT
Insofar as Guy Banister was in Terry, Mississippi, soliciting help in his cause from the KKK, that is important historical information. may be controversial, but if this turns out to be correct history, then she should be appropriately rewarded.
We have written evidence from the New Orleans Times Picayune in February 1961 that Guy Banister ran for Councilman in New Orleans on the platform of "the segregation of races." This is a matter of record. This historical fact, all by itself, justifies research into Informants claim that Guy Banister went to towns where the KKK was strong and openly operating, to recruit members for his cause.
important item in JFK assassination research -- namely -- that Guy Banister (who was amply identified by Jim Garrison in 1968 with complicity with Lee Harvey Oswald) also worked with the KKK to advance his racist politics.
The KKK angle in JFK research is ugly -- no doubt. Violence and atrocity are the legacy of this underground, secret organization. It is dangerous, even today, for non-members to attempt to interview members of the KKK.
It is difficult -- but this should not dissuade the historian from research.
Validate or invalidate this single point, Did Guy Banister recruit the KKK in Terry Mississippi in 1963 ?
INFORMANT RESPONSE
do you mean that Banister was in Terry to recruit assassins or racists? What I heard across the road from the Klan rally that Banister attended in Terry in the summer of 1963, was that Banister was talking about what was going to happen to Kennedy. He said that Mr. Lewis was a "Champion of Freedom" and JFK was called a "communist puppet".
They were planning the assassination at those rallies. Their children filled me in at school, with all their bragging. The children of the Klan were so pumped that summer and rather cocky to anyone who didn't agree with them. The children made it clear, in October that if JFK went to Dallas, he would not walk out. Then the Texas children sang, "The Eyes of Texas are Upon You till Gabriel blow his horn".
I knew by the end of October Kennedy would be killed in Dallas, that's why I wrote him to warn him. Too bad he didn't listen.
Response to INFORMANT
it seems fairly clear to me that Guy Banister traveled to Terry, Mississippi in 1963 to recruit paramilitary fighters to support his personal politics of race segregation. What better place than a county that was dominated by the KKK (and was only 3.5 hours away from his Lake Pontchartrain paramilitary training camp) than Terry, Mississippi?
It makes further sense that Guy Banister would attend a KKK rally while in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963. It makes further sense that Guy Banister would be a featured speaker there -- after all, Banister was a political candidate in New Orleans, running on the race segregation platform.
Like nearly all US race segregationists in 1963, Guy Banister believed that Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren should be impeached (or worse) for hisBrown ruling of 1954 that mandated the racial integration of all US public schools. JFK's enforcement of that law with thousands of Federal troops at Oxford, Mississippi in 1962 was the last straw for many.
We have a handbill published by the KKK in the early 1960's that reads, "Wanted for Treason: Earl Warren". It reminds us eerily of a similar poster that circulated in Dallas on 24 October 1963 (during the Adlai Stevenson humilitation) and on 22 November 1963 when JFK was killed, namely, the "Wanted for Treason: JFK" handbill.
The new ideological development inside the race segregation movement after the Brown decision was that race integration was a Communist plot. "Race mixing is Communist!" was the KKK slogan. This slogan united Racists and Anticommunists into one big blob. Here is the level of hatred that carefully organized the JFK assassination, IMHO.
Therefore, it makes further sense that the topic of Guy Banister's speech in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963 would be that JFK was "a communist puppet." That made JFK into a traitor. And the just reward of all traitors is the firing squad.
I find it very easy to believe -- given all this evidence -- that the KKK rallies in Terry, Mississippi in the summer of 1963 were full of talk about killing JFK.
(Harry Dean says that in California, inside the Minutemen organization training camps, although there was no talk about race segregation, nevertheless rumors about killing the Main Communist, JFK, were heard every hour.)
Your eye-witness, INFORMANT of this historical period in Terry, Mississippi, could become a valuable part of resolving the case of the JFK assassination, which has remained open in the public mind for 50 years now.
INFORMANT RESPONSE
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