The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline of Ku Klux ...



Add Jack Roberts and Florida TV interview from post dis and BH file section 3

The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE, and the Ku Klux Klan in Florida 1964-1971

Between September 1964 and April 1971, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a domestic covert action program named COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE. This counterintelligence program endeavored to discredit, disrupt, and vitiate the Ku Klux Klan and other white-supremacist vigilante groups.[1] While historians are quite familiar with the FBI's efforts to nurture anticommunism and to disrupt civil rights and leftist movements, the FBI's role in neutralizing KKK groups in the American South during the late 1960s has not been systematically assessed.[2] Kenneth O’Reilly, William Keller and Richard Gid Powers have described the process by which Johnson administration officials pressured the FBI to conduct domestic security investigations against the Klans, and analyzed why the Bureau exceeded this mandate in September 1964, by launching the covert action program. David Cunningham has described the organizational structures of the FBI, and analyzed its influence on COINTELPRO targeting decisions. He has distilled a typology of COINTELPRO tactics and advanced arguments as to why they proved effective. Yet no one has systematically assessed the actual effects of COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE on the Klans. [3] This article describes and assesses the effects of COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE operations against Florida Klan groups. It provides an important comparison to FBI operations in the Deep South, where local law enforcement authorities were often less willing to suppress Klan activity. Along with my studies of COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE in other states, this article provides the first detailed account of COINTELPRO’s effect upon white-supremacist groups in the 1960s.[4]

Klan Activity in Florida Before 1964

According to historian David Chalmers, Florida hosted 30,000 Klansmen, including 1500 in Miami during the 1920s.[5] They joined a myriad of individual Klaverns, and Klan activity was characterized by “anarchic localism.”[6] Vigilantes intimidated black voters in Orlando, Jacksonville, and Duval and Orange counties in Fall 1920, and whipped a black man in Miami. Klansmen whipped more than 100 people in 192, and in Key West lynched Manolo Cabeza that Christmas.[7] In January 1923, Klansmen participated in the destruction of the independent black community of Rosewood, killing perhaps one hundred residents.[8] Perhaps because no Klan leader ever emerged to lead a united drive for political power, the Florida Klans met with public acquiescence. Thus although Klan activity declined in most of the rest of country after 1928 in the wake of political and moral scandals, Klan vigilantism lasted into the 1930s in Florida.[9] In the citrus-growing areas of Central Florida for example, Klansmen targeted vice and organized labor.[10]

In Tampa, businessmen sponsored extralegal vigilante violence, repressing a cigar worker strike in 1931.[11] By mid-decade, however, "notable members of Tampa's economic elite, including . . . leaders of the Chamber of Commerce, joined most cigar manufacturers in accepting union recognition and collective bargaining under the New Deal," according to Robert Ingalls.[12] A lynching of a black prisoner in 1934 reinforced a growing view among Tampa’s business and commercial elites that vigilante violence had to be contained, lest the city's violent image discourage capital investment. When an opposing political candidate was flogged to death by a group of policemen and Klansmen who "identified with traditional southern values that equated socialism with communism and race mixing" in 1935, local officials decried the violence and, for the first time, State authorities prosecuted a group of vigilantes. [13] By 1940, Tampa had been dropped from the American Civil Liberties Union’s annual survey of communities that suppressed civil liberties.[14]

In the 1960s, Tampa whites "responded nonviolently" to the civil rights movement. They emphasized “moderation and cooperation," and made “a conscious attempt to avoid violence by blacks or whites that would tarnish the city's progressive image."[15] Civic and business elites avoided coercion and repression, relying instead on persuasion and volunteerism to integrate public facilities.[16] In keeping with this approach, Tampa police cracked down on vigilante activities. In April 1960 for example, police broke the Tampa Amalgamated Gun Club, after discovering that the Klan group had stockpiled weapons. Several Klan members were interrogated in connection with a shooting into a home. In September, police arrested several Florida Ku Klux Klan members after they chased and threatened black teenagers in Plant City, a community located 25 miles to the east. Police also maintained public order, consistently thwarting Klansmen who planned to disrupt sit-ins, thereby “just about caused Plant City klavern to break up.” Across the Bay in Bradenton, police arrested several members of the United Klans, who had demonstrated the Klan’s presence by walking city streets in Klan robes, in 1961.[17]

Elsewhere in the state however changes in race relations such as an increase in black voting registration that made them a factor in elections fomented an “incipient backlash” after WW II.[18] In Polk County, night riders fired into homes in July 1949. In 1950, crosses burned in at the Lakeland home of a civil rights activist, and vigilantes bombed a restaurant in Bartow.[19] From his home base in Tallahassee Bill Hendrix organized Klan units (Klaverns) in Palm Beach and Orlando. In 1951, Klansmen murdered two black men, in Winter garden and Tampa, and nearly killed an Orlando man after beating him. In Miami, the desegregation of the city’s Carver Village housing project that summer precipitated Klan organizing, white motorcades accompanied by rock throwing, and the shooting of a black man. On September 22, two 100-pound boxes of dynamite blasted an untenanted building at the complex. In October, three bombs exploded, at Jewish schools and synagogues in the city. On November 30 a second blast rocked an empty building at the complex, and bombs exploded at Carver Village, a Jewish Synagogue, and in a residential area. Another bomb found on the steps of a Catholic church during this period. Floggings were reported in Orange County. Then, on Christmas Eve, NAACP leader Harry Moore and his wife were killed by a bomb that someone had planted under their home in Mims, just north of Titusville.[20]

In addition to pushing black voting rights and equal pay for black teachers since the 1930s, Moore had pursued a recent case of police brutality involving rape suspects in Groveland Florida, a case that the FBI had dropped. Bureau relations with south law enforcement had become strained by Civil Rights investigations despite the Justice Department’s dismal record of obtaining convictions by Southern juries.[21] The Moore killing precipitated an intense uproar of international press coverage, and sparring with Soviet representatives at the United Nations, even as President Truman and the Governor of Florida were swamped with letters. Unions and church groups also protested, with some threatening to boycott Florida citrus fruit and the State tourism industry. Attorney General Howard McGrath and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover were inundated with demands to investigate the crime, and McGrath granted "unprecedented authority" to FBI, for first time in its history, to find the perpetrators.[22]

The FBI "conducted an exhausted, full-throttled, no holds-barred investigation."[23] Twenty FBI agents uncovered a three-year reign of terror, including an incident in 1947 in which a black woman’s house in a white neighborhood had been razed in an arson-attack. Agents interviewed dozens of Klansmen in Orlando, Winter Garden and Apopka, as well as many known and former Klansmen in Orange County. They reviewed documents stolen from the Apopka Klavern by local businessman Lee MacWhithey. They placed Orlando Klan renegades Tillman Belvin and Earle Brooklyn, (alleged to have displayed map of Moore’s residence at an Apopka Klavern meeting), under constant surveillance, and tapped their phones until September 1952. Agents found evidence of Klan infiltration of law enforcement agencies, and came to focus on a Brevard County political boss who controlled the City machine and the local Democratic Party. The largest employer of blacks in the County, the sawmill owner had controlled black vote in previous elections.[24] According to FBI informants, Sheriff McCall had gone to an Atsula Klan meeting after the bombing and advised Klansmen not to talk to the Bureau.

Klan violence continued into 1952, yet Klan leader Edgar W. Waybright was elected Chair of the Duval County Democratic Party.[25] In October, a Federal Grand Jury heard testimony on all the Miami bombings and subpoenaed forty-seven witnesses, including twelve Klansmen. On 9 December 1952, the Grand Jury indicted three Klansmen for lying-to federal agents or on federal job applications-with regard to the Carver City bombings. Thirty witnesses were subpoenaed for the Moore bombing in February 1953. In late March, the Grand Jury is sued an indictment for the murder, flogging, dynamiting, and arson encompassing the period 1943-1951. It clearly placed blame for the Moore killing on the John B. Gordon Klavern in Hialeah. A Federal Judge ruled that none of the crimes involved federal jurisdiction however, and the Justice Department chose not to appeal.[26] One Hialeah Klansman was convicted of concealing membership in a secret organization in his application to be a postal employee, based upon testimony from a Ft. Lauderdale police officer elected to a Klan office after he infiltrating the group for the FBI.[27]

After the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, segregation became the dominant issue in Florida politics. To counter a segregationist insurgency, including Klan threats, during the 1956 gubernatorial primary, formerly moderate Governor LeRoy Collins moved far to the right. In the two succeeding gubernatorial contests, the strongest segregationist candidate won by attacking his opponents for being too moderate on race.[28] Florida gained the second largest number of Klansmen in any state as of 1957, organized under the Florida Ku Klux Klan.[29]

Dade County undertook token school desegregation in 1959.[30] Several hotels, mostly Jewish owned, had desegregated in 1956.[31] CORE conducted voting rights drives between 1958 and 1964, speeding the end of Jim Crow in Miami as politicians began to solicit black votes.[32] Governor Collins also reversed course and began voicing support for desegregation.[33] CORE conducted sit-ins in 1959 and after two years, suceeded in integrating downtown lunch counters, restaurants, hotels and theaters, by negotiating behind the scenes with city and county buisiness leaders, as well as Mayor Robert High and Governor Collins. The NAACP and the Urban League joined to integrate Broward County beaches, parks, pools and golf courses in 1960-1961.

Thus, Florida authorities flirted with massive resistance, but resistance was relatively weak in South Florida due to heavy in-migration of northerners, who responded favorably to black initiatives.[34] The Citizens Councils thrived in black belt, and Northern Florida saw the rise of several resistance groups, including Klan groups, strongest in the rural counties adjacent to the Apalachicola and Suwannee Rivers, and concentrated in the area from Marion county northward. Central Florida also experienced Klan revival. In St. Petersburg, Rev. C. Lewis Fowler, who headed the Kingdom Bible Seminary, was an active Klan organizer.[35] A racially mixed family of citrus pickers forced out of Eustis Florida by men claiming to be Mt. Dora Klansmen.[36] Four hooded white men fired shotgun blasts into a labor rally, wounding twelve blacks in Umatilla. Shotgun blasts were fired through windows of a Masonic Hall during labor meeting to organize citrus workers in Lake County, the scene of at least three shootings.[37]

Journalist Stetson Kennedy linked the Georgia Klan-Columbians story to Klan violence in Florida, keeping Brown Scare era themes alive in anticipation of anti-Klan exposés in the 1960s.[38] Nevertheless, by 1957, Florida had the second largest Klan membership in the nation.[39] Five bombings occurred in Jacksonville and one in Miami and Havana in 1958.[40] Two Jewish community centers in Jacksonville and a synagogue in Miami. Claimed by Confederate Underground.[41] Governor Leroy Collins instructed sheriffs to ban as far as lawfully possible and Klan or NAACP demonstrations.[42] By the end of the 1950s, remaining Klan strength coalesced in the Northeast corner of the State, with about 1000 Klansmen spread among five Klan organizations.[43] The postwar and post-Brown period then, was also characterized by localism, as a myriad of statewide and regional Klan groups rose and fell, incorporating local Klaverns (Klan units) into constantly shifting coalitions.[44]

In response to the advent of direct action phase of the civil rights movement in August 1960, a Jacksonville group called the Florida Ku Klux Klan marched, burned crosses and beat sit-in protesters with ax handles.[45] Despite forewarning, police failed to act against what appeared to be a carefully planned assault against peaceful demonstrators, as well as black citizens who had nothing to do with the sit-ins, arresting and assaulting blacks instead of stopping the mob.[46] Governor Collins, however, sent a staff member to work with the NAACP for a resolution of racial problems in the city.[47]

By late-Spring 1962, two Klan groups had organized in the city, as well as seven in the Tampa area, but no activity in Miami.[48] 3/63 reports that “freemen” formed action group to eliminate jewish businessmen, govt. officials and commies, while Council for Statehood engage in target practice in West Palm beach.[49] ANP near Jacksonville[50]

In response to civil disturbances in November 1963, agents provided intelligence to local police about militants said to possess hand grenades, and rumors of an assassination plot against NAACP activist Dr. Robert Hayling.[51] Yet law enforcement officers in St. Augustine worked with this group of lower middle class vigilantes in 1963-1964. Sheriff L. O. Davis deputized more than 100 members of the United Florida KKK’s St. Augustine Klavern, led by Holstead, "Hoss" Manucy, to suppress black demonstrations.[52]

Watchdog groups detected an upsurge in Klan activity during 1964, with total membership rising in the three most active Florida counties, Duval, St. Johns, and Nassau.[53] Membership in Eunice Grover Fallaw’s Ancient City Gun Club swelled after he introduced NSRP agitator Connie Lynch to Klan audiences outside St. Augustine and participated in the beating of NAACP activist Robert Hayling. FBI agents became concerned about “criminal types” in this group that “would take action just for kicks.”[54] In Duval, a group of United Florida Klansmen stole 13 cases of dynamite and made crude fragmentary grenades, which they hurled at the Jacksonville NAACP office and a black-owned liquor store in early 1964. On February 6, Robert E. Lee Klavern Kligrapp Robert Gentry shot at a black truck driver from a car driven by Indiana resident William Rosencrans, who had been recruited by Exalted Cyclops Bart Griffin. Ten days later Rosecrans bombed the family home of six year old Donald Godfrey, a black child who had integrated Lackawana elementary school the previous September.

The Klan helped Rosecrans flee to St. Augustine, where Sheriff Davis helped to hide him, but Mauncy fingered Rosencrans to FBI agents investigating a February 27 double bombing of a strike-bound Florida East Coast railway, in an effort to collect money for the information. A polygraph test absolved Rosecrans of those crimes, but pointed to his guilt in other cases; his fingerprints were found on sticks of dynamite recovered on a highway. Rosecrans confessed to the Godfrey bombing, naming six accomplices. His guilty plea resulted in a seven-year prison sentence, but none of the other defendants were convicted. [55]

In November 1964, while on a recruiting trip in Jacksonville, United Klans of America officers had met with these defendants. UKA Imperial Klonsul Matt Murphy served as an attorney for some of them even though UKA Kleagles expected trouble while recruiting in UFKKK territory. FBI informant Gary Thomas Rowe later testified that UKA officers including Robert Scoggin and members of the Imperial Klokan Committee, agreed to eliminate Rosecrans if an opportunity presented itself and that certain Alabama Klansmen were assigned to this task.[56] The National States Rights Party (NSRP) however, protested what it called a “conspiracy against Jacksonville whites,” in its Thunderbolt newspaper and staunchly defended Rosecrans, alleging that the FBI had coerced him into pleading guilty, and had threatened other Klan members. The new UFKKK Grand Titan, the Thunderbolt alleged, was a FBI spy.[57] In November, Barton Griffin and Gene Wilson were introduced at a NSRP meeting in Birmingham as “white Patriots who had been framed” by the FBI.[58]

The bombing, investigation, and arrests brought racial tensions to a head in Jacksonville. Police had already arrested 200 children and 23 adults during two weeks of demonstrations aimed at desegregating restaurants and hotels, when rioting broke out. A black housewife was killed in a drive-by shooting, and at least a dozen whites were injured in racial attacks, including one white man who was tied to tree and cut up. After police arrested 465 black citizens, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP accused police of overreacting. He demanded that the FBI investigate a forcible police entry at the Jacksonville NAACP office, as well as police arrests without warrants, and assaults on workers. Reluctantly, the Mayor appointed a biracial commission.[59]

On April 25, a firebomb razed Griffin’s home to the ground. Recruiters for different Klan groups attempted to capitalize on the publicity surrounding the trial of the remaining defendants. On May 2 Griffin shared a speaker platform with NSRP activist and defense attorney Jesse Stoner, who denounced J. Edgar Hoover as a pawn of Jewish-communists and homosexual. A pre-rally parade organized by a UKA Titan also included marchers from a black-robed group called the Knights of the Golden Eagle. Assisted by UKA Klonsel Matt Murphy, Stoner argued that federal agents were attempting to frame the defendants by paying informants to lie in court. An all white jury acquitted one defendant on both counts of conspiracy and violation of Godfrey’s civil rights, cleared a second on one count, and failed to reach a verdict on the remaining charges.[60] In response, Bureau executives stepped up their efforts to predict and contain outbreaks of racial violence, investigating whether Sheriff L. O. Davis had deputized Klansmen, and making inquiries with informants as to Klan plans.[61]

On June 22, 275 whites marched and listened to J. B. Stoner’s harangues, and police rescued New York Times reporter John Herbers rescued from the mob. Young whites waded knee deep into the surf to strike four blacks attempting to integrate beaches, and thwarted a wade-in the next day. An white Episcopal church allowed blacks to worship, but four blacks and one white were arrested for attempting to integrate a Methodist church.[62] In the second week of July, a gang of whites wielding baseball bats and rubber hoses attacked four black teenagers who were attempting to integrate a re-segregated restaurant.[63] FBI agents photographed the perpetrators and provided copies to Justice Department prosecutors.[64] A U.S. District Court judge briefly jailed Manucy and Jermome Goodwin for refusing to supply Klan membership lists.[65]

In late July, St. Augustine police arrested Jacksonville Klan leader Paul Cochran, along with Stoner, Lynch, Barton Griffin and Bill Coleman, for burning a cross at a Bakery. William Stewart Williamson and Robert Edward Leonard were arrested for carrying concealed weapons and pornographic materials. That same day however, someone firebombed a motel that was undergoing pressure to desegregate.[66] At the end of August, vigilantes fired five shotgun blasts into civil rights workers’ cars in Madison.[67] In November someone took six shots at black businessman Sam Solomon, three of which hit his moving automobile near St. Augustine,.[68]

The Ancient City Gun Club however, began succumbing to “severe internal disorder,” during these months. After “violent arguments,” the group became inactive and disorganized, evidently because an informant in the group had caused disruption.[69] Public exposure finally forced local authorities to curb armed UFKKK motorcades in late 1964-early 1965. The UFKKK? ACGC? collapsed after completion of court action in St. Augustine.[70] According to informants, Manucy was “dropped from a comman position in St. Augustine.”[71] By April, informants reported that the unit had broken up because Manucy had held down violence and provided information about Jacksonville Klansmen, and that Buddy Cooper had formed a new Klan unit.[72]

In Orlando, after members of the black “Nasty Bono” gang committed a series of crimes in which white victims were beaten, raising concerns that white citizens might arm themselves and patrol the streets at night, the FBI pursued and arrested two fugitive gang members in West Virginia.[73] Agents also opened an intensive investigation after receiving reports that Klansmen were plotting to kill several individuals active in the integration of the Indian River County School system.[74]

COINTELPRO Operations Against the UFKKK

FBI agents in Tampa launched COINTELPRO with an interview of James Hall, leader of a small Klan group in Clearwater, so as to “compound existing suspicions that he is an informant.” [75] Hall soon died however, so agents maintained contact with another Klansman to “frustrate” Klan organizing.[76] At this point, most North Florida Klansmen belonged to the three year old, loosely organized "Province # 41" of the United Florida Ku Klux Klan (UFKKK), formed from a January 1961 merger of the Florida KKK and the United KKK. According to press reports, the UFKKK grew from about 500 members in July, to about 1000 members in Fall 1964.[77] FBI investigators in Tampa uncovered eleven UFKKK units: in Apopka, Auburndale, Dade City, Haines City, Lakeland, Lake Wales, Melbourne, Orlando, Plant City, plus units 7-1 and 7-2 in Orlando. Most active were the Klaverns in Plant City-the largest and fastest growing, with 90 members of whom 25-35 regularly attended Klavern meetings, the Orlando units-with 40-50 members between them, the Apoka klavern with about 30 members, and an Orlando group called the Pioneer Club that contained about 25-35.[78] By December 1964, the Plant City Klavern had grown to 100 members.[79] In early 1965 Grand Dragon Jason E. Kersey of Samsula was hampered by illness, so his son, Richard Kersey, carried out official duties along with Kliggrap Alton Cooksley.[80]

The House Un-American Activities committee estimated active membership in the UFKKK to be approximately 300, with the heaviest concentration of activity around Jacksonville, St. Augustine, and Lakeland.[81] The group also controlled Klaverns in Yulee, Jacksonville, Lake City, Lake Butler, Gainesville, Palatka, Ocala, Samsula, Mt Dora, Auburndale, Haines City, Lake Wales, Apopka, Ocoee, Orlando, Plant City, Sebring, Melbourne, and Dade City. Jacksonville was also home to a twenty-five member strong splinter group called the “Militant Knights,” organized by Donald J. Ballentine and Gene Forman in 1965 led by.[82] MKs check[83] Another independent Klavern existed in Oldsmar, calling itself the Knights of the KKK.[84]

They devoted particular attention to curbing the activities of NRSP agitator Connie Lynch, a nationwide organizer who was also a registered member of Jacksonville Klavern #502 (formerly #2).[85] Although the Bureau never developed any information that Lynch had directly engaged in violence, his advocacy of violence raised concern, because he spoke at 57 UFKKK and KKK meetings and rallies between July 1962 and November 1963.[86] He returned in summer 1964, drawing hundreds of spectators to UFKKK rallies.[87]

Described as a “rabble rouser,” in one FBI memorandum, Lynch was a leading national speaker for the NSRP. Successful in “stirring up violence,” Lynch referred to FBI agents as “nigger babysitters and haters of white men.” To curtail his nation-wide travel, FBI agents alerted Florida law enforcement agencies that he was driving without a valid driver’s license.[88] Although the NSRP chapter in Tampa disbanded in early 1965, the group formed a chapter at Winter Beach.[89] The North Florida Klan moreover, also continued to publicly attack the Bureau’s activities.[90]

To expose Klan activity, FBI agents maintained contact with and provided selective intelligence information to a host of anti-Klan editors. In Miami for example, agents had contacts at the Miami Herald, the Miami News, the Ft. Lauderdale News, radio stations WGRS and WIOD, and TV stations WKCT and WLBW.[91] When the East Hillsborough Sportsman's Club contacted the Plant City Courier to obtain publicity about a turkey shoot they were sponsoring, FBI agents sent an anonymous letter to the paper, which revealed that the Club was in fact a cover name for the Plant City UFKKKK Klavern. Potentially favorable publicity was thus blocked, and after the Bureau initiated contact with a source at the Courier, they gained photographs of Klansmen for their investigations.[92]

In March and April 1965, the Bureau provided historical information on Klan activity in central Florida, the locations of contemporary Klavern buildings and their cover names, and the names and addresses of selected Klansmen, to Tampa Tribune editor James A. Clendenin.[93] Smith published a series of articles that exposed the existence of five central Florida klaverns and published photographs of their meeting halls.[94] Smith subtly ridiculed the Klan's professed "moral tone," "patriotic theme" and "philanthropic" activities by detailing how Klansmen engaged in floggings and intimidation of blacks who moved into traditionally white neighborhoods.[95] He found that sympathy for the Klan and vigilante enforcement of sexual morality ran particularly high in the Haines City, Davenport, Dundee and Lake Hamilton area of Polk County.[96] Yet "old timer Klansmen" another journalist wrote, could now only reminisce about the 1930s, when Klansmen had protected women and children and “roughed up” union organizers.[97]

The articles also exposed a gun club that had existed in the early 1960s, and former Tampa Klansman Clarence Eastman described a “growing” paramilitary group called the Rangers as “similar to the Minutemen.”[98] He identified two members of the Keysville klavern in Hillsborough County, and exposed its relationship to the Sporting Club.[99] The Klan today, was “massively infiltrated by the FBI,” according to the Tribune, which published a description of KKK rites and organizational lexicon.[100] Due to “circumstances in the past,” Plant City Klavern members had long believed that their Klavern hall was bugged, and they became even more convinced that this was the case after the Tribune series was published.[101]

In January 1965, after the Bureau received reports that a municipal employee was cruising through the police department parking lot and observing FBI activity, Tampa agents sent an anonymous letter to city officials.[102] The letter revealed that the worker was contacting UFKKK Klansmen, "including those who [had] attacked a Lake Wales policeman in the Summer of 1964," and protested the "use of a [city?] Vehicle" and the fact that a city employee was "promoting Klan activities while on the [city?] payroll."[103] The Mayor subsequently instructed his City Manager to conduct an investigation. City manager Howard Burns informed the press that the city had warned the employee in question, that the city had worked with the FBI on the matter, and that the employee "will be asked to resign" if his activities "conflicted with municipal policy."[104]

The Jacksonville #2 unit of the UFKKK, meanwhile, was having trouble building a new klavern building, because adjacent neighbors, one of them a former Klansman, refused to allow them to build an access road through their property. When Klansmen decided to build the road through County property using County machines and employees, Bureau agents sent an anonymous letter protesting use of tax dollars to support of the Klan, to County authorities, two local television stations, a local radio station, and the Jacksonville Journal. They sent a similar letter to Jacksonville city authorities, protesting the use of city electricity by the klavern, which was holding meetings in a building leased or rented from the city until the new hall could be built.[105]

In so-called “progressive” states such as Florida and North Carolina, FBI agents worked closely with State Police agencies that were willing to crack down on Klan organizing activities.[106] In January 1966 for example, Brevard County Sheriff’s Deputies checked automobiles for defective equipment, causing “countless numbers of persons” to turn away from attending Klan rallies.[107] Klan leaders complained about “intimidation.”[108] FBI agents helped such police agencies to keep tabs on Klan activity.[109] On one occasion, Plant City Klansmen had made plans to beat a man but had been scared off by police patrol.[110] FBI field officers also provided local law enforcement with intelligence on scheduled Klan meetings and public appearances. Thus, to "frustrate Klansmen and disrupt activity" in March 1965, FBI agents sent information to police, and anonymously informed local news media, that Plant City Klansmen planned appear in robes on public highways in the County. Undercover police conducted surveillance on the group of 15-25 Klansmen who met for 45 minutes.[111] Miami field office agents encouraged the Dade County Sheriff's Department to conduct patrols "in an obvious fashion" near Sebring klavern meetings to "discourage attendance and cause concern” among members of a dying and nearly inactive klavern.[112] Tampa agents notified law enforcement officials that a Klansman was carrying a concealed weapon while driving and Bureau executives made inquiries with the Army Reserve to find out if he was buying rifles and perhaps selling them to his Klan associates.[113]

In April 1965, Tampa agents could report that the UFKKK had been reduced to a “hard core.”[114] The group still controlled eight Klaverns in the Jacksonville area, as well as units at Deland, Lake City, Lake Butler, Gainesville, Palatka, Yulee, and perhaps Sebring, but only eight of these Klaverns, containing about 500 members, remained active.[115] In the June 1965 Klan elections, the Bureau was able to position an FBI informant in the state administration.[116] Since the Auburndale and Lakeland Klaverns had been "consolidated" and brought "under control," Tampa agents now moved to discredit activists in the Lake Wales klavern and further disrupt the Plant City klavern.[117]

In August, agents mailed some anonymous letters and postcards, and made an anonymous telephone call.[118] In these communications, the State Beverage Department was alerted to the fact that a third Klansman was serving alcohol to minors in his bar. Complaints were made to District Health officials about "unsanitary conditions" at a barbershop and a gasoline station run and frequented by Lake Wales Klansmen.[119] Law enforcement officials were alerted that [5], a Lake Wales Klansman carried a concealed weapon while driving.[120] These operations brought results. A Province Titan led to believe that [4] a Plant City Klansman working on a government contract was an informant.[121] [6,4] came under suspicion “of being a stoolpigeon and he is not, therefore, trusted as a result of [agents’] efforts.”[122] After [5] was thrown out of the Lake Wales klavern and filed a replevlin suit against three Klansmen who took his Klan robes and book, agents anonymously furnished information about the suit to the Lakeland Ledger.[123] In early summer 1966, the Klan meeting place was shut down. A Lake Wales Klansman was thrown out for drunkenness.[124]

In autumn agents alerted the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Department about an upcoming UFKKK rally. The Sheriff sent numerous vehicles and employees to the rally, where no trouble ensued.[125] They also informed the Sheriff’s Department that two Klansmen regularly exceeded the speed limit and drove recklessly after leaving Klavern meetings.[126] They sent anti-Klan cartoons to the Plant City Courier and the director of a local radio station WPLA Plant City, both known for having taken stands against Klan activity.[127] They sent an anonymous note to an Orlando credit bureau to expose and disrupt a client's Klan related activities in the area.[128] They made an anonymous phone call to [4] to reinforce suspicions that [7] another Orlando Klan officer, was informant for the FBI.[129]

As I have discussed elsewhere, between October 1965 and February 1966, the House Un-American Activities Committee interrogated leaders and members of Klan groups throughout the nation.[130] The selection of witnesses was accomplished by HUAC alone, as Florida agents did "not making recommendations to HUAC concerning witnesses except in instances where security of an informant is involved."[131] In October, HUAC revealed the locations of 22 Klan units in Florida. Later on, the Committee also revealed the names of many klavern officers.[132] In the last two weeks of February the Committee grilled twenty Florida Klansmen, including twelve members of the UFKKK, two officers of the United Knights, and one each from UKA, the Militant Knights and the NSRP. NSRP attorney Jesse B. Stoner represented them. [133] Joseph Huett, the police chief of Mt. Dora, was revealed to be Exalted Cylops (unit leader) of the Mt. Dora Klavern.[134]

Reactions among Florida Klansmen varied. One, “formerly sizeable klavern in Jacksonville was “reduced to meeting in a parked automobile.”[135] The city’s Militant Knights of the KKK picketed a federal building and called upon FBI to investigate HUAC.[136] MKKK members also attempted to burn a black home in June, and conducted a dangerous cross-burning (bullets were wrapped in burlap on a burning cross), at the Seminole Hotel on July 21. Lakeland Klansmen rammed a four-foot high cross through the door of WWII-era Imperial Wizard James Collescott’s daughter, who had provided her fathers’ Klan records to HUAC.[137]

In April 1966, Klan attorney Jesse B. Stoner editorialized that the HUAC

was once a great Committee and it did much good patriotic work when it was dominated by the late Congressman John Rankin. Now, the committee is packed with leftwing pro-communist race-mixers and political quacks . . . [who] openly endeavored to insult and entrap . . . patriotic White witnesses. . . .The committee, acting as pimps for the Federal Bureau of Integration called me before the committee in an effort to entrap me; to assassinate my character and also to besmirch my reputation by reading into their record the lies of paid FBI pimps who falsely accuse me of being responsible for most of the racial violence and killings in the South. . . . [Representative] Pool gave instructions to the Committee staff to find the identities of all witnesses' employers and get them fired if they work for Jews. FBI agents went to Bart Griffin's job in Jacksonville and tried to get him fired. When the NSRP eventually wins political power, we will prosecute, imprison and execute all of those devils who persecuted us and worked with the Communist-Jewish conspiracy to destroy our religion, our race and our nation.[138]

Stoner was angry, because the HUAC hearings had created significant disruption.[139]

Jacksonville Klan leader W. Eugene Wilson, a defendant in a dynamite bombing case, published an article in the NSRP’s Thunderbolt publication proclaiming that “we want every white person to know that we're against Jews, communists, Negroes and the FBI." He called the FBI a political police, and declared that the FBI was controlled by "Jews, Communists . . . and is making every effort to destroy the constitutional rights about white people and help the Cannibals." NSRP attorney Jesse B. Stoner represented him and other United Florida Klansman before HUAC.[140]

The UFKKKK, according to one COINTELPRO memorandum, was "floundering."[141] Only three Klaverns continued to function in Jacksonville, with #502 (formerly #2) being strongest. Small klaverns also existed in Branford, Samsula and Green Cove Springs. The Lakeland -Auburndale Klavern and Haines City Klavern were merging into the Lake Wales Klavern, where an officer had been “unfrocked” and where bad publicity ensued after a fight between Klavern members and [5]. The Orland Klavern folded and the members became inactive. The Tampa Sheriff was regularly checking [6] and his activities. The Apopka Klavern had only a few members left.[142]

Once the HUAC hearings ended, covert operations accelerated, and became an increasingly important component in the Bureau’s anti-Klan effort.[143] In April, Jacksonville gents sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service and UFKKK Klan officers from a "disgusted former member" that month, which alleged that officers of Jacksonville Klavern #502 were embezzling money, causing disruption and concern among the leadership. Some speculated that [6], a former member had sent the letter.[144] In May, they sent out the first set of cartoon postcards, entitled “Klansmen, Trying to Hide Your Identity Behind a Sheet?” to 43 Klansmen. This raised some speculation and [7] became upset. Agents launched an investigation into reports that Jacksonville Klansmen had reproduced these cards and planned to mail them to elected officials, but FBI investigative interviews deterred them. Agents sent out second set of postcards asking “Which Klan Leaders are Spending Your Money Tonight?” in mid-June.[145] In July, they mailed a third set bearing the Legend “Invisible Government-someone is peeking under your Sheet.”[146]

In early June, Tampa agents sent out sent #2 postcards, entitled “Klansmen, Trying to Hide Your Identity Behind a Sheet?” to 52 members of the UFKKK and to all members of the Florida Pioneer Club except one. They also sent 14 #1 postcards to members of the UKA in hopes that the two groups would blame each other for the cards.[147] They sent out 60 #3 cards captioned “Invisible Government” to the two groups in July.[148] Officers of the Pioneer Club became “completely demoralized” and suspected [11], the non-recipient, of being a plant, and he was expelled.[149] A Tampa Klavern officer resigned his office and dropped out because of the mailings. Some Klavern members suspected that the FBI was responsible, but others, reinforced by Plant City Klavern members, came to believe that another Klansman who had deliberately not been sent a cars, had sent the cards.[150] Orlando Klavern members became suspicious that a certain individual had sent the cards, and [11] became upset.[151]

After Lake Wales Klansmen reproduced these cards and sent them to non-Klan members in order to divert suspicion from themselves, Tampa agents sent a letter to the Lake Wales Chief of Police, advising them that [Bureau deletion] was sending the cards and “harassing the good citizens of Lake Wales.”[152] They also sent a letter to the wife of [6], perhaps the same Klansman, stating that she should “Check on your husband’s girlfriend and the money he is making!”[153] Miami agents had sent at least one postcard to a Ft. Lauderdale Klavern #6 Klansman’s work address. [6] was the “last remaining” founding member of that unit, and his “power and influence in the UKA far exceed[ed] the duties inherent in the office” that he held. He had been campaigning for his employer but had avoided public exposure as a Klansman.[154] Agents sent a photograph of him in Klan robes to the media to “neutralize his influence in County politics.[155]

In spring 1966, the FBI also created a "paper organization" called The National Committee For Domestic Tranquility (NCDT), to attack the Klan "from a low key, common sense and patriotic position."[156] NCDT bulletins aimed to capitalize on factionalism, to heighten internal disputes, to discredit Klan officers, to reduce vigilante activity, and to facilitate the development of informants.[157] As I have discussed elsewhere, FBI executives deliberately oriented these NCDT communications toward the worldview of Southern Klansman, as they perceived it. Appealing to the anticommunist aspects of the Klan’s Christian-Patriot rhetoric, NCDT communications accommodated anticommunist aspects of the Klansman's countersubversive demonology, even as they condemned Klan leaders and vigilante violence.[158]

Tampa agents sent 17 NCDT letters to members of the UFKKK and the Pioneer Club in May, and 23 more in June.[159] Miami agents sent the first NCDT letter to less than twenty and sent the second.[160] Six Klan officials in South Florida received the letter.[161] A Tri-City Klavern member at Vero Beach was provoked into discrediting one communication as a Jewish attempt to ‘”discredit loyal Christians.”[162] Some UFKKK Klansmen were “shook up” by the cards, and others discussed how their membership had become known, with most recipients blaming the FBI, the ADL or the government.[163] Speculation in a Jacksonville klavern that a “some ‘Jew organization’” had sent it.[164]

Miami Klan leaders speculated that the ADL, or perhaps an ex-Klan member was responsible. Many of them became concerned as to how identities and addresses had been obtained by unauthorized people.[165] In Lake Wales an announcement was made that the FBI knew the names of everyone who had ever belonged to the Klan and that the cards probably came from them, and that a lot of Klansman had reported that their automobile, home and life insurance policies were being cancelled. All rallies were being cancelled due to reports that Klan hearings were to resume in Washington D.C.[166] A Tampa Klansman [4] dropped out of the Klan after receiving a card. Tampa and Plant City Klavern members became suspicious of [6,4?].[167]

By June, the Dade City Klavern had become inactive and the Apopka klavern was down to six not very active members. The Auburndale and Haines City Klaverns had had only one meeting since February and only one member had shown up to the latter. The few remaining members of the Lake Wales klavern remained fairly active, and the inactive Orlando 7-2 Club had an average of nine attending meetings. Only the Plant City klavern remained significant, with 75 active Klansmen with average meeting attendance of 30 in spring dropping to 17 in June. [168]

At the end of July, the Jacksonville field office "attacked" the UFKKK and the MKKKK by sending a "crude newsletter" to an active Klan organizer and 21 members of Robert E. Lee Klavern #508 in Jacksonville.[169] A UFKKK speaker was lambasted for being "boring" while another Klansman, it was asserted, "could've done better that one who did speak," this in order to "increase existing friction between them." Jacksonville #2 Members were holding meetings at private homes due to fear of exposure and was ridiculed for "hiding behind petticoats." The FBI letter also inferred that "a woman not generally liked by the membership is the power behind the Grand Dragon throne" and ridiculed a Militant Knights member who worked at a hospital for having "emptied nigger bedpans."[170]

On July 10-12, riots followed an incident in which a white gunman killed a black man in a drive-by shooting. A black-owned store was bombed in Jacksonville on 7/20/66.[171]

In July, agents sent a note of complaint to the Hillsborough County Courthouse, the Sheriff’s Office, the Tampa Tribune, and the Exalted Cyclops of the Plant City Klavern about Klavern members who were driving drunk and constructing a new meeting hall without having acquired proper building permits.[172] The resulting exposé, exposed fact that the building permit tacked up at the Keysville construction site had been issued to someone else and dated from 1962.[173] This forced authorities to take the County Plumbing inspector to task and ultimately, to suspend him for thirty days for having given the obsolete building permit to "a friend." The Commission called for a halt to all construction. [174]

When informants advised that Klansmen planned quickly complete the building over the weekend, agents made an anonymous telephone call to the Tampa Tribune, which sent reporters to the scene.[175] Klansmen attempted to figure out who wrote the letters, by circulating a petition in the neighborhood. They also started driving slower.[176] The Klansmen eventually received a proper permit, by changing their Klavern’s cover name, but on January 20 1967, both the old and the new Klavern buildings were burned to the ground.[177] Agents sent a postcard to Klavern members implicating [6] and [5] in the arson.[178] Klavern leaders became "convinced" of at least one member's guilt and began to "watch [5]'s every move." Klavern members got “all stirred up” with the 20-25 regular members “fighting amongst themselves.” Some dropped out to form a new klavern and join up with the United Klans.[179] Since this Klavern did not keep their money in a bank, agents sent a postcard to a Klavern officer, accusing [4] of embezzling collections from a Turkey shoot.[180]

By April 1967, the UFKKK had become a minor and inactive organization, with Apoka down to six members, Tampa to five, Auburndale at three to five, Orlando 7-2 “dying on the vine” and Haines City defunct. The twenty-five member Plant City Klavern was beset by schism, and the Lake Wales Klaverns had left to join the UKA.[181] Area Klansmen were in no position to respond to the riots that rocked Tampa that June.[182] The FBI continued to monitor the group, but no significant growth occurred. As of April 1968 the Apopka Klavern had united with the Orlando Klavern so as to have attendance for meetings. The Plant City Klavern was down to 10-15 members. When a new Klavern arose in Dade City that month, agents interrogated the members.[183] As remaining UFKKK members joined the relatively larger UKA, agents apparently instructed their informants not to thwart the process.[184] This may explain why Klansmen made no appearances at a Tampa High School where interracial fights broke out.[185] Klansmen were not involved in the brutal beating of a black boy in Altamonte Springs, Orlando either, and did not make an appearance after interracial fights at a football game in Titusville that September.[186]

By April 1969 the Orlando Klavern # 7-2 was inactive.[187] Units at Auburne, Dade City, Plant City and Tampa meanwhile, “continue[d] to be contained through Tampa sources.”[188] An October meeting of State officers and Exalted Cyclopses in Samsula attracted only a discouraging thirteen.[189] By 1970, remaining Klaverns contained very few members, with Plant City, formerly the largest unit, down to ten members.[190] By March only the depopulated Orlando Sherwood # 7-2 and Plant City Klaverns remained, with Tampa defunct and Dade City having folded, their few remaining members transferring over to the UKA and Dade City.[191] Held in check by interviews,[192] the group was never reorganized.[193]

COINTELPRO Operations Against the United Klans of America

The Alabama-based United Klans of America (UKA), began recruiting in Florida in late 1964, and was led by UKA headquarters appointee Donald Cochran of Jacksonville. UKA activity was initially limited to the Jacksonville area, with organizing relatively unsuccessful in other parts of the state. The UFKKK New Smyrna Beach unit for example, affiliated with the UKA in 1965. As late as summer 1965, only about 100 Florida Klansmen had affiliated with the group. As of June, when four hundred people turned out for a UKA rally and parade in Wildwood, six klaverns existed in Fort Lauderdale. By September, Cothran organized three Broward County Klaverns as well as a fifteen-member unit in Miami. Small units were added in Ocala and other central Florida areas. HUAC counted twenty-seven UKA Klaverns operating at one time or another during the period 1964-1966. As of 1967, the Florida UKA had approximately 400 members.[194]

The first COINTELPRO operations against the Florida UKA was launched when the Golden Eagle Klavern left the UFKKK for the UKA in late 1964. Agents mailed an anonymous letter to Robert Shelton citing rumors that [7] was embezzling funds.[195]

Agents provided information on the criminal background of [7], who had been investigated by the San Diego and Long Beach police departments.[196] Agents provided info on an initiation ceremony Miami klavern to police and the DCSO so that police might show up and obtain license tag numbers and deter people from joining the Klan. Police set up roadblocks, and six individuals were identified and a Miami Klan member was issued a ticket for driving without a license. Combined with a newspaper report identifying Joe Siddons as the owner of the house where the meeting was to take place, this raised suspicions among Miami Klansmen that here was an informer in their midst.[197]

Suspicion about informers aggravated existing political tensions between Grand Dragon Donald Cochran and a Klansman named Charles Riddle Hoover. Ridlehoover had joined the UKA in April 1965, and became a Grand Titan. Riddlehoover complained that Cochran had mismanaged Klan funds and used dictatorial methods to maintain power, as exemplified by the staging of a mock election to hand pick his Klan Officers. In an October 1965 meeting at Ft. Pierce, the Melbourne, Miami, Ft Lauderdale and Jacksonville units voted to replace Cochran as Grand Dragon with Riddlehoover and elected a slate of new officers. In response, Cochran suspended Riddlehoover, Albert T. Massey, Joe Bedford, and Roy Peacock. Political and financial disputes came to a head after Shelton supported Cochran. Riddlehoover, Miami Exalted Cyclops Jack Grantham, Klan officer Albert T. Massey, Grand Klabee Leon Aspinwell, and one hundred Miami Klansmen, broke from the UKA and formed a new group in Melbourne called United Knights of the KKK Inc. (UKKKK).[198]

The fallout from this controversy caused internal problems for the UKA.[199] Robert Shelton made several trips to Ft. Lauderdale and Central Florida to speak at Klan rallies in summer and fall 1965. On December 12, he cancelled UKA State elections in Florida and appointed North Carolina Klan organizers Boyd Hamby and George Dorsett to administer Klan affairs in the state. The two organizers set up a new UKA Headquarters in Titusville.[200]

COINTELPRO targeted the UKKKK because Riddlehoover had a “propensity for violence.” Riddlehoover was a militant who had discussed "commission of acts of violence such as burnings of automobiles and cross burnings." The FBI also targeted Riddlehoover however, in order to discredit Klan activity in general:

The UKKKK is not a powerful Klan organization, however, the general public does not make the distinctions we do. Therefore, and in the event [Riddlehoover] is convicted, mass media coverage of same would mitigate against all Klan organizations.[201]

FBI officials alerted the Dade County Sheriff’s Office that Riddlehoover had a prior felony conviction in Georgia and that he carried a firearm while traveling. The Sheriff’s Office instituted an intensive investigation of the Dade County Klan and Riddlehoover was caught when his car was pulled over by deputies. He was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.[202]

Police charged the driver, Miami Exalted Cyclops Harold "Jack" Grantham, with careless driving and seized a box of UKKKK material. Riddlehoover protested police tactics, whereas Grantham became extremely upset, contemplated abandoning Klan activities, and shot himself. The Sheriff issued a press release that exposed the names of all 15 of the organization's officers. The arrest and expose was widely publicized, and the Klan records were reprinted in the HUAC Hearings Report.[203] Before October 1965, it had seemed that Riddlehoover might well take the whole Florida UKA membership, except for a few Cochran loyalists, into his United Knights. The publicity surrounding his arrest, however, restricted his organizing activities, and Riddlehoover only ever managed to organize one klavern. Located in the Broward County community of Davie, the Broward Fellowship Club held about fifty active members in Broward and Dade counties.[204] Riddlehoover subsequently devoted his time to the NSRP.[205]

Nevertheless, FBI executives planned to mail newspaper articles regarding the arrest to Riddlehoover, if he managed to gain employment.[206] When a black man who had bought his home from Riddlehoover advised that the neighborhood had been pre-dominantly Jewish at the time of the purchase, agents undertook an investigation into Riddlehoover's ethnicity. The Atlanta, Los Angeles and Phoenix field offices were enlisted to research family birth and death records, INS records and marriage records to ascertain whether Riddlehoover's parents had been married in a synagogue.[207] In August, the UKKKK held a joint rally with the National States Rights Party at Vero Beach near Winter Park Florida. Media sources were alerted that Riddlehoover was slated to be the principal speaker.[208] Agents then furnished copies of press reports about the rally to Dade County authorities, in order to "be of assistance in affirming the court's decision regarding [Riddlehoover's] conviction on a firearms violation."[209] Riddlehoover was almost fired from his job after his picture appeared in newspapers, and fear of further publicity curtailed subsequent UKKKK activity.[210]

In 1967, an appellate court ruled that "It is evident that the pretext of a minor traffic violation was used to stop and search . . . without a search warrant," and reversed Riddlehoover's firearm possession conviction. "When the primary purpose of an arrest appears to have been a pretext for making an unrelated exploratory search of the defendant or his car, the search is not justified," the court ruled.[211] This decision had some effect on COINTELPRO tactics, as three weeks later FBI executives denied a proposal to have UKA Eau Gallie Klavern members arrested for weapons violations through routine traffic stops.[212]

Nevertheless, by September 1966, despite renewed recruiting efforts, the UKKKK was inert. Two rallies featuring evangelical Christian Identity preacher Connie Lynch that month attracted 35 and 37 people respectively. An October 15 rally featuring Lynch, NSRP Director Edward Fields, and Albert T Massey in Jacksonville, drew 125-150 people, but two days later, only 50-75 people attended a rally led by Massey and Wilson.[213]

Miami agents also targeted Riddlehoover's associate Leon Stephen Flynn, a militant who had been involved in demonstrations, cross burnings and vandalism. Flynn had registered to vote despite the fact that he was a convicted felon. Agents alerted the State's Attorney's office though a trusted source so that it might open an investigation.[214] Flynn was arrested in February 1967 and resulting newspaper publicity exposed his record. Although the charge was eventually dropped, the arrest allowed New Jersey authorities to locate Flynn and force him to him pay delinquent child support for his three illegitimate children. This scandal was, of course, also publicized and by March 1967, Flynn was no longer active.[215]

From the records seized from Grantham and Riddlehoover, Miami agents had discovered that one active Klansman was also the senior vice commandant of a veteran’s organization called the National Marine Corps League.[216] A charter member of the Fort Lauderdale UKA klavern #4, Edward Twist III had been "instrumental in organizing local Klaverns in Broward County.” His father, Edward Twist Jr., was a UKA security guard and an "agitator for the Klan."[217] Agents also mailed a copy of a photograph of Twist in Klan robes to the Marine Corps League, along with a letter from a “disgusted Marine.” The “Marine” opinioned that " it is a disgrace that a despicable man like [Bureau deletion], extremely active in Ku Klux Klan” should represent their organization.[218] After Miami and Ft. Lauderdale newspapers published a number of articles exposing the Klan affiliation and criminal records of Twist, his father, and his brothers, a bar owned by Edward Twist received a number of telephone bomb threats. Twist was reprimanded by the NMCL and, calling the Klan subversive, resigned from the UKA. and encouraged other Klansmen to follow his lead. Please with these results, Bureau executive directed their agents in Miami to attempt to remove Twist’s father from his employment.[219] All four klaverns in Dade and Broward counties decided to discontinue meetings for an indefinite period.[220]

In January 1966, outside HUAC hearings, Robert Shelton announced that the UKA would soon launch a recruiting drive in Florida.[221] Within two weeks, North Carolina Klansmen Rev. George Dorsett and Boyd Hamby, a member of the UKA Imperial Board, held four rallies in Cocoa Beach. Sheriff’s deputies had issued fifty-two citations for faulty license tag lights at a rally in West Melbourne a few months before. Declaring that “We don’t want their breed in our county,” and that he would let the Klan “know who the sheriff is,” Brevard County Sheriff Leigh Wilson again set up roadblocks around the Cocoa Beach site, to conduct “drivers license and safety checks.” Only fifty people turned up at the first rally, and attendance figures were between 40 and 80 over the next two nights. Boyd Hamby was cited for faulty brake equipment. Dorsett was refused the following night, when he asked a FBI agent to intervene with the sheriff. Visibly upset, Dorsett fifty-five minutes of his hour-long speech complaining about the “intimidation and harassment.” He warned Wilson to “Get off his back,” insulted the sheriff’s mother, and threatened to beat him. Hamby and Melbourne Klavern Exalted Cyclops George Canada also spoke out against the sheriff.[222]

About 80 people attended a January 30 rally in Scottsmoor.[223] Mid-February rallies in Winter Beach, where Virginia Grand Dragon Marshall Kornegay introduced the theme that the Jews were financing the United States Government, attracted about 100 people.[224] Rallies held in Scottsmoor between February 18 and 20 brought more citations and denunciations. Someone kicked out a parking light on a police car. Dorsett, who continued to insult the sheriff personally, also now felt compelled to warn the 75 people in attendance to check their automobile lights before leaving the rally. He announced that much as he would like to continue campaigning in Florida, he would have to leave on other business.[225]

According to FBI surveillance reports, a March 5 rally in Largo brought in 250 people, but raised little enthusiasm among locals for contributions membership applications.[226] Only 60 attended a rally in Malabar on March 19 and 75-100 on March 20, and Hamby announced that he would be returning home to North Carolina. [227] Bureau reports also indicate increasing frustration among UKA recruiters. In March 1966, as Klan rally attendance in Miami also declined precipitously, Boyd Hamby blamed sheriff Leigh Wilson for intimidating people by checking cars in the vicinity.[228] In May, he also criticized the HUAC.[229] Tension was evident at an informal rally that June in Summerfield, where all 75 Klansmen and women carried guns. Reportedly, “a deputy sheriff asked Klansmen to help to flush Negroes from the surrounding woods.”[230]

In June, as rally attendance increased dramatically, Klan spokesmen began lambasting the FBI.[231] Boyd Hamby mentioned Special Agent John R. Palmer by name and claimed (falsely according to the Special Agent in charge) that a UKA security guard had caught an FBI agent audio-taping a rally.[232] At a June 3, 1966 rally in Titusville, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton professed respect for FBI as “fine department,” reserving his venom for Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. North Carolina-Virginia Klan organizer Marshall Kornegay however, criticized the FBI and FBI agents.[233]

When Broward County klaverns resumed meeting once again in early 1966, Miami FBI agents provided information regarding the date of a joint klavern meeting of the three remaining klaverns in the county, to the Chief of Police in Ft. Lauderdale. The police alerted the media to arrive shortly after the arrests, so as not to make it appear that it had all been coordinated.[234] On April 18, police set up a roadblock of "all possible exits" from the Seaway Engineering Company in Ft. Lauderdale, where the meeting took place. Fourteen automobiles were examined for "safe operation" and two citations were issued.[235] Police alerted the media, which set up cameras near each of the four roadblocks, allowing them to photograph and publicly identified twenty UKA members, including Assistant Grand Dragon Daniel J. Zbin.[236]

Bureau agents alerted the Ft. Lauderdale News to check on the criminal backgrounds of these men, and the newspaper published the fact that Quarterman had spent 18 months in federal prison for tax evasion in 1950.[237] According to FBI executive F. J. Baumgardner, the operation caused "utter chaos and confusion."[238] Some Klansmen “indicated that they would never return to the building for fear of police checks,” and the “bad publicity made it extremely difficult for the Klan to raise money to meet the mortgage payment on the Klan building.”[239] Dissention and mistrust grew among Broward County Klansmen, as those who had failed to attend the meeting were accused of having tipped off the police.[240]

That spring, a FBI informant helped to instigate a UKA investigation of Assistant Grand Dragon Daniel J. Zbin, who had shown a Ft. Lauderdale klavern building to an alien (non-Klansman) without permission. Klavern #6 locked Zbin out of the klavern and refused to allow him to attend meetings. Zbin turned over his membership card and wrote a letter of resignation to the Imperial Wizard and Grand Dragon. On April 1, the State Grand Dragon and 5 UKA state officials tried Zbin on charges that he was a Castro Communist and/or FBI informant. In his defense, Zbin stated that he had made several trips to Cuba during Fidel Castro's early stages of power, and admitted that he had been invited to dinner in the Cuban leader’s honor on occasion, but he denied that he had ever been a communist. The Grand Dragon dismissed the charges against Zbin, prompting the resignations of one of the Klansmen who had made the allegation. His own klavern and one recently elected Grand 5 however, was not satisfied with the verdict and prepared to try him again.[241]

In order to capitalize on developing factionalism, the FBI Exhibits section prepared a "Commies Take Over Klan" cartoon which depicted Castro holding a "Down with America" sign and Zbin holding a "Down with Niggers" sign. The cartoon was captioned, "Commie Castroite to be Appointed Top Aid of Florida United Klan of America by Grand Dragon [Bureau Deletion]."[242] After the “dismal failure” of a Klan rally at Oakland park on June 5, klavern #4 EC and a State officer residing in Hollywood, blamed fellow Klansmen, including [9], for the poor turnout. Members of another ft. Lauderdale klavern announced that they would no longer meet with members of klavern #6. [9], a member of klavern 4 then switched to klavern #6, stating that he could no longer work with his former associates. Agents mailed most of the cartoons to members of Klavern #6, and did not mail any to Zbin or his associates. The cartoon caused consternation among Zbin’s supporters.[243]

At any rate, around June 1966, Broward County Klansmen received the first of the FBI produced Pink Postcards. They speculated that the ADL was behind the nationwide effort.[244] Shelton and at least one other UKA Klansman [7] are reported to have laughed, but another Klansmen’s wife “flipped her lid” when a card arrived in the mail.[245] Perhaps Klansmen were to busy with their own internal difficulties, since there is no evidence that the UKA or the UFKKK responded when hundreds of blacks rioted in Pensacola Beach, Pompano Beach, Jacksonville and Ft. Lauderdale? that month.[246]

Agents sent out 15 #2 postcards captioned “Klansmen, Which Klan Leaders are Spending Your Money Tonight?” in July.[247] Twenty more varied cards were sent to Titusville, Scottsmoor and Clearwater Klansmen in August.[248]

Miami agents also sent leaflets entitled "Al Paredón" from Hollywood Florida in August, to thirty-five Ft. Lauderdale Klansmen, along with a photograph of Zbin arriving in Cuba.[249] The leaflet read,

What does Al Paredón mean? Ask [Daniel Zbin]. He shouted this phrase many times as anti-communist Cubans went before the firing squad. Ask him about [Bureau Deletion] his Nigger roommate in Castro’s espionage school. Ask [Zbin] about his strange trips away from home. [Zbin] hopes someday to shout 'Al Paredón' at his fellow Americans.[250]

Zbin became convinced that a member of Klavern #4 had mailed the leaflet, and a feud developed between Zbin and his opponents, forcing Robert Shelton to request a Klan investigation. Robert Shelton criticized the management of the Florida realm at a UKA rally that August. The Grand Dragon revoked Klavern #4’s charter. Zbin resigned from his position in September, and Zbin’s klavern subsequently withdrew from the UKA.[251]

In October, GOP Congressional write-in candidate William Partin called upon Klavern #6 for political support, and met with Pahokee and Pompano klavern members at the Seaway Engineering building. Miami agents alerted the Ft. Lauderdale News, to expose the meeting and decrease Klan influence in County politics. [252] Although he denied that he knew that the people he’d met with were Klansmen, protesting that “I’m certainly not seeking the KKK support . . . I need it like a hole in the head,” Partin was forced to admit that he had been present at the hall. Due to the negative publicity, Klavern members began to discuss selling the building.[253]

In June, Miami agents had also given information to [deletion] that [5] a UKA officer and resident of [11] illegally carried a firearm and although married, was in contact with a divorcee during his travels around the state.[254] Tampa agents informed a trusted police contact that [6], a Klavern officer who had previously served prison time for cattle theft, was poaching alligators in the swamps east of Melbourne, a felony crime in the state. That same night, [7] resigned from the UKA. More than a year later, Brevard County authorities arrested two Melbourne Klansmen on poaching charges, resulting in arguments over donations to defense funds.[255]

In the South Florida community of Vero Beach, most UKA Klansmen were employed at the Piper Aircraft Co., Inc. Although the firm's management was "completely in disagreement with any Klan activities, and has been most cooperative in furnishing personnel files for review," it "had not placed pressure on employees to drop out of Klan, possibly due to recent unionization efforts at the plant." The management evidently believed that dismissing employees on the basis of Klan affiliation "would possibly create new grounds for union activity." The FBI thus endeavored to expose the fact that most local Klansmen were Piper employees in order to "cause pressure of public sentiment for Piper to take action."[256] The Klavern's meeting place as well as the identities and criminal records of officers and members were provided to a source at the Ft. Pierce Tribune.[257]

The criminal activity to be exposed, included "drunkenness, assault, neglect of minor children, fondling" and child molestation. Such information "will have embarrassing effect," the Miami Special Agent in Charge reasoned, because the "alleged purpose of KKK is to castigate men of the community who are involved in such offenses and do not properly care for their families."[258] Six members resigned after FBI agents interviewed them and another quit after an anonymous letter was directed to his employer. Members came to believe that the FBI was bugging their meeting place, their houses and their phones, and following them constantly. The Klavern Exalted Cyclops was soon suspected of being an informant and weekly meetings ceased.[259] Other members became suspicious of each other and regular meetings were ”drastically curtailed.[260]

By September 1966, the dropout rate in Ft Lauderdale was outpacing recruitment of new members. UKA activity had been "reduced from actions of violence and vandalism to such acts as letter writing and anonymous mailings." COINTELPRO had "practically eliminated the potentially dangerous Klansmen who could be considered as troublemakers" by utilizing Klan informants to "blackball, or otherwise eliminate individual Klansmen who are prone to instigate acts of violence."[261]

After four young Pahokee Klavern members beat a young man in Bell Glade in September, agents contacted the Palm Beach Post-Times.[262] One Klansman lost his job and his wife separated from him because of the publicity, causing several of his cohorts to fear that similar problems would beset them.[263] This recently formed group was of particular concern, because it was the fastest growing klavern in the Miami division, and several people with criminal records had joined.[264] After seven men, two of them Klansmen, were arrested for gambling at the Klavern meeting hall, agents leaked material to the press that the building was a UKA meeting hall. One member was fired from his job, and his wife separated from him due to his Klan membership, raising concerns among others.[265] Several Klan leaders became “extremely upset” about the adverse publicity.[266]

In December, the Miami office focused on this "tough Klan unit,” which must be exposed in order to prevent violence."[267] Eleven of the members of this unit had prior criminal records. In the run-up to Klavern elections, Miami circulated 50 copies following handbill to selected Klan members[268]:

Not Wanted By No One

Yu ain't seen nothing till you seed [Bureau Deletion] Pahokee Klavern 29. [Bureau Deletion] is borned and raized in Glades and hes got plenty going for him. We calls him sweet charity because of his bad conduct fighting, gamblin, thievin. As the town drunk hes the greatest. Wes think that [Bureau Deletion] is sop outstanding that hes got all the making for bigger doings, but not in our klavern.[269]

The target of this leaflet, [6] had "been having trouble with [7,4]" a Klan officer, blamed him for the leaflets, and declared that he was going to "get even with [4] for preparing and sending the leaflets."[270] Two Klansmen quit, and Klavern activity declined.[271] By April 1967, there were not enough members left to hold regular meetings.[272]

By the end of 1966, the State organization was in financial straights, necessitating a fund-raising effort, the securing of loans. Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton was forced to intercede and demand proper accounting. Klan rally attendance in the Miami division was small, so donations were failing to cover rally expenses. Recruitment of new members in the Ft. Lauderdale area was nil.[273] In response to the deteriorating situation in Florida and indeed, nationwide, Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton removed Florida Grand Dragon Boyd Hamby and the entire Florida UKA State officer corps on January 24, 1967. They were replaced by elections of four district Titans.[274]

COINTELPRO operatives had played a direct role in Shelton's removal move. Boyd Hamby was stripped of the office after he was charged with embezzling $300 in Klan funds. Under the so-called HORIP program, the Miami field office had directed "[deleted] to move for the removal of the UKA Florida Grand Dragon at the National Rally meeting" as part of a plan to "encourage the UKA Imperial Wizard to remove the UKA Florida Grand Dragon."[275] A February 1 follow up report asserted, "Florida offices have sufficiently infiltrated the UKA so that the state organization can be completely captured and controlled by this Bureau."[276] The Cocoa Today reported that Klan members had become “disenchanted with Hamby when they discovered he was driving a new Thunderbird auto while the Klan treasury was at a low ebb.[277] J Edgar Hoover was proud of this accomplishment, and alerted Attorney General Clark about Zbin’s and Hamby’s removal.[278]

As high UKA officials continued to “bicker and fight over internal politics,” Robert Shelton declared that the Realm had become the nation’s worst.[279] He complained that the Florida UKA was “bad business” because he had spent $800 to help pay Realm debts. Recruiting continued to falter, and income continued to fall short of expenses.[280] Moreover, [8], an informant in Florida, seems to have played a role in an anti-Shelton smear campaign, by agitating over Shelton’s procrastination in removing an incompetent leader in Florida, leading to a drop in membership there.[281]

Meanwhile, Tampa agents took immediate steps to discredit [Richardson], a violence prone Klansman who had engaged in vandalism, as a candidate before the April elections. Richardson had circulated the charges leading to Hamby's ouster. Agents endeavored to promote other candidates from South Florida, to hasten the loss of UKA membership in the north due to previous neglect by Hamby and his kleagles.[282] Richardson however, won a subsequent election Grand Titan of Province #3 in Titusville. Bob Roache, who lost to Richardson by one vote, became Vice Titan.[283] The Bureau now worked to remove Richardson.[284]

By March, Eau Gallie Klavern membership was reduced to between five and seven, Titusville-Scottsmoor to eleven, Orlando to between nine and ten and Tampa to five.[285] In April, police arrested seven Plant City Klansmen, based on information furnished by Tampa informants concerning UKA efforts to establish themselves in the Plant City area.[286] In May, Melbourne police arrested four members of the Vero Beach Klavern #14, caught in the act of burning a cross in front of the interracial Tiki Club. Since it was readily apparent that a member of the Eau Gallie Klavern had tipped off police, the Klansmen became "furious.” Some Eau Gallie Klavern members indirectly accused of informing were "visibly shaken" over the indignation that was aroused.[287] Charges and countercharges as well as threats, were exchanged between the Eau Gallie, Vero Beach, and Melbourne klaverns.[288] FBI agents conducted interviews of two Eau Gallie Klansmen involved in the incident, facilitating their resignation from the group.[289] Most Eau Gallie members quit soon afterward, prompting the UKA to revoke the Klavern’s charter in June.[290] Another Klansman resigned after he received a threatening phone call from “goons.”[291] Bond and court costs bankrupted the Vero Beach Klavern that month as well, placing it on the verge of dissolution.[292] In May, agents alerted local law enforcement that [deletion] a fugitive Klansman charged with cross-burning in Virginia, would appear at a Fort Lauderdale Klan meeting.[293]

Bureau informants nurtured the growing antagonism toward [5], an Orlando Klansman who had poorly planned for a disappointing UKA rally that month.[294] The NIC letter stating Shelton was removed was assumed to be factual among some Florida Klavern. In Orlando, a Klan officer produced R.I. T. letter and read a letter from Shelton that it is not to be heeded. When [10] said that all reports and monies would be sent to him until the matter was resolved, “all hell broke loose” and bitter arguments ensued.[295] Similar arguments over fines and bail money beset the Orlando Klavern in July.[296] In August fire destroyed an outbuilding near the Klavern, slightly damaging it. Several incidents had occurred between Klansmen and teenagers the previous evening, prompting one UKA Province official to urge violent retribution.[297]

Brevard County deputies endeavoring to secure a photograph of [Davis], a member of the Titusville klavern and an associate of [11] noticed that he was carrying a concealed weapon and arrested him.[298] More importantly, John Davis and William Richardson, who had terrorized members of the Eau Gallie Klavern, were charged for the blackjack beating of two teenagers in St. Cloud Florida in July. The publicity caused consternation among Klansmen, allowing the Bureau to pursue a counterintelligence effort to oust him.[299] The FBI provided five photographs to police so that the victims could identify their attackers.[300] Agents alerted same/Tampa? police that Klansmen who had been involved in a beating and shooting two months earlier were planning more violence, resulting in arrests.[301]

At a July 16 Unit 12, Orlando meeting, the Exalted Cyclops, advised that recruitment was being stalled due to Richardson's reputation. An argument ensued and "[Carter?] told members of this unit that they were to make no donations to [Richardson], pay his fines or bail moneys or attorney's fees."[302] A petition calling for Richardson's ouster circulated in all twenty-seven counties. It accused him of destroying Klan prestige with his arrests, improper accounting for Klan funds, illegally disbanding the Eau Gallie klavern, recklessly carrying and displaying guns, and causing young Klansmen to commit offenses. Norman Carter, former Klaliff of Brevard County and leader of the Eau Gallie klavern, maintained that Richardson's Titusville followers had threatened his life, and that the current leadership "has everybody disgusted."[303] After Richardson’s wife received a letter accusing him of committing adultery, and Richardson declared that Carter was banished for having violated the Klan bylaws and broken the Klan oath.[304] [In response, Carter quit the UKA in March 1968, claiming to the FBI that he would do all possible to encourage young men to get out of the UKA.].[305] One informant now described Richardson as "one of the most hated members of the Klan in the state. . . . They feel that all that has been accomplished since he took office was that several Klan members had been beaten and several others injured." Members of the Orlando unit would not let him enter town.[306]

The Brevard County Klan, which had boasted 100 members at the height of Hamby’s organizing drive one year earlier, was now down to 15 members.[307] The Plant City Klavern picked up members, but dissention was reported among them and Lake Wales Klavern members. By October, the Brevard County unit, which had once been the UKA state Headquarters, had less than twenty members.[308] In November, there were only three UKA Klaverns left in the Tampa division with a total membership of forty-five.[309] UKA membership had dropped thirty-three percent between October and year's end.[310]

UFKKK membership was dropping by twenty-five percent during this period, prompting a UFKKK, Orlando officer to write to the newspapers that August and explain that Richardson was not affiliated with the UFKKK, but with the UKA. A fire had meanwhile destroyed an outbuilding and slightly damaged the main building at the UKA's Orlando property. The “Florida Pioneer Club,” the Klavern’s front name while still affiliated with the UFKKK, officially owned the buildings but the UKA paid the utilities and property taxes.[311] In order to exploit the differences between the UFKKK and UKA and undermine Richardson the FBI divulged "crude and obscene” content of the UKA leader's rally speech to Orlando station WFTV.[312] Editorials appeared that condemned the Klan and Bureau agents conducted more interviews, creating uproar and confusion among now demoralized Orlando Klansmen.[313]

In October, a bank foreclosed on Richardson's house, his former wife filed non-support charges and his driver's license was seized after a speeding ticket pushed his point total beyond the twelve-month limit. Liens on his equipment disabled operation of his contracting business, his automobile was repossessed and he was arrested for disturbing the peace and forced to post a $350 bond after refusing to lower the volume on a loudspeaker at a UKA rally. On the way home from the rally, Richardson, Tony Caudell and Fred Caudell of the Orlando Klavern were arrested for carrying concealed weapons and discharging a shotgun without a permit. Richardson had shot at a group of teenagers in another car who had been chasing his wife and daughters. By December, Richardson was incarcerated and being held without bond on charges of contempt and non-support. All of these incidents received extensive publicity.[314] The three existing Klaverns in Brevard County, at Titusville, Cocoa and Melbourne now possessed a combined membership of 45. Since the Melbourne Klavern had never been a source of vigilante violence and the “fragile” Cocoa Klavern had not yet been chartered, agents now planned to interview Titusville klavern members and encourage them to drop out.[315]

On December 6, agents sent a letter charging the UKA with tactical mistakes, to cause divisiveness.[316] By mid-December, due to the actions of informers the Lake Wales Klavern had disbanded and UKA membership had been reduced by one-third. A Plant City Klavern member resigned, citing FBI questioning.[317] By the end of January 1968, due to the efforts of an informant, the Cocoa Klavern had disbanded and the Titusville Klavern had been reduced to four active members.[318] One member was soon arrested on a bench warrant for failure to appear on an aggravated traffic charge, after agents provided his whereabouts to the Brevard County police.[319]

After the UFKKK’s Plant City Klavern broke up over allegations of sexual misconduct by one member with the wife of another, some of the members moved over to a newly organized UKA Klavern in Tampa. The leader of this new group, called a new group he called the Citizens of the Invisible Empire (COIE), was a militant racist who had organized for the NSRP. Since he had been previously arrested on numerous criminal charges, agents sent letter to someone advising him to “check up on the fondler and past burglar.”[320] A second letter was sent to his employer.[321] Within a month, [7] had stepped down and meetings were no longer being held in his home.[322]

Through the use of mass media, local law enforcement officials and informants in the counterintelligence program against Richardson, "a new awareness to the potential dangers of the Klan's activities [had come] to the public and law enforcement," according to the Tampa Special Agent in Charge:

No longer is it difficult to obtain cooperation from local law enforcement officials in taking preventative action against the Klan and the various mass media now willingly take material regarding Klan activities, due to the fact that the public is now interested in reading and hearing about the Klan.[323]

The Orlando Inter-racial Advisory Board condemned the Klan and urged “that every effort be taken to dissuade, discourage and oppose the KKK in is activities in this area.” It called upon all law enforcement authorities to maintain surveillance over the organization and to “prevent and punish severely violations of existing laws.”[324] In late 1966 for example, when a Klansman was convicted of running a red light, details of his arrest and his photograph and appeared in a local paper.[325]

Thus, an article in the Tampa Tribune exposed ties between Klansmen and the NSRP.[326] FBI agents had launched an ambitious campaign to expose and discredit the NSRP, a vehemently anti-Jewish organization that excoriated the FBI in its publications.[327] Local FBI field office agents provided Miami television station WKCT with NSRP literature, information about the identity, residence, and employment of a local NSRP activist, and the name of a knowledgeable policeman who was available for interview. The Baltimore field office sent along information on recent race riots that ensued after NSRP agitators held rallies in that city. WKCT utilized this material to compile a thirty-minute documentary on what the program narrator termed “professional haters.” Photographs of local activists, their places of employment, and their criminal records were broadcast, and allegations about involvement in bombings were discussed.[328] Broward County NSRP officer Joe Carrol was interviewed, and violent rhetoric from speeches by Connie Lynch and California State NSRP Director Neuman Britain, was quoted and broadcast. Jesse B. Stoner was quoted as having called “Federal Bureau of Integration” agents “dirty mangy dogs,” and J. Edgar Hoover a homosexual and “Jew-dominated communist.” Hitler,” he said, had been “too moderate” with regard to the Jews. University of Miami psychiatry professor Grnaville Fuisher provided his analysis of the group’s motives, arguing that “hate, violence and a destructive attitude” against “scapegoats” constituted the “venting” of an emotional response to “frustration” over social status.[329]

The chairman of the State Committee of the Republican Party requested a special screening of the documentary for his staff and officials of the Anti-Defamation League. School districts requested copies for use in the classroom.[330] Newspaper editorials celebrated the program and censured the NSRP.[331] One writer declared that such “extremists” should be silenced:

[They are] insane radicals . . . you and I had to fight a war because of them. . . Hitler only had 20% of the German people. It can happen here. . . .most have prison records. . . .These men are just as great a danger to our way of life as are the Rap Browns who holler for death and violence against white people. . . .[They are] a definite threat to our national security and our families.[332]

In the months after the program aired, the featured activist stopped attending NSRP meetings, and the three NSRP chapters that had existed in Broward County all folded. [333]

WKCT-TV has also emphasized links between the NSRP and the South Florida Klan, and the station also asked the Bureau for material for it’s interview of Robert Shelton. Delighted with the NSRP exposé, FBI executives were happy to oblige.[334] While this program was being prepared, Miami Herald editorialist Mike Morgan condemned Klansmen as “un-American” for taking the Fifth Amendment before HUAC.[335] In January 1967, agents provided material to the Ft. Pierce Tribune, resulting in an editorial that ridiculed Klan ideology and warned against the danger of bigotry and vigilante justice.[336] In October 1967, WKCT prepared another program entitled "KKK -- A Change of Linen."[337] The FBI provided information on UKA-related violence in North Carolina, Virginia and Mississippi. [338] The exposé was "prepared on a confidential basis primarily from Bureau approved and supplied public source information." The Miami Special Agent in Charge (SAC) described the program as "a refutation of the UKA claim to respectability and law abidingness."[339] “Sensitive to its public image,” according to the narrator, the UKA had erected a “fascade of respect” by “disclaiming violence and emphasizing patriotism.”[340]

When confronted by the fact that UKA members had been arrested and convicted of crimes, Shelton discounted Justice Department statistics. FBI informants, maintaining that prosecutors “buy off pimps,” who “sold their souls for thirty pieces of silver.” He complained about harassment and intimidation by Civil Rights Division attorneys. The narrator described Robert Shelton as a "convicted criminal currently released on bond arising from his Contempt of Congress conviction," exposed the fact that he was paid a $20,000 annual salary by the UKA, and presented HUAC’s accusation that Shelton duped Klan members by opening bank accounts under ficticious names.[341]

In response to Shelton’s protest that “we are not hatemongers and bigots,” the program quoted patently racist and anti-Semitic statements made by Klan officials and photographs of race-baiting materials printed on UKA presses and distributed at Klan rallies. Shelton maintained that the United Klans of America was unrelated to the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which the Attorney General had placed on his list of subversive organizations in 1946, but the narrator pointed out that UKA reprinted and distributed KKKK materials. The program emphasized a UKA-NSRP tie-in, highlighting the fact that while three Klansmen had recently left the UKA to join the “more militant, hate spewing” NSRP, convicted felon Robert Quarterman “now prints NSRP material on a printing press that he shares” with Broward County EC Fred Kiefer.[342]

The "cleverly designed" program also exposed sixteen Florida Klansmen, providing photographs and film, as well as information about their backgrounds, places of employment and "social standing in their communities."[343] It identified sixteen people, including Don Stevens, Klaliff of Klavern #6 Ft Lauderdale and general manager of a firm owned by the city’ s former Mayor, Cy Young. The program exposed two Klansmen’s arrest and conviction records, as well as Walter Karlstead’s attempts to recruit Boy Scouts into the Klan and Don Knight’s work for his employer’s unsuccessful County Commission campaign.[344]

The narrator pointed out that no engineers worked for Seaway Engineering and that all of the organization’s officers and directors were active Broward County UKA klavern members, and described the Klan altar inside the Headquarters. Caught on film while exiting a Klan meeting at the Seaway building, Exaulted Cyclops Fred Kiefer was forced to admit that the UKA used the building. While all the other attended endeavored to avoid the camera while exiting the meeting, Daniel Zbin admitted that he and “another Klansman” had gone to Cuba on business shortly after Castro assumed power. The narrator closed with the comment that “We cant confirm” whether there was “more to the trip than meets the eye.”[345]

The program closed with an admonition that “actions, not image is what counts” and editorialized that “if the linen of Klansmen has changed, it is still dirty.” While “federal authorities will hurt these men, our neighbors, by stripping the veil of secrecy,” the narrator entreated, it is up to local citizens to prevent “hate organizations from functioning as legitimate representatives of the community.” He advised that citizens make Klansmen’s employers aware of their dissaproval of “those who through violence and bigotry would destroy the ideals on which our nation is founded.”[346] The Miami Herald commended WKCT the program and condemned the Klan’s “same tired, shabby, bigoted line.”[347]

After program aired, a local carpenter's union brought charges against one Jesse Taylor to have him expelled "inasmuch as Klan membership is inconsistent with union membership." One Walter Carsted, who was also identified in the documentary, fell under investigation by the Boy Scouts for having "attempted to furnish Klan propaganda without parental consent." The exposé also prompted State Attorney General Earl Faircloth to call a press conference and order an investigation of "Seaway Consultants, Inc." the KKK front organization led by Daniel Zbin in South Florida.[348]

The exposé had also indicated that Seaway had engaged in "sale or transfer of securities within the firm."[349] Under Florida securities law, sale of more than five shares required registration with the Secretary of State as a public corporation with the right to offer stock for sale to the public. The Attorney General instructed the Florida State Securities Commission to seek out irregularities under State incorporation laws.[350] The Bureau alerted media outlets about the hearings. Klavern #6 member John Gettinger threatened to strike a Channel 7 cameraman for taking his photograph outside the Committee hearings, an incident which received extensive coverage on the evening news. Klansmen who had cooperated with WKCT in preparing the program came under severe criticism from their brethren, and infighting resulted.[351]

FBI agents then worked with allies in WKCT and the Ft. Lauderdale News, to notify the Florida Securities Commission about the impending sale of a Klan building to the Broward Elevator Company.[352] They also made an anonymous call to the company alleging "complications in the impending sale" due to the fact that "clear title to the property may not be obtained inasmuch as the corporation is under investigation for irregularities in its corporate contract."[353] The Miami SAC anticipated "that Seaway Engineering, Inc. will be placed under severe financial strain if they do not sell this property which has been operating at a loss and will thus adversely affect the UKA."[354]

Robert Shelton accused the Florida Attorney General of "persecuting" the KKK at a December 1967 rally in Fort Lauderdale.[355] Internal dissension arose over "what dispositions should be made of moneys belonging to Seaway and in what manner persons purchasing stock will be reimbursed," and "considerable animosity" arose among the leaders of Ft. Lauderdale Klavern #6.[356] Disruption was thus engendered despite the fact that County Solicitor James Balsigar ultimately concluded that insufficient evidence existed for a prosecution.[357] A general decline in Klan activities had taken place, including the complete disbandment of Vero Beach and Pahokee and the failure of a Klavern in Moore Haven.[358] On the other hand, some disenchanted members of Klavern #6 began to turn toward the militant Minutemen paramilitary organization.[359]

In November 1967 an individual named Roderick George Hunsinger shot an enlisted soldier in the back and killed him after a fistfight over a barroom pool game. Hunsinger was not a Klan member at the time, but FBI agents ensured that newspapers exposed the fact that a local Klan leader had gone to the police station to ask if he could do anything on Hunsinger's behalf.[360] Informants advised that media publicity "totally demolished the image of the UKA in South Florida"[361] By November 1967 the South Florida UKA retained only three Klaverns with a total membership of forty-five. By December UKA membership had decreased 33 percent.[362]

In January 1968, NSRP organizer named Fowler began working with the remnants of the UFKKKK in Jacksonville to set up a “White Man’s Church.”[363] Fowler trial scheduled for Jan 69 for assaulting a federal officer, so keep counterintelligence in abeyance of send letter to creditors.[364] To disrupt the June 1969 NSRP Convention in Jacksonville, Bureau agents sent a letter from a concerned white citizen of Jacksonville to the manager of the Holiday Inn, warning him that “negro hoodlums” might hear that his inn planned to host the convention.[365] A representative contacted the FBI to express “considerable concern” and stated that he was referring the matter to the Sheriff’s office.[366]

In March, agents sent a long letter to Klansmen in Georgia and Alabama, as well as about 53 Klansmen residing in North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and Virginia. Sent to Klan officers, Klansmen who had expressed dissatisfaction with Shelton’s leadership, Klansmen who could be expected to inform Shelton about the letter, and poor Klansmen, the letter attacked Robert Shelton and other Imperial Officers for misusing UKA income. The letter alleged that they were using UKA money to support four families, providing them with “fine homes, automobiles, a private airplane, and paid vacations to Florida.”[367] The letter pointed out that Shelton’s home klavern at Tuscaloosa Alabama, “is almost inactive,” and asked, “Did you know that many of the klaverns in Alabama have folded up and are inactive?” “Many of [the UKA’s] most valuable leaders,” it declared, “have resigned in disgust.”[368]

By July, the Vero Beach and Pahokee Klaverns had disbanded and an attempt to form a Moore Haven Klavern had failed.[369]

In October 1967, the FBI had also alerted a Probation officer so that he could demand that [8], one of his assignees, immediately cease his efforts to join the Okeechobee # 29 Klavern, and thereby create friction within the Klavern. In November, the Klavern rejected [8]’s application.[370] Agents also 1967 contacted [Bureau deletion] and provided information that this person’s son [7], a prospective Klan, who was planning to make false testimony. The son resigned and Klavern #32 Sebring, which was holding meetings at Okeechobee, had to find new location.[371] The FBI also sent two letters to Governor Kirk informing him that [5] an employee of a school, was an active officer in the Okeechobe Klavern.[372]

SAME CASE?: When agents received information that [7], a Sebring Klavern member and [Bureau Deletion] of Province 2 was ineffective due to poor management and a lack of administrative ability, they sent a letter from a “citizen” to the mayor of Okeechobee that [14] belonged to the KKK. The individual stopped attending klavern meetings, affecting other members, and internal discord prevented meetings from being held on a regular basis.[373] In June, 1968 the FBI sent a letter, ostensibly from a "citizen," to the Mayor of Okeechobee Florida exclaiming that a particular Klansman should not be retained as a city employee. Action was apparently taken as the individual stopped attending Klan meetings.[374]

William Richardson meanwhile, continued to fight with Robert Shelton. When several members of former UKA Unit # 12, who had disaffiliated from the UKA some months previously tried to set up a new group under a militant leader, Tampa conducted interviews to deter them.[375] Richardson took the Tampa, Melbourne, Plant City, and Titusville UKA klaverns and formed the Knights of the Invisible Empire (KOIE) on May 26. 1968.[376] This left the UKA with only one Klavern, in Lake Wales.[377]

Richardson was charged with arson in the firebombing of a sundries store in June 1968. A Fire Marshall and City detectives who had the store under surveillance witnessed Richardson drive behind the store and leave minutes before the blaze broke out. Officers arrested them two blocks away, and found explosives in their truck.[378] The Fire Marshall and Fire Inspector had "received confidential information" that a store was to be bombed.[379] Agents made plans to exploit divisions in the KOIE, consolidate opposition to Richardson, and unseat him.[380]

In August, the Bureau provided WKCT with information on William Richardson and the KOIE but it is not clear whether the station used it to prepare reports.[381] In any event, the KOIE had difficulty in recruiting while officers waited for the outcome of Richardson’s arson charge.[382] Richardson was imprisoned in January 1969. By that time, the UFKKK was losing members and the CIOE had disbanded. After Richardson was imprisoned, only a small contingent of 25 Klansmen remained in two KOIE Klaverns, in Melbourne and Titusville. [4 had left the group after being brought up on charges in a special meeting.[383] One informant who had evidently attained a high position within the KOIE, was instructed to combat an advocate of violence by questioning his legitimacy, and ensure that vigilante violence was prevented, and thereby effectively reduced the organization's membership.[384]

In May, after [5] joined the KOIE, the group reactivated, burning a cross to intimidate an alcoholic, driving two black patrons out of a restaurant in a Holopaw service station, and intimidating a white divorcee having affairs with black males. Klansman held a rally to capitalize on a tense racial situation in Melbourne that June. Arrests followed confrontations between black and white youths. Agents “repeatedly instructed” [8] to prevent violence from occurring, and re-interviewed Klansman to “cast a shadow of doubt in their minds as to [5’s] legitimacy as a member,” and to caution them against violence.[385] The interviews upset Klansmen, and drove all but seven members to drop out of the group, and [9] advised that he would continue to oppose [5] and block proposals to recruit more members and nullify his influence over the existing ones.[386] Melbourne closed and rejoined UKA in July. Ocoee 9-10 present in meetings July-Aug.[387]

In November 1967, agents had sent a copy of an article from the Ft Pierce Tribune, as well as a letter warning about former Vero Beach Klansman Leon Blanton’s states rights organization activity, to a Florida Klan officer, in order to cause friction between the UKA and the NSRP.[388] Blanton’s activities were quickly "neutralized," but NSRP organizing continued, radicalizing former Klansmen.[389] By April 1968 Leon Blanton was complaining to Shelton the “the FBI is giving [us] hell in Florida.” He or someone working with him was complaining that property owners were fearful of allowing the Klan to hold rallies on their property.[390]

An extensive Ft. Lauderdale News exposé in April 1969 provided readers with a detailed graph of the UKA structure, identified and ridiculed Klan officers, and identified their places of employment. As a result, Klansmen suspected that the News was operating informants within Klavern #6, where members began searching for bugs. One officer [11], as well as some rank and file members resigned and some prospective applicants withdrew their applications. The Exalted Cyclops resigned one month later.[391] Robert Shelton instructed that Klansmen were to stop talking to newspaper people. All news releases were now to come only from Imperial headquarters.[392] The Unit # 12, Orlando retained forty-seven as of October 1968.[393] Cocoa, Dade City had disbanded and Titusville showed no signs of activity. The Lake Wales klavern had grown however, and the Orlando #12 had become very active.[394] Up until the spring of 1969 then, overall Klan membership declined in Florida while the hard core members moved from organization to organization with increasing frequency.

In May, however, Polk County Florida fell under a Federal Court Order to integrate it's schools, precipitating a distribution of KKK circulars, cross burnings, and a growth in UKA membership. At a 1968 integration workshop in Bartow, an imposing group of about a dozen white men disrupted a meeting by entering and standing silently against the walls of the room for thirty minutes. Klan literature had been placed on automobiles outside. The integration of Lake Wales High School precipitated interracial fights, white protests against integration and protests by blacks at the closing of their schools, as well as and a number of cross burnings directed at white women alleged by the Klan to be "carrying on affairs with Negro men."[395] UFKKK members talked of forming "rifle clubs."[396] Police feared that a riot would occur sooner or later, and FBI informants were instructed to stifle violence.[397] Increased Black Power activity in the state occurred over the next three years as well, raising a potential issue for Klan recruiters to exploit.[398] Although cross burnings and threats against civil rights leaders would occur in 1970 and the school integration controversy escalated over the next few years, FBI reports reported declining membership in all Florida Klan organizations through the rest of 1969.[399]

The UKA was growing to a small degree, with a new klavern established at Bartow, and the Melbourne KOIE rejoining the UKA in July. Units contined to meet at Lake Wales #31, Orlando #12, Titusville, but none of them were engaged in any “extreme racial situations.”[400] The Bartow unit contained only 12-16 members, and only 9 of these had attended meetings in September. Orlando#12 was in a similar state. The Bureau had “sufficient coverage” to minimize activities of militant Klansmen, according to the Tampa SAC. Lake Wales lost their klavern trailer due to lack of money and membership and a fire destroyed their trailer. The Fire Marshal suspected arson, leading members to speculate that [6] destroyed it to recover insurance money and not have it repossessed, so the Klavern was in serious trouble.[401] Bartow was forced to cancel plans for a rally because not enough money existed in the Klavern treasury. [402] On the other hand, FBI investigations revealed that some Klansmen were working with members of the American Nazi Party to install a white power telephone-message line.[403] [4] UFKKKK was talking about organizing hard-core Klansmen into cell-like structures.[404]

In summer 1969, agents sent a letter to Imperial Headquarters protesting that it was a bad idea that [5] proposed to raise money by collecting debts for Orlando businessman to collect a large percentage for the Klan.[405] In 1969-1970, agents interviewed recruiters for the Lake Wales and Bartow Klaverns to discourage their work. Agents also contacted the Orlando Sentinel and provided copies of the Fiery Cross, so that the newspaper could publish derogatory information on Robert Shelton.[406] They helped another newspaper with informaiton on Klavern #6.[407] In January 1970, COINTELPRO operatives alerted Ft. Lauderdale Zoning authorities about building code violations at the Klavern #6 meeting hall. After authorities forced the Klavern to rectify minor deficiencies, agents contacted the Ft. Lauderdale News, to expose the Klavern.[408] After the Melbourne Klavern’s lease expired, agents contacted the Melbourne Police, who in turn contacted the building’s management to expose [7’s] Klan association. The group was forced to leave. To further disrupt the Klavern, agents made anonymous telephone call to the wife of one Klasman, indicating that her husband, “the [26 ]. . . should stay away from [13] or he would go to jail with [7].”[409] Robert Shelton continued to attempt to recruit in Florida, but Bartow retained only 10-12 Klansmen.[410]

Agents also informed the People’s Missionary Church that one of their organizers, Armand James Chandonnet had furnished fake credentials. Church investigators found that Chandonnet had forged checks and misappropriated more than $2000 in church funds. Agents alerted the Ft. Lauderdale News to Chandonnet’s background and his forthcoming prosecution for check fraud, resulting in an exposé. The operation was important because Chandonnet had been an effective Klan organizer, revitalizing Klavern #6 and opening Klavern #108, a new unit in Broward County. Klavern #108 EC pressed charges against Chandonnet, who then resigned his Klan office. This created considerable dissention, with the ultimate effect that the #108 EC and four other Klansmen also resigned. They split from Klavern #6 to create an independent organization, but the EC eventually returned to his home in North Carolina. Klavern #108’s four remaining members folded back into Klavern #6.[411]

Racial tension was evident in Spring 1970, as interacial fights caused two schools to close in Panama City, and riots broke out in Melbourne and Miami.[412]

Tampa one troublemaker will set informants against him.[413] As of June, the UKA was growing but experiencing numerous differences. Tampa Klansmen brought charges against one member and another member was suspended. Bartow was riddled with troubles. There was constant bickering between the Ft Lauderdale units, which the Grand Dragon was unable to resolve. Melbourne Klavern retained only 7-8 Klansmen, and they too, were “enthralled in their own machinations,” as a state of confusion took hold after two of the group’s most trusted members resigned in the wake of controversy.[414]

In fall, when a Klavern #6 Klansman became active in an anti-bussing organization called “United We Stand for America,” Miami agents exposed his role through the Ft Lauderdale News, forcing him to disassociate himself from the group. Interest in the USA fell substantially after the expose appeared. FBI agents also interviewed newly elected Klan officers to disrupt the UKA.[415] When a #6 Klavern official contacted WKCT to alert them that Robert Shelton was recently released form prison and would like to be interviewed on the station, Miami agents provided a list of questions for the interviewer to ask, including questions about accounting and financial matters, and identification of local Klan officials. Some of these questions were utilized.[416] In Lake Wales, some law enforcement person in sympathy w Klan and provided bureau information it.[417]

By 1971 despite the activities of ambitious Klansman who were traveling throughout Florida to build klaverns, promote good will and espouse that they would help law enforcement rather than commit violence, the UKA retained only five Klaverns, with small memberships: West Melbourne #8 with 8, Orlando #12 with 20, Lake Wales # 31 with 15-20, Bartow #105 with 10, and Tampa with 7. Rallies in the state also proved disappointing.[418] Then, in March, racial incidents at high schools in Haines City, Lakeland and Winter Haven, contributed to UKA recruitment among low-income seasonal laboring people in the Polk County citrus industry. One klavern was established at Winter Haven and second group began organizing in Lakeland. A number of successful rallies took place, due to a Polk County organizer’s active promotion of the Klan. Robert Shelton’s also spent considerable time in Florida, creating a reservoir of new applicants.[419]

When a new Homestead Klavern #114 was established in South Florida in March 1971, agents launched an “All out, vigorous and intensive interview program” to thwart its growth.[420] [6] was making frequent attacks against FBI agents in local newspaper interviews.[421] He was infuriated by FBI interviews and obsessed with the idea of using a polygraph to weed out FBI informants. As COINTELPRO ended Klan informants were reminded to be most circumspect in contacts with agents.[422] Given "appearances by black militants and white radicals" at Florida schools, Florida agents closed the COINTELPRO file while worrying about the potential of increased Klan growth due to a growing white "backlash."[423] In 1973, Grand Dragon John Paul Rogers and Orlando Klansman Ed Jones attempted to reorganize the UKA, around the issue of racial violence in Florida schools, but ran up against FBI pressure.[424] Eight years of COINTELPRO had accomplished an appreciable reduction in Klan membership statewide, and Klan activity was sporadic through the 1970s.[425]

-----------------------

[1] John Drabble, “COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE, the FBI, and the Cold War Consensus,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1996).

[2] On domestic anticommunism and FBI surveillance, see Kenneth O'Reilly, Hoover and the Un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the Red Menace, (Philadelphia, 1983); Athan Theoharis, Spying on Americans, Political Surveillance from Hoover to the Huston Plan, (Philadelphia, 1978); idem, ed., Beyond the Hiss Case: The FBI, Congress, and the Cold War, (Philadelphia, 1982); Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance, (New York, 1980). For an analysis of COINTELPRO-WHITE Hate’s origins and place in the Cold War domestic security apparatus, see William Keller, The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover, Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State, (Princeton, 1989); Kenneth O'Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972, (New York, 1989).

[3] Kenneth O'Reilly, Racial Matters: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972, (New York, 1989); William Keller, The Liberals and J. Edgar Hoover, Rise and Fall of a Domestic Intelligence State, (Princeton, 1989), Chapter 3; Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover, (New York, 1987), 407-411; David Cunningham, There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence, (Berkeley, 2004), 81-92, 106-108, Chapter 4, 152-156, Appendix A and B. For more detail on the origin of COINTELPRO-White HATE, see Drabble, “"The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan Organizations in Mississippi, 1964-1971," Journal of Mississippi History, 66:4, (Winter, 2004): 353-401.

[4] John Drabble, To Ensure Domestic Tranquility: The FBI, COINTELPRO-WHITE HATE and Political Discourse, 1964-1971, Journal of American Studies, 38:3 (August 2004): 297-328; The FBI . . . in Mississippi.”

[5] David Chalmers, “The Ku Klux Klan in the Sunshine State: The 1920s,” Florida Historical Quarterly, 43, (1964), 209-215.

[6] Klan units were organized in Jacksonville, Orlando, Volusa county, Miami and St. Petersburg, Hastings, West Palm Beach, Key West, Ocala, Ft Meyers, Levy County, Dunnellon Lakeland Lake Worth, Florence Villa, Deland, Kissimmee, Tampa, Sumter City, Sanford, Miami Gainesville, Putnam County, Palatka, Volusia, Polk County and Monroe. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 225-229.

[7] Michael Newton, The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001), 49-52.

[8] Newton, Invisible Empire, 53-56.

[9] Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 225-229.

[10] Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 311-313; Jerrell H. Schofner, “Communists, Klansmen, and the CIO in the Florida Citrus Industry, Florida Historical Quarterly, 1993 71(3): 300-309.

[11] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, xvii.

[12] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, 203.

[13] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, 204.

[14] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, 204.

[15] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, 214.

[16] Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes, 214. See also, Steven F. Lawson, "From Sit-In to Race Riot: Businessmen, Blacks, and the Pursuit of Moderation in Tampa, 1960-1967", in Elizabeth Jackoway and David R. Colburn, eds. Southern Businessmen and Desegregation, (Baton Rouge LA., 1982), 257-81.

[17] Tampa to Director, 1/14/65.

[18] Michael J. Klarman, "How Brown Changed Race Relations: The Backlash Thesis," Journal of American History (June 1994), 91(quote); Cantor Brown Jr., None Can Have Richer Memories: Polk County Florida, 1940-2000, (Tampa: University of Tampa Press, 2005), 64-65.

[19] Brown, None Can Have Richer Memories, 87.

[20] Hendrix entered into a coalition with William Morris’s Federation of Alabama Klans and Tom Hamilton’s Association of Carolina Klans. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 339-342; Teresa Lenox, “The Carver Village Controversy,” Tequesta, L, (1990): 39-51; Clive Webb, Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights, (Athens, University of Georgia Press, 2001), 55-64; Michael Newton, The FBI and the KKK: A Critical History, (Jefferson NC: McFarland and Co, 2005), 50-52. The Associated Klans of America blamed the bombings on the NAACP, and castigated “hate mongering racial agitating” newspaper columnists who blamed the Klan. “Florida Bombings and the Klan,” American Klansman, 2:1, (Associated Klans of America, January 1952), Box 1, Folder 3, RIGHT WING POLITICAL COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA LIBRARY, ATHENS GA. From 1949-1962, Hendrix used “Knights of the KKK” and a number of other names. SAC Letter No 63-4, 1/23/63, 15-16, FBI San Francisco file 100-44462, “Bombings and Attempted Bombings,” Lazar archive.

[21] One 1947 report citing 1570 civil rights investigations indicates that the government obtained only 27 convictions. Powers Secrecy and Power, 326, 563; Ben Green, Before His Time: The Untold Story of Harry T. Moore, America's First Civil Rights Martyr, (New York, 1999), 94, 106-107; Robert W. Saunders Sr., Bridging the Gap: Continuing the Florida Legacy of Harry T. Moore, 1952-1966, (Tampa: Tampa University Press, 2000), 18-24, 111, Chapter 5.

[22] Green, Before His Time , 176-177, 182. See also New York Times, 28 December, 1951, 9 January 1952; Don Whitehead, “FBI Hunting Night Riders in Florida,” Los Angeles Times, 13 January 1952, 16.

[23] Green, Before His Time, 229.

[24] FBI investigators suspected that Sheriff Dave Starr, Constable Carl Sanders and Justice of the Peace C. M. Tucker, were Klan members. In 1978 a confession by Raymond Henry Jr., blamed Mccall for the killing. Green, Before His Time, 118, 231-245; Newton, FBI and KKK, 52; 10 Action News Reports circa late 1985, University of Georgia Libraries media archive.

[25] On the first day of Rosh Hashanah for example, a dynamite blast, targeted the Tifereth Israel Northside Center. Kate Snatich, “A tale of Citrus and Secrets: a father Sends His daughter back to a Time when the Klan Gripped Orlando County—and a Puzzle Falls Into Place,” Orlando Sentinel, 7 April 2002, F1; Green, Before His Time, 132-133. See also New York Times, 1 January, 1952.

[26] In 1958 Richard L. Ashe, a former FBI undercover informant testified that Orlando Klansman Edgar J. Brooklyn had admitted his Klan’s culpability in the killing. In January 1978 the case was re-opened, former Brevard County Klansman Edward Spivey, who had been indicted for flogging and castrating Joseph Schoomaker in 1935, claimed that Joseph Neville Cox, Secretary of the Orlando Klan, had set the bomb in a $5000 contract job. Two months later, Raymond Henry Jr. admitted making the bomb and implicated many local policemen, as well as the local sheriff. His claims did not hold up however, since the policemen he named were too young to have done it. In 1991, researcher Jim Clarke revealed that the FBI’s principal suspects had been Exalted Cyclops Tillman Belvin? and Earle J Brooklyn, (the brother of the man Ashe had identified in 1958), of the Orlando Klan. The case was reopened in 1991, and closed in 1992 with no indictments issued. Caroline Evans, “‘A Bland, Scholarly, Teatotaling Sort of Man,’ Harry T Moore and the Struggle for Black Equality in Florida,” in Charles M. Payne and Adam Green eds., Time Longer Than a Rope: A century of African American Activism, 1850-1950, (New York, New York University Press, 2003), 456; Green, Before His Time, 194-206, 215-216; Lenox, “Carver Village Controversy”; Newton, FBI and KKK, 52-53.

[27] David Kraswell, “Liuzzo Case Remindful of Florida Klan Expose,” Los Angeles Times, 25 April 1965, 10.

[28] Klarman, "How Brown Changed Race,” 98; idem, “Brown and the Civil Rights Movement,” 100; Saunders, Bridging the Gap, 149-151, 159.

[29] Moseley, 165.

[30] Raymond A. Mohl, “The Pattern of Race Relations in Miami since the 1920s,” in David R. Colburn and Jane L. Landers eds., The African American Heritage in Florida, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1995), 348.

[31] Mohl, “Pattern of Race Relations,” 349.

[32] Ibid., 349; Meir and Rudwick, CORE, 176, 260.

[33] Brown, None Can Have Richer Memories, 113, Saunders, Bridging the Gap, 151-157.

[34] Core also used a boycot to gain hiring of blacks in supermarkets in 1960. Mohl, “Pattern of Race Relations,” 349-351; Richard V. Kelcher, “The Black Struggle for Political and Civil Rights in Broward County, 1943-1984,” MA Thesis, (Florida Atlantic University, 1990), 60-66. On the impact of migrants see also McMillan, Citizen’s Council, 98-99; Heard, A Two Party South? (1952), 53; Manning J. Dauer, “Florida The Different State,” in William C. Harvard ed., The Changing Politics of the South, (1972), 92, 157.

[35] McMillan, Citizens Council, 99-103

[36] The family claimed a mix of Irish-Indian. AP, “Family Quits town After Klan Threat,” Washington Post, 14 January 1955, 3.

[37] “Union Reports 12 Shot,” Washington Post, 22 October 1955, 21.

[38] Stetson Kennedy, The Klan Unmasked, ((Boca Raton: Florida Atlantic University Press, 1990 [1954]).

[39] Georgia was largest. Moseley, “Invisible Empire,” 165. Audiences ranged from 200-700. Nathan Perlmutter, Bombing in Miami: Anti-Semitism and the Segregationists, Commentary, 25 (1958), 498. 501-502.

[40] Director to Albany and all Continental Offices, 1023/58, Bombings and Attempted Bombings, 5-6, Racial Matters in FBI San Francisco file 100-44462, “Bombings and Attempted Bombings,” Lazar archive; Nathan Perlmutter, “GET” Commentary, 25, (June 1958), 498-503.

[41] The group also claimed bombings of Jewish Center in Nashville. Bern Price, “Anti-Semitism Growing in South as By-Product of Integraiton issue,” Washington Post, 15 June 1958, A14; Benjamin Muse, “Anti-Semitism Rise Doubted in Bombings,” Washington Post, 19 October 1958, E1.

[42] “Klan Demonstrations Barred in Florida,” Washington Post, 14 March 1958, A3.

[43] Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 353-354. For details on Klan organizing during this period, see FBI Report, “The Ku Klux Klan,” Section II, 1944-1958, (May 1958), downloadable from fbi/kkk.htm, 59-66.

[44] Between 1949 and 1963, klaverns were organized in Tampa, Lakeland, Mulberry, Ruskin, Orlando, St Petersburg, Orlando,. Jacksonville, Pinellas County, Brooksville, Dade City, Lacoochee, Bradenton, Ft Meade, Lake Wales, Sebring, Avon Park, Arcadia, Bartow, Wimauma, Auburndale. Tampa to Director, 1/14/65. All FBI documents cited in this article are contained in the COINTELPRO-White Hate File (Bureau File 157-9) unless otherwise indicated. The complete COINTELPRO file, as released by the FBI in 1977, is available on microfilm: Athan Theoharis ed., COINTELPRO: The Counterintelligence Program of the FBI (Wilmington, DE, 1978). The WHITE HATE file comprises microfilm reels 18-20. Sections 1 and 2 of this file contain executive level communications. The rest of the sub files are organized by city of field office location. The communications discussed in this article, are contained in the Jacksonville, Tampa or Miami Field Office sub files, unless otherwise indicated. “Director” denotes FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. In the interest of brevity, I cite the section or field office file, the direction of the communication, and the date it was sent. Occasionally, if a document that originated from a given sub file or section, is located in a different sub file, I indicate the actual location in parenthesis, following the date.

[45] “Fiery Crosses In Southern States,” London Times, 28 March 1960, 8; Chalmers, Hooded Americanism, 353-354; Saunders, 189, 191.

[46] U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Book 5: “Justice,” (1961), 37-39; Saunders, Bridging the Gap, 179-181, 189.

[47] Saunders, Bridging the Gap, 148.

[48] Jacksonville to Director, 5/21/62, Tampa to Director, 5/22/62, and Miami to Director, 5/15/62, FBI HQ File 157-7 “Klan Type Organizations and Hate Groups,” Section 1, Lazar archive.

[49] Director to Miami, 3/13/63, FBI HQ File 157-7 “Klan Type Organizations and Hate Groups," Section 1, Lazar archive.

[50] Jacksonville letter, 5/24/63, FBI HQ File 157-7 “Klan Type Organizations and Hate Groups," Section 1, Lazar archive.

[51] Memorandum, 11/1/63, “Racial Situation St. Johns County Florida,” and Director to Jacksonville, 11/27/63, in David Garrow ed., Centers of the Southern Struggle: FBI Files on Montgomery, Alabany, St. Augustine, Selma, and Memphis, (Frederick MD, 1988) hereafter cited as COTSS

[52] INSERT GARROW ET AL from DOM Tranq.

[53] The ADL, which generally overestimated Klan membership in the 1960s, claimed that 3500 people had signed up. Foster and Epstein, Report on the KKK, 26 cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 131.

[54] Fallaw had been a member of the Coca and Jacksonville UFKKK units, and referred to his unit as the KKKK or North Florida Klan. Key organizers included brothers Melvin and Herbert Fallow, as well as Buddy Cooper, Alton Cox and Joe Godwin. NSRP activist Jesse Stoner would act as his council at the HUAC hearings. SA [X] to SAC [X] 6/1/64, (quote) FBI HQ File 157-813 “Manucy, Holstead R.” Section 1, Lazar archive; Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 191; HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan Organizations, Vol. V, 3656-3664.

[55] In Federal Court, former Klansman Earl Sidney Jordan testified that he had witnessed defendant Barton Griffin set off dynamite blasts. Newton, Invisible Empire, 172-173; Bartley, Keeping the Faith, 105; United States v. William Rosencrans et. al., (S.D. Fla.); Rosen to Belmont, 11/30/65 and attached UPI release, VIOLA LIUZZO MURDER FBI File 44-28601; UPI, “Former Klansman Says Dynamite Was Set Off as Initiation Ritual,” Washington Post, 22 November 1964; HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3684-3685, 3690-3693. Donald Eugene Spigal, Barton H. Griffin, Jacky Don Harden, Willie Eugene Wilson, and Robert Pitman Gentry were arrested. Papers of the NAACP. Part 20 White resistance and reprisals, 1956-1965, edited by John H. Bracey Jr. and August Meier, (Bethesda MD, 1995), Reel 13, Frame 0011; New York Post, 27 July, 1964, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 131; HUAC, The Present-Day Ku Klux Klan Movement, 117-118. On February 2, an explosion had also taken place at a railway bridge in north-Miami Beach. The FBI pursued a suspect who worked for Dade County and, according to informant reports, associated with the American Nazi Party and the National States Rights Party. Miami to Director, RE: 2/24/64; FBI to Department of Justice, Re: Bombing Matters Investigation MM 160-67, 2/24/64.

[56] According to Rowe, James R. Whitefield and his brother William acted as bodyguards in Jacksonville, and the Klokan Committee included Robert Thomas and Ralph Roton, as well as militant Birmingham area Klansmen Collie Wilkins, Eugene Thomas, and Thomas Eaton. NSRP attorney Jesse B. Stoner also worked on the case. HUAC, The Present-Day Ku Klux Klan Movement, 117-118; HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 2110-2112, 3113-3114, 3234-3235; John Drabble, “The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan in Alabama, 1964-1971,” revised and resubmitted to the Alabama Review, August 2005. posted at ; Rosen to Belmont, 11/30/65 (Pdf12, 13, 26), and attached UPI wire report, VIOLA LIUZZO MURDER file [FBI File 44-28601].

[57] Thunderbolt No. 58, April 1964; Thunderbolt No. 66 April 1965, 11; "'Jacksonville Chronicle' Charges F.B.I. Using Illegal Methods Against Fla. K.K.K.," "Letters To The Editor," and "FBI Plant Wins Top KKK Post," Thunderbolt No. 57, March 1964.

[58] HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3686.

[59] Newton, Invisible Empire, 173; Bartley, Keeping the Faith, 110; Papers of the NAACP. Part 20 White resistance and reprisals, 1956-1965, edited by John H. Bracey Jr. and August Meier, (Bethesda MD, 1995), Reel 13, Frame 0011; Gloster B. Currnet to Messrs. Wilkins, et. al., 3/24/64, Papers of the NAACP. Part 20 White resistance and reprisals, 1956-1965, edited by John H. Bracey Jr. and August Meier, (Bethesda MD, 1995), Reel 7, Frame 0005.

[60] In St Augustine, whites stoned blacks outside an integrated church and lobbed eggs at marchers in the city’s Easter parade. Newton, Invisible Empire, 173-174, 176; HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3686. This was the only appearance ever made by the Knights of the Golden Eagle. Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 327. Cites NYT 1964.

[61] McGowan to Rosen, May 30 1964, COTSS; Director to Jacksonville, 5/28/64, COTSS.

[62] AP, “Rival Rights Marchers Parade in St. Augustine,” Los Angeles Times, 22 July 1964, 13.

[63] AP, “Four Negroes Beaten in St. Augustine Strife,” Los Angeles Times, 18 July 1964, 3.

[64] Teletype, Jacksonville to Director, 4:05 PM, 7/24/64.

[65] “2 St. Johns Segregationists Freed After Brief Jail Stay, Florida Times-Union, nd, 24 in FBI HQ File 157-813, “Manucy, Halstead R.,” Section 1, Lazar archive.

[66] Cochran was also charged under a state anti-mask law. Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 121, 123, 201, 241; “Warrants Against Klan Leaders, London Times, 25 July 1964, 6; AP, “Klansmen Facing Arrest: 5 Men Sought After Bombing,” Miami Herald, 25 July 1964; AP, “Bomb Kindles Crackdown on Ku Klux Klan,” Los Angeles Times, 25 July 1964, 1.

[67] Michael and Judy Ann Newton, Racial and Religious Violence In America: A Chronology, (New York: Garland, 1991), 476.

[68] Soloman had helped to lead the 1939 Miami Voting Rights drive. “In Florida: NAACP Hits Try to Kill Sam Solomon,” New Pittsburgh Courier, 5 Dec 5, 1964, 18.

[69] Jacksonville to Director, 10/14/64.

[70] CHECK Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 177; Edward W. Kallal Jr., “St Augustine and the Ku Klux Klan,” in Garrow ed, St Augustine; Newton, Invisible Empire, 146-150..

[71] Jacksonville to Miami, 12/29/64, FBI HQ File 157-813, “Manucy, Halstead R.,” Section 1, Lazar archive.

[72] SA [X] to SAC [X], 4/6/65, FBI HQ File 157-813, “Manucy, Halstead R.,” Section 1, Lazar archive.

[73] Director to Tampa 9/22/64; Tampa to Director, 9/25/64; “FBI Arrests 2 As ‘Bonzo’ Fugitives,” Orlando Evening Star, 22 September, 1964.

[74] Miami to Director, 12/31/64.

[75] Hall led the KKKK-AKA. Director to Tampa, 11/2/64. According to the HUAC, this Klan was very small and inactive when HUAC in October 1965. HUAC, Activities of KKK, 1573.

[76] Ibid; Tampa to Director, 1/4/65.

[77] Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 3/30/65; HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 54-55; Robert E. Baker, “Revived KKK Isn’t Funny Any More,” Washington Post, 5 July 1964, E1; “The Ku Klux Klan On The Way Back,” US News and World Report, 57:16 19 October 1964, 52; Douglass Kiker, “Heavy Infiltration by FBI Spawns Klan Within the Klan,” Tampa Tribune, 6 April 1965.

[78] Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 3/30/65.

[79] Tampa to Director, 12/9/64.

[80] HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 54-55.

[81] The FKKK had existed since 1955. The UKKK had been composed of remnants of the Florida Realm of the U.S. Klans, led by Imperial Wizard Eldon Edwards until his death in August 1960. Reluctant to pay dues to an organization based elsewhere, Florida Klansmen opted out of joining the Alabama based United Klans of America (UKA), loosely affiliating with the National Association of Klans, led by Veteran Georgia Klansman James Venable in Stone Mountain Georgia. HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 54-55.

[82] HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 59. This group split off from the Jacksonville UFKKK Klavern #2 in Spring 1965. Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 177.

[83] CHECK Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 17, 154, 177, 201; Arnold Foster and Benjamin Epstein, "Report on the Ku Klux Klan" 1965, 9. SBI Box II, ID2.

[84] CHECK HUAC, Activities of KKK, 1569-1575, 1594; HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 28-29, 37, 62; Miami Herald, 16 March, 1966, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 144-145.

[85] Tampa to Director, 4/1/65; Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 177; Edward W. Kallal Jr., “St Augustine and the Ku Klux Klan,” in Garrow ed, St Augustine; Newton, Invisible Empire, 146-150..

[86] Jacksonville Report, 12/23/63, Los Angeles to Director, 7/30/64, FBI Jacksonville file 157-670 “Lynch, Conrad,” Lazar archive.

[87] Jacksonville reports, 7/30, 9/22, 9/22 and 10/5 1964, 11/12/65, FBI Jacksonville file 157-670 “Lynch, Conrad,” Lazar archive.

[88] Baumgardner to Sullivan, 12/16/65 (Section 1); Director to Los Angeles, et. al., 12/17/65, (Section 1). The operation failed to secure revocation. “State Drops Case Against C. C. Lynch,” Florida Times-Union, 19 July 1965, in FBI Jacksonville file 157-670 “Lynch, Conrad,” Lazar archive.

[89] Tampa to Director, 3/30/65; Miami to Director, 12/28/65.

[90] John Herbers, “The Klan: Its Growing Influence,” New York Times, 20 April 1965, 1.

[91] Miami to Director, 10/14/66.

[92] Tampa to Director 12/9/64; Director to Tampa, 12/18/64; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 12/17/64, 1/14/65, 2/3/65.

[93] Agents also provided information about UFKKK klaverns in other areas of the state, and may have provided information to a second source at the Melbourne Daily Times . Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 11/23/64, 1/14/65, 4/1/65; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 1/28/65; Director to Tampa, 12/10/64, 1/29/65.

[94] Located in near Keysville South of Plant City, near Lake Wales, and at Auburndale, Haines City and Lacoochee north of Dade City, the , Polk and Pasco? County klaverns contained a few hindered members, according to locals. Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 11/3/64; Fred Smith, "5 Klan Klaverns Found Active in Central Florida", 4 April 1965 idem, “Two in Hillsborough County Praise Ku Klux Klan Ideals," 5 April 1965; idem, "Klan Has Trouble Keeping Its Secrets: Tribune Finds Klaverns in Polk, Lawman Says Action at Minimum," Tampa Tribune, 6 April, 1965.; idem, "Victim Tells of Klan's Role As the 'Keeper of Morals,'" Tampa Tribune, 7 April, 1965; idem, "Victim Tells of Klan's Role As the 'Keeper of Morals'" Tampa Tribune, 7 April, 1965.

[95] Smith, "5 Klan Klaverns.” The intimidation had been “instrumental;” in convincing blacks to leave homes in County. Smith, “Two in Hillsborough.”.

[96] Smith, "Victim Tells.”

[97] Kiker, “Heavy Infiltration.”

[98] Eatman said he had left the U. S. Klans in late 1959 or early 1960. Smith, "5 Klan Klaverns.” Perhaps this is the same group referred to as a John Birch society affiliate that called upon “patriots” to arm themselves and organize secret Minutemen teams to avoid FBI surveillance. Drew Pearson, “Noise on the Right,” Washington Post, 7 November 1965, E7; Lowell Brandle, “‘Patriots Called to Arms,” Washington Post, 15. November 1964, E3.

[99] Fred Smith, "Two in Hillsborough .”

[100] Kiker, “Heavy Infiltration.”

[101] Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 6/29/65.

[102] Tampa to Director, 1/4/65, 1/14/65; Director, to Tampa 2/1/65.

[103] Tampa to Director, 1/14/65.

[104] Tampa to Director, 1/14/65; 1/17/65 (and attached LHM 3/17/65), 4/1/65;; Radiogram, 4/2/65; Staff Writer, "Activities of Lake Wales Employee To Be Investigated" Tampa Tribune, April 7, 1965(quote). It seems that the employee had some kind of political connections, which made it difficult to discharge him. Tampa to Director, 6/18/65.

[105] The klavern was meeting under the cover name of the Paul Revere Historical Society. Jacksonville to Director, 10/14/64, 12/30/64, 3/29/65; Director to Jacksonville, 11/5/64. The Klavern was later known as #502. Tampa to Director, 3/25/66. HUAC identified Klavern #502 E.C. Alton Cooksley as acting Grand Dragon and Klavern treasurer John Lee Stoudenmire as State Treasurer of the UFKKK. The klavern also used he name Duval Fellowship Club. HUAC, Activities, 3717-3719, 3736-3737.

[106] John Drabble, “The FBI, COINTELPRO-White Hate, and the Decline of Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, 1964-1971,” Talk Given at the John Hope Franklin Center Lecture Series, Duke University September 24, 2003. posted at .

[107] Tampa to Director, 2/21/66.

[108] The complaints were aired at a rally attended by about 50 people in Cocoa. AP, “2 Crosses Burned in Baltimore, MD.,” Baton Rouge State Times, 24 January 1966, 12-A.

[109] Tampa to Director, 9/29/66.

[110] Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 3/30/65.

[111] Tampa to Director, 3/9/65 (quote), 3/13/65, 3/17/65; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 3/11/65 (quote); Director to Tampa, 3/11/65

[112] They also planned to provide confidential information to the Fort Pierce News Tribune, concerning an attempt by [6] to organize a new klavern in Sebastian, in Indian River County. [6] moved to Wabasso where his recruiting activities also failed. Miami to Director, 10/14/64 (quote), 12/31/64, 1/21/65, 3/30/65; Baumgardner to Sullivan 10/30/64; Director to Miami 11/2/64.

[113] Tampa to Director, 8/5/65 (four memoranda); Director to Tampa 8/16/65; Tampa to Director, 9/29/65. In the 1960s, the federal Government had bestowed a special priviledge on members of the National Rifle Association. They had the exclusive right to purchase surplus surplus arms from the Army. Four alleged members of Klan or other “extremist”groups were blocked from the program in 1968. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, “Guns for Criminals?” Washington Post, 14 July 1968, B7.

[114] Tampa to Director, 4/23/65.

[115] Tampa to Director, 4/1/65.

[116] Tampa to Director, 3/30/65, 6/29/65.

[117] Tampa to Director, 6/29/65. The Plant City klavern remained the largest in the Tampa division. Tampa to Director, 9/29/65.

[118] Tampa to Director, 8/5/65 (four memoranda); Director to Tampa 8/16/65; Tampa to Director, 9/29/65.

[119] Director to Tampa 8/16/65.

[120] Ibid. [5] associated with [4] a Klansman that had shot someone with a teargas pen and made a death threat in connection with an affray at the State Theater in lake Wales. Tampa to Director, 8/5/65.

[121] Ibid. [4] had also been previously been associated with the NSRP. Tampa to Director, 8/5/65 (four memoranda); Director to Tampa 8/16/65; Tampa to Director, 9/29/65.

[122] Tampa to Director, 9/29/65.

[123] Tampa to Director 11/15/65; Director to Tampa, 11/16/65

[124] Tampa to Director, 6/30/66.

[125] Tampa to Director, 10/18/65, 11/10/65; Director to Tampa, 10/22/65.

[126] Tampa to Director, 12/30/65, 1/7/66; Director to Tampa, 1/18/66.

[127] Tampa to Director, 9/29/65, 10/6/65; Director to Tampa, 11/1/65.

[128] Tampa to Director, 10/6/65, 11/10/65, and Director, to Tampa, 11/22/65.

[129] [7] was a bombing suspect. Tampa to Director, 1/6/66; Director to Tampa, 1/17/66.

[130] Drabble, “To Preserve,” idem, “The FBI . . . in Mississippi,”; idem, working papers.

[131] Director, to Miami, 11/8/65.

[132] HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 1570, 1574-1575, 3736-3738.

[133] Robert Gentry was interrogated in executive session in September. Newton, Invisible Empire, 177-178; HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, Part 5.

[134] HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3739-3743.

[135] One eastern NC resident refused to sell land to a local Klavern. James K. Batten, “Once Robust Klan is Clearly Ailing,” Charlotte Observer, 27 February 1966, 1.

[136] HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3776-3777.

[137] HUAC, Activities of Ku Klux Klan, 3745, 3747.

[138] J. B. Stoner, "Un-American Committee Plotted Entrapment: Stoner Takes Oath Before House Committee," Thunderbolt, No. 75, March 1966, 5.

[139] Jacksonville to Director, 4/19/66.

[140] "Klan leader had FBI as a Target, Investigator Charges," Birmingham News, February 22, 1966, 11. In 1967 WKCT identified him as a leading member of the State NSRP. Wayne Ferris Reports, “Thunderbolt on the Right,” available at the University of Georgia Libraries, Media Center.

[141] Director to Jacksonville 4/28/66.

[142] [#] denotes a Bureau deletion, in which the number of characters in the person’s name is discernable Tampa to Director, 3/25/66.

[143] US Congress. Senate. Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence ["Church Committee"], Final Report, Book III, 474; O'Reilly, Racial Matters, 223-224.

[144] Jacksonville to Director, 4/19/66 (quote) 6/29/65; Director to Jacksonville 4/28/66.

[145] Jacksonville to Director, 5/20/66, 5/25/66, 6/29/66; Miami to Director, Jacksonville and Tampa 10:12 EST 5/20/66; Miami to Director, 6/15/66, 6/17/66, 6/23/66.

[146] Jacksonville to Director, 6/29/66.

[147] Tampa to Director, 6/2/66, 6/28/66. Tampa agents at that time had confirmed 250 KKK addresses that Spring. Tampa to Director, 3/9/66.

[148] Tampa to Director, 8/2/66.

[149] Tampa to Director, 6/2/66, 6/28/66, 6/30/66.

[150] Tampa to Director, 6/30/66, 7/21/66.

[151] Tampa to Director, 7/21/66.

[152] Director to Tampa 9/9/66. An informant told the FBI that [6], a Tampa Klansman had reproduced the cards after a collective decision by the state officers of the UFKKK. Tampa to Director, 8/30/66.

[153] Tampa to Director, 8/30/66(quote); Director to Tampa 9/9/66.

[154] Miami to Director, 9/12/66.

[155] Director to Miami, 9/19/66.

[156] Baumgardner to Sullivan, 3/10/66, (Section 1).

[157] Ibid.

[158] Drabble, “To Preserve.”

[159] Tampa to Director, 6/2/66, 7/1/66.

[160] Miami to Director, 6/17/66, 10/26/66.

[161] Miami to Director, 12/30/66.

[162] Miami to Director, 10/26/66.

[163] Shelton and at least one other UKA Klansman [7] are reported to have laughed about the cards. Tampa to Director, 6/20/66, 7/21/66, 9/30/66.

[164] Jacksonville to Director, 6/29/66.

[165] Miami to Director, 6/23/66.

[166] Tampa to Director, 7/21/66.

[167] Tampa to Director, 9/30/66.

[168] The Pioneer Club remained completely demoralized. Tampa to Director, 6/30/66.

[169] Director to Jacksonville, 6/29/66 .

[170] Jacksonville to Director, 6/9/66. See also Tampa to Director, 9/23/66.

[171] Newton, Racial and Religious Violence, 493.

[172] Tampa to Director, 6/28/66; Director to Tampa, 7/5/66.

[173] Charles Hendrick, "Klan Shows Signs Of Increasing Prosperity" Tampa Tribune, 16 July 16, 1966.

[174] Charles Hendrick, "Klan's Illegal Permit Traced to Inspector" Tampa Tribune, July 21, 1966.

[175] Tampa to Director, 8/1/66; "Kluxers Work at Red Tagged Club" Tampa Tribune, 31 July, 1966.

[176] Tampa to Director, 8/2/66;

[177] "Klan Building May Get Its Permit" Tampa Tribune, September 23, 1966; "Kluxers Change Name, Receive Building Permit" Tampa Tribune, September 29, 1966; Tampa to Director, 2/8/67.

[178] [5] was a suspect in a bombing case. Tampa to Director, 2/8/67; Director, to Tampa 2/23/67

[179] Tampa to Director, 3/31/67; Supplemental Correlation Summary, Dec. 19, 1966, 25 in FBI HQ File 157-552 #44, personal archive of FIOA researcher Ernest Lazar.

[180] Tampa to Director, 12/9/66; Director to Tampa, 12/21/66.

[181] Tampa to Director, 3/31/67.

[182] Don North, "Negro's burn Tampa Block, Battle Police," Birmingham News, 12 June, 1967, 1; S. T. Macfeely, "Raging Negro's burn, low in Tampa, " Birmingham News, 13 June, 1967, 1.—CHECK TITLE/author spelling

[183] Tampa to Director, 4/1/68, 7/1/68, 10/1/68, 4/4/69.

[184] Tampa to Director, 5/22/68.

[185] "20 Tampa youths held after riot," Birmingham News, 21 May 1968, 4.

[186] Mistaken for another youth whom the mob accused of having sexual relations with a white woman, the victim’s lacerations, which required 400 stiches, made him unrecognizable. "Negro beaten up by a group of whites," Birmingham News, September 18, 1968, 25; "Race fights more Florida great gains, " Birmingham News, 21 September, 1968, 1.—CHECK TITLE

[187] Tampa to Director, 4/4/69.

[188] Tampa to Director, 7/2/69. May have thwarted a cross burning. Tampa to Director, 8/28/69. See also Director to Tampa 8/21/69, COINTELPRO-Black Nationalist Hate Groups.

[189] Richardson 10/3/69.

[190] Tampa to Director, 12/31/69.

[191] Tampa to Director, 3/31/70, 6/30/70, 1/5/71.

[192] Tampa to Director, ??

[193] Tampa to Director, 1/5/71.

[194] HUAC, Activities of KKK, 1569-1575, 1594; HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 28-29, 37, 62; Miami Herald, 16 March, 1966, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 144-145; Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 17, 154, 177, 201; Arnold Foster and Benjamin Epstein, "Report on the Ku Klux Klan" 1965, 9. SBI Box II, ID2; AP, "Klansman Observe 100th Birthday," Birmingham News, 6 September, 1965, 50; Miami to Director, 6/30/65, 9/24/65, 12/28/65.

[195] Jacksonville to Director, 10/14/64; Director to Jacksonville, 11/5/64.

[196] Director to Miami, 10/6/65.

[197] Miami to Director, 9/24/65; Verne O. Williams, “Dade Sheriff’s Men Show Up For Klan Party That Wasn’t,” Miami News, 15 September 1965.

[198] Other new officers included Massey, Aspinwell, Bob Roache, F. Stephens, J. Siddons, H. Canada, R White, J. Grantham, F. Andrews, E. Harpe, T. Riddle, R. Peacock, B. Ryan, J. Box, E. C. Stone, and Norman Carter. Tampa to Director, 10/15/64, 3/30/65; Newton, Invisible Empire, 176-177; HUAC, Activities of KKK, 3748-3751, 3754-3758, 3759-3766, 3769-3770; HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 28-29, 59-60; Miami Herald, 16 March, 1966, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 144-145; Glen Miller "2 Klan Officers Arrested in Dade Gun Found In Auto, Police Say" Miami Herald, 30 October, 1965. They were also joined by Grand Klaliff and Imperial Klexter Joseph H. Bedford as well as Grand Klokard Albert T. Massey, both residents of Jacksonville, in October. HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 88.

[199] HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 59-60.

[200] Director to Miami, 3/29/65; Miami to Director, 9/24/65; HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 28-29; Miami Herald, 16 March, 1966, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 144-145.

[201] Director to Miami, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa 5/16/66.

[202] Miami to Director, 12/28/65.

[203] Miami to Director, 11/1/65 and Enclosure, Lt. L. J. Buskirk to T. A. Buchanan, “Press Release-Ku Klux Klan”; "Secret Klan Documents Name 4 Here" Fort Lauderdale News, 4 November, 1965; "I Might Go Feet First Myself" Miami Herald , 31 October, 1965; Bill Barry "Klan Grand Dragon Protests Arrest," Miami News, 30 October, 1965; Miller "2 Klan Officers Arrested”; HUAC, Activities of KKK, 3754-3800. The records revealed that about 100 klansmen belonged to klaverns in Ft. Lauderdale. "Secret Klan Documents Name 4 Here" Ft. Lauderdale News November 4, 1965.

[204] HUAC, Present-Day KKK, 59-60; Newton, Invisible Empire, 176-177; Miami to Director, 3/29/66.

[205] Wayne Ferris Reports, “KKK, A Change of Linen: A Report on the Klan and its Image in South Florida,” available at the University of Georgia Library, Media Center.

[206] Miami to Director, 3/25/66 6/3/66; Director, to Miami, 4/13/66; Director to Miami, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Tampa, 5/16/66.

[207] Atlanta to Director, 4/26/66 (Miami File); Director to Miami, 5/3/66; Miami to Director, 5/5/66;

[208] Miami to Director, 8/19/66; Director to Miami, 8/19/66.

[209] Miami to Director, 9/2/66 (quote), 9/30/66; Director to Miami, 9/16/66.

[210] Miami to Director, 9/23/66.

[211] Miami to Director, 5/12/67; "Appellate Court Releases State KKK's Grand Dragon" Miami Herald, May 11, 1967.

[212] Tampa to Director, 5/24/67; Director to Tampa, 5/26/67, 5/29/67.

[213] Savannah Report, 12/21/66 RM. (Bufile 105-66233); NRSP membership in Jacksonville stood at 20-25, with 15 of them active Savannah Report 2/15/67 RM. (Bufile 105-66233). The author obtained these files through a Freedom of Information Act request.

[214] Miami to Director, 10/31/66, 12/27/66; Director, to Miami, 11/14/66.

[215] After Riddlehoover’s arrest, Flynn had made contacts with the Georgia based National Knights, led by James Venable. Miami to Director, 1/6/67, 2/8/67, 2/21/67, 3/28/67, 8/31/67, 12/11/68, 1/2/69; Newark to Director, 11/16/66, "KKK Man Arrested" Pompano Beach Sentinel, February 8, 1967; Patty Mummert "Illegal Voting Charged to Klansman" Ft. Lauderdale News, 7 February, 1967; Bill Martinez, "Arrest of Klan Leader Jeopardizes Splinter Group" Miami Herald, 8 February, 1967; Bill Fenton, "Child Support Suit Adds to KKK Leader's Woes" not attributed Ft Lauderdale Newspaper, 11 March, 1967.

[216] This was the second highest position in the organization. Ibid; "Klansman Quits But Eyed By Marine League" Ft. Lauderdale News, November 5, 1965; Patty Mummert "Former Klansman Voted Reprimand: Twist Hearing Closed," Ft. Lauderdale News, November 14, 1965.

[217] Miami to Director, FBI 9/28/65,

[218] Director to Miami, 10/22/65.

[219] "Klansman Quits”; "Bomb Scares at Ex-Klansman's Bar" Miami Herald, November 5, 1965; "Second Klansman May Quit" Miami Herald, November 5, 1965; "Calls Warn Twist Bar Bomb Target" Ft. Lauderdale News, November 6, 1965; "Secret Klan Documents Name 4 Here" Ft. Lauderdale News November 4, 1965; Ford Burkhart "Ex-Member Calls Klan Subversive" Miami Herald November 5, 1965; Mummert "Former Klansman”; "Twist Reprimand Upheld By League”, Ft. Lauderdale News, August 2, 1966; Miami to Director, FBI 11/8/65, 12/28/65; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 11/10/65.

[220] Miami to Director, 11/16/65.

[221] Robert Sherrill, “KKK’s Shelton Plans To Recruit In The Florida Sunshine,” St. Petersburg Times, 5 January, 1966.

[222] Hamby headquartered the two month drive in Titusville. Tampa to Director, 1/24/66 5:49 PM, 1/25/66, 1/27/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1; Robert J. Howard, “Klan Disputes Deputies,” Orlando Sentinel, 22 January 1966; Karl Hunziker, “Klan Cyclops Sees War With Wilson,” Cocoa Tribune, 24 January 1966.

[223] Tampa to Director, 2/1/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1.

[224] Tampa to Director, 2/24/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1.

[225] Tampa to Director, 2/23/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1. Chester Slone was the leader of Pinellas Club Klavern #10. Tampa to Director, 3/4/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1.

[226] Kenneth Stowe was Grand Nighthawk. Tampa to Director, 3/7/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1.

[227] Norman Carter of the Eau Gallie klavern was the Klan’s chief Investigator. Boyd Hamby and Canada also spoke at the rally, held on Johnnie Price’s property. A Mr. Stowe, EC of Scottsmoor-Titusville, was master of ceremonies. Tampa to Director, 3/21/66, 3/31/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 1; idem, 6/15/66 Section 2.

[228] Miami Herald, 16 March 1966, cited in Moore, "A Sheet and a Cross," 144-145.

[229] EC Summerfield is Newsom. Tampa to Director, 5/14/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 2.

[230] Tampa to Director, 7/5/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 2.

[231] Tampa to Director, 5/21/66, 5/24/66, 6/6/66, 6/15/66, 7/6/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 2.

[232] Tampa to Director, 6/15/66, UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 2.

[233] Shelton described Justice Department Attorneys as “political afterbirths” and insulted Katzenbach’s wife. Tampa to Director, 6/4/66, 6/9/66 UKA/KKKK-FL Tampa File, Section 2.

[234] After Riddlehoover and Grantham pulled the Miami klavern out of the UKA, the three remaining klaverns included #4 and #6 in Ft. Lauderdale, and a klavern at Davie, Florida. Miami to Director, 1/24/66; Director, to Miami 2/15/66, 4/13/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 4/26/66.

[235] Miami to Director, 4/20/66.

[236] Other Klansmen were identified as Robert E. Quarterman, Olen Abernathy, Richard Harley, Drew Eugene Johnson, Frederick Paul Attix, Sam Richard McBroom, Jessie Gay Taylor, Conde Lewis McConnaughay, Walter Harold Carlstedt, Ellis Herman Heflin, John Francis Gettinger, and Joseph Brady Burd. The operation allowed the FBI to obtain photographs of twenty-three Klansmen, many of them for the first time. Miami to Director, 4/20/66, 4/27/66, 6/23/66; "Klan Says Police Violate Rights," Fort Lauderdale News, April 19, 1966. As of June 1967, S.R. McBroom of Ft. Lauderdale was a South Florida Titan. “Initials R.E.T. Mask Local Klan Leader,” Ft. Lauderdale News, 6/17/67, attached to Miami to Director, 6/20/67 (Charlotte file).

[237] Director to Miami, 4/13/66; “Klan Says Police Violate Rights.”

[238] Baumgardner to Sullivan, 4/26/66.

[239] Miami to Director, 6/23/66.

[240] Miami to Director, 4/27/66.

[241] Zbin was a member of Klavern #4. The informant may have been a Realm officer and the member of Klavern #6 who informed the Bureau about the upcoming trial. Donner, Age of Surveillance, 208-209; Miami to Director, 3/31/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 4/18/66.

[242] “Commies Take Over the Klan,” Cartoon attached to Director to Miami, 4/22/66.

[243] Miami to Director, 6/21/66.

[244] Miami to Director, 6/17/66.

[245] Tampa to Director, 6/20/66, 7/21/66(quote).

[246] AP, " Negro Riot quelled on Pensacola Beach," Birmingham News, 13 June 1966; "Negro mob again rocks police in Pompano," Birmingham News, 22 June 1966, 22; "Leaders say Florida race riots are over," Birmingham News, 23 June, 1966, 9; F. T. Macfeely, "Vandals deal Jacksonville violent night," Birmingham News, 20 July 1966, 1; Fort Lauderdale Florida: "Sniper's shot Hits Officer," Birmingham News, August 18, 1966, 1; "Negro vandals Riot in Florida," Birmingham News, 1 November, 1966, 8.

[247] Tampa to Director, 8/2/66.

[248] Tampa to Director, 9/2/66.

[249] Miami to Director, 6/28/66, 8/9/66; Director to Miami, 7/26/66.

[250] Al Paredón, means "up against the wall." The phrase was used by Cuban Revolutionaries when sentencing members of the Batista regime for execution. Leaflet attached to Baumgardner to Sullivan, 7/8/66.

[251] One of his opponents was a UKA organizer in Wildwood. Miami to Director, 5/11/66, 8/9/66, 8/25/66, 9/28/66, 9/30/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 10/6/66 (Section 1).

[252] Miami to Director, 10/12/66, 10/13/66, 10/18/66; Director to Miami, 10/13/66; “Candidate Pays Visit To Klan Hall,” Ft. Lauderdale Tribune, 18 October 1966.

[253] “Candidate Pays Visit”; Miami to Director, 12/30/66.

[254] Miami to Director, 6/23/66.

[255] Director to Tampa, 4/5/66, 6/23/66, 7/11/67; Tampa to Director, 6/15/66

[256] Miami to Director, 6/21/66.

[257] Miami to Director, 6/21/66; Director to Miami, 7/11/66.

[258] Miami to Director, 6/21/66.

[259] Miami to Director, 7/25/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan 7/29/66, Director, to Miami, 7/11/66, 8/1/66.

[260] Miami to Director, 9/30/66.

[261] Miami to Director, 9/30/66.

[262] Miami to Director, 9/15/66; Director, to Miami 9/16/66.

[263] Miami to Director, 9/23/66, 9/30/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan 9/28/66; Iz Nachman, "Klan Linked To Beating Of Student In Belle Glade" Palm Beach Post Glades Edition, 16 September, 1966; idem, "Assault Suspect Denies Active Klan Membership" Palm Beach Post Glades Edition, 17 September, 1966; idem, "Second Youth Denies Klan Membership" Palm Beach Post , 18 September, 1966; Patty Mummert "Boy Beaten; Four Klansmen Arrested" Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition, 17 September, 1966; idem, " Klan Suspects Arrested" Fort Lauderdale News, 17 September, 1966; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 9/28/66.

[264] Miami to Director, 9/30/66.

[265] Miami to Director, 11/15/66, 12/15/66, 12/30/66, Director to Miami, 11/23/66; "Gambling Trial of Glades Men Is Postponed" Palm Beach Post, 10 December, 1966.

[266] Miami to Director, 9/30/66.

[267] Director to Miami,

[268] Miami to Director, 11/9/66; Director to Miami, 12/1/66.

[269] Leaflet attached to Baumgardner to Sullivan, 11/21/66.

[270] Miami to Director, 1/11/67. The target may have been Troy Martin.

[271] Ibid; Miami to Director, 2/9/67.

[272] Miami to Director, 3/28/67.

[273] Miami to Director, 12/30/66. See also, 9 Birmingham Report, 4/17/67, “Racial matters,” FBI HQ File 157-552 #44 “Robert M. Shelton,” Ernest Lazar archive.

[274] Jacksonville and Tampa informants had been instrumental in having forced the purge. Tampa to Director, 1/24/67. A new Fifth District was added in February. A 1/13 rally in Vernon attracted 200. Birmingham Report, 4/17/67, 12 “Racial Matters,” FBI HQ File 157-552 #44 “Robert M. Shelton,” Lazar archive.

[275] Director to Tampa and Miami (copy to Jacksonville) 1/9/67, HORIP, (Section 1). See also Tampa to Director, 3/17/67.

[276] Miami to Director, 2/1/67.

[277] John McAleenan, “In the Shadows of the Burning Cross,” Cocoa Today, 1 October 1967.

[278] He did not mention the elevation of Richardson. Report, Director, FBI to Attorney General, December 19, 1967, KU KLUX KLAN INVESTIGATIONS FBI ACCOMPLISHMENTS, reprinted in Church Committee, Hearings, Vol. 6, 516-527.

[279] Tampa to Director, 3/31/67.

[280] Miami to Director, 3/28/67.

[281] Tampa to Director, 10/11/66.

[282] Jacksonville and Tampa informants had been instrumental in having forced the purge. Tampa to Director, 1/24/67, 2/8/67, 2/9/67; Director to Tampa, 2/17/67; Jacksonville to Director, 2/24/67 (Tampa File); Miami to Director, 2/20/67; McAleenan, “In the Shadows.”

[283] Richardson was a member of the 11 member strong Titusville Klavern. Roache did not get on well with Richardson. McAleenan, “In the Shadows”; Tampa to Director, 2/8/67, 2/9/67, 3/31/67.

[284] Domestic Intelligence Division Informative Note, 6/1/67 (Tampa File).

[285] As discussed above however, members of the UFKKK’s Plant City Klavern and the entire Lake Wales Klavern however, had joined the UKA. Tampa to Director, 3/31/67. Shelton met with 54 Klansmen in Orlando on April 9. Birmingham Report, 10/24/67, 2 FBI HQ File 157-552 #44 “Robert M. Shelton,” Lazar archive.

[286] Tampa to Director, 6/28/67. 500-600 people attended a UKA rally there on April 8. Birmingham Report, 10/24/67, 2 FBI HQ File 157-552 #44 “Robert M. Shelton,” Lazar archive.

[287] The Palm Bay City Council refused a parade and cross-burning permit to the Klan for a subsequent rally. Tampa to Director, 5/22/67. See also, "Four Forfeit Bonds in 'Cross' Case" Miami Herald, (Indian River County Edition), 24 May, 1967; "Charged With Cross Burning, Forfeit Bonds" Vero Beach Press Journal, 25 May, 1967.

[288] Leon Blanton posted bond for the men. Ibid; Miami to Director, 5/29/67; Tampa to Director, 5/25/67, 6/28/67.

[289] Tampa to Director, 5/22/67, 6/6/67, 6/28/67; Director to Tampa, 6/31/67.

[290] Tampa to Director, 6/19/67, 9/29/67; Miami to Director, 6/27/67.

[291] Tampa to Director, 9/29/67.

[292] Tampa to Director, 6/28/67, 8/28/67, 9/29/67; Director to Tampa, 9/5/67.

[293] Miami to Director 5/1/67, Director to Miami, Richmond, 5/1/67. Ft. Lauderdale Klansman Robert Chesley Talbot Jr. was arrested for unlawful flight to avoid prosecution soon afterward. “KKK, A Change of Linen.”

[294] Tampa to Director, 5/17/67; Director to Tampa, 5/25/67.

[295] Tampa to Director, 6/28/67.

[296] Tampa to Director, 9/29/67.

[297] The property was owned by the Florida Pioneer Club which had broken away from the FKKK and later affiliated with the UFKKK, a but the UKA was paying utilities and possibly taxes on the property. Tampa to Director, 8/17/67.

[298] Tampa to Director, 7/11/67.

[299] John Davis was charged with assault with a deadly weapon, while Robert Browing, Bobby Joe Vanderford and Eddie Ellison were arrested on disorderly conduct charges. Vanderford and Ellison were not participants in the Klan rally. Tampa to Director, 6/1/67, 7/24/67; Director to Tampa 6/2/67; “Witness Tells Of Gun Battle,” Orlando Sentinel, 24 June, 1967; AP, “Orderly Rally’ Held By 200 Klansmen,” Herald Tribune, 24 July 1967; “Klan Holds Night Rally,” Orlando Sentinel, 24 January 1967. .

[300] Tampa to Director, 7/6/67, 7/24/67.

[301] Tampa to Director, 9/27/67.

[302] Tampa to Director, 9/29/67.

[303] John McAleenah, “Threatened My Family, Eau Gallie Leader Says,” Cocoa Today, 3 October 1967.

[304] McAleenah, “Threatened My Family.”

[305] Tampa to Director, 4/1/68.

[306] John McAleenan, “Membership Shrinks to 15 in Brevard,” Cocoa Today, 4 October 1967.

[307] Ten in Titusville and five in Melbourne. The Eau Gallie klavern had six members when it was disbanded. McAleenan, “Membership Shrinks.”

[308] Tampa to Director, 9/29/67.

[309]

[310] Tampa to Director, 12/29/67.

[311] Tampa to Director, 8/17/67, 12/29/67. FBI investigators described the Klavern as “independent” in 1965. Tampa to Director, 8/4/65, FBI HQ File 157-7 “Klan Type Organizations and Hate Groups," Section 2, Lazar archive.

[312] Tampa to Director, 8/17/67 (quote); Director, to Tampa, 8/29/67.

[313] Tampa to Director, 12/29/67.

[314] Tampa to Director, 11/15/67, 11/16/67, 11/27/67, 12/5/67; "Troubles Multiply for Top Klansman" and "Klan Boss Jailed in Two Counties" Cocoa Today, November 14, 1967; "Klan Chief Fined $200 In Wildwood" Cocoa Today, November 25, 1967; "Klan Chief in Jail Cell" Cocoa Today, December 2, 1967.

[315] Tampa to Director, 11/30/67.

[316] Tampa to Director, 12/29/67.

[317] Tampa to Director, 12/29/67.

[318] Tampa to Director, 1/24/68.

[319] Tampa to Director, 2/28/68.

[320] Tampa to Director, 3/1/68. See also, idem 4/1/68.

[321] Director to Tampa, 3/15/68.

[322] Tampa to Director, 4/1/68.

[323] Tampa to Director, 12/5/67.

[324] “Council Urged To Seek 300 Housing Units,” Orlando Sentinel, 21 December 1967.

[325] Miami to Director, 12/30/66.

[326] Tampa to Director, 12/29/67.

[327] Drabble, “FBI . . . in Alabama.” On the NSRP, founded by members of the Colombians after the Brown Scare, see E. B. Duffee, Jr., “The National States Rights Party” Ph.D. diss., (University of Maryland, 1968). For NSRP rhetoric, see The Thunderbolt, in The Right Wing Collection of the University of Iowa Libraries, 1918-1977, [Microfilm] (Glenn Rock NJ, 1978) Reel 40, A40a. For the FBI's view of the NSRP, see FBI Monograph, “National States Rights Party,” August 1966, 3-4, 16; FBI Monograph, “WHITE EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS, Part II, National States Rights Party,” May 1970, 1-3.

[328] Identified individuals included Charles Riddlehoover, former UFKKKK officer Willie Eugene Wilson, former UKA ECs Richard Frampton Harley and Robert Quaterman, and a former UKA member named Wier (phonetic). Chairman of the Hollywood chapter, Harley was identified as the “#1 man in the NSRP in Florida.”

[329] The exposé aired on September 9, 1967. An estimated audience of 150,000-200,000 viewed the program. After the telecast WKCT received about twice the number of calls as usual for similar programs. The FBI had the film copied, to make it available to patriotic and church groups. “Wayne Ferris Reports, “Thunderbolt on the Right,” available at the University of Georgia Library, Media room; Brennan to Sullivan 7/17/67, 9/11/67, 9/22/67, (Birmingham file); Miami to Director, 6/22/67, 6/27/67, 7/10/67, 8/11/67, 9/1/67, 9/13/67, 9/18/67, 9/26/67, 10/5/67; Director to Miami, 7/7/67, 7/18/67, 9/12/67, 9/22/67, 10/4/67 10/16/67, “Turnpike Crash a Mystery,” Fort Pierce News Tribune, 27 August, 1967..

[330] Miami to Director, 9/26/67, 10/5/67.

[331] “WKCT's States Rights Documentary Stirs Up a Storm,” Miami News, 28 September, 1967; John Powel Editorial, “Sincerely Yours,” Fort Lauderdale Tribune, 28 September, 1967, attached to Miami to Director, 10/5/67.

[332] John Powel Editorial, “Sincerely Yours,” Fort Lauderdale Tribune, 9 September, 1967, attached to Miami to Director, 9/26/67.

[333] This left two chapters, in Hollywood and Jacksonville. Miami to Director, 10/16/67, 12/27/67; Moore to Sullivan, 10/3/67. Rallies in Jacksonville during July-September 1967 had drawn 75-100 people. In Turkey Creek, however, two hundred people and 40 people attended rallies in October 1967, 2/14/68, FBI file 105-12, National States Rights Party, Lazar archive.

[334] Miami to Director, 5/16/66, 5/25/66, 6/21/66; Director to Miami 5/23/66, 5/31/66; Baumgardner to Sullivan, 5/31/66, 10/3/67.

[335] Editorial, “Mike Morgan Says: Klansmen Un-American,” Miami Herald, 1 June 1966.

[336] Miami to Director, 1/23/67, 2/8/67; Director to Miami, 2/3/67; Editorial, “We Don’t Need Them,” Ft Pierce News Tribune, 29 January 1967.

[337] Miami to Director, 10/23/67.

[338] Miami to Director, 10/9/67, 10/23/67, 10/31/67; Director to Miami, 10/4/67, 10/13/67; "FBI Nabs 12 In Dawn Arrests; All Charged In Rights Violence”, Salisbury Post, July 18, 1967; George Bietz "Jackson Temple Bombed; 3 Held" Birmingham News, September 19, 1967; "# Arrested After Synagogue Blast" Birmingham News, September 20, 1967; "FBI Joins Probe of Temple Bombing" Birmingham News, September 20, 1967; Newton ed. KKK Encyclopedia; 259-260; "Mechanic Held In Cross Burning" Miami Herald, May 6, 1967.

[339] Miami to Director, 10/23/67.

[340] Wayne Ferris Reports, “KKK, A Change of Linen: A Report on the Klan and its Image in South Florida,” available at the University of Georgia Library, Media Center.

[341] Miami to Director, 10/23/67;

[342] The other thee officers identified by WKCT were former former grand Titan Charles Riddlehoover, EC Richard Harley, who became chair of the Hollywood NSRP, and an officer named Ronnie Wier. Noah Savage was identified as a member of the group. WKCT had previously identified Quaterman as chair of the Ft. lauderdale NSRP chapter. “Thunderbolt on the Right.”

[343] Miami to Director, 10/23/67.

[344] The records included a liquor violationby Herman Hefflin, and Talbot’s unlawful flight to avoid cross burning, as well as the latter’s several assault and battery charges.

[345] KKK, A Change of Linen.

[346] Ibid.

[347] Miami to Director, 10/31/67.

[348] Miami to Director, 10/31/67. Taylor was also identified as an employee of Young. 11/9/67. See also, Darrell Biland “State to Investigate charges of Illegal Stock Sale Here,” Miami Herald, 29 November 1967.

[349] Miami to Director, 11/9/67.

[350] Miami to Director, 10/31/67, 11/9/67, 12/29/67; “KKK Faces Illegal Stock Sale Probe,” Ft. Lauderdale News, 29 November 1967.

[351] Miami to Director, 12/6/67, 12/29/67.

[352] Miami to Director, 11/29/67, 12/6/67; Domestic Intelligence Division Informative Note 12/6/67; Director to Miami 12/6/67.

[353] Miami to Director, 11/29/67.

[354] Miami to Director, 11/29/67.

[355] Miami to Director, 4/1/68.

[356] Miami to Director, 7/1/68.

[357] Miami to Director, 8/13/68.

[358] Miami to Director, 7/1/68.

[359] Jed Drew "Secret Rules Ignored By Reduced Membership, Klan's Raggle-Taggle Induction Rites Related," 24 April 1969.

[360] Miami to Director, 10/29/67, 11/26/67, 11/27/67, 11/28/67, 11/29/67; Domestic Intelligence Division Informative Notes, 11/27/67; Director to Miami, 11/28/67; Bill Moake "Klansman Held in Slaying of Youth, 19" Ft Lauderdale News, November 27, 1967; Raleigh Mann "Klansman Charged in Soldier's Death" Miami Herald, 28 November, 1967; Oty Cerkin "Klanist Charged In GI's Slaying Pompano Beach Sun Sentinel, 28 November, 1967.

[361] Miami to Director, 11/29/67. In 1969, former Klavern #6 EC Fred Kuehner identified Hunsinger as a militant Klansman whom he had tried to expel from the UKA. Jed Drews, “This is What Klan Man Is Like,” Ft Lauderdale News, 25 April 1969.

[362] Tampa to Director, 11/29/67, 12/29/67, 1/24/68.

[363] It was named the II Covenent Church of Jesus Christ. Jacksonville to Director, 1/12/68.

[364] Jacksonville to Director, 12/30/68.

[365] Jacksonville to Director, 5/20/69 (quote); Director to Jacksonville, 6/4/69.

[366] Jacksonville to Director, 6/26/69.

[367] Director to Birmingham, Atlanta, Charlotte, Jackson, Miami, Richmond, 3/28/68, (Birmingham file); Atlanta to Director, 5/31/68, 5/28/69 Miami to Director, 4/3/68.

[368] Ibid.

[369] Miami to Director, 7/1/68.

[370] Miami to Director, 10/13/66, 12/9/66, 12/30/66; Director to Miami, 10/21/66.

[371] Miami to Director, 10/2/67; Brennan to Sullivan, 6/19/67; Director to Miami, 6/19/67.

[372] Director to Miami 8/1/67, 11/16/67; Miami to Director. 8/2/67, 9/26/67, 11/7/67, 12/4/67.

[373] Miami to Director, 4/2/68, 6/7/68, 10/1/68; Director to Miami, 4/19/68, 7/1/68.

[374] Miami to Director, 6/7/68; Director, to Miami, 7/1/68 .

[375] Tampa to Director, 5/22/68, 6/10/68, 7/1/68; Director to Tampa, 6/13/68.

[376] Tampa to Director, 6/10/68, 7/1/68; FBI Appendix, “Knights of the Invisible Empire (KOIE),” Folder 689, Collection #4630, GBCRF, SHC; David Watson "Area Klansmen Reorganizing To Unify Political Movement" Tampa Tribune, 2 June, 1968.

[377] Tampa to Director, 10/1/68. This Klavern had retained 14 members as of December 1968, down from thirty-one paid members in September, down from forty members in September. Tampa to Director, 1/6/69.

[378] AP, "Ex-Klan Dragon Held in Bombing" Miami Herald, 24 June, 1968; John Davis of Zepher Hills was also held. UPI "20,000 Bond Set in Bombing" Miami Herald, 25 June 1968; Tampa to Director, 1/6/69.

[379] AP, "Ex-Klan Dragon Held.”

[380] Tampa to Director, 7/23/68, 7/23/68; DID note 8/22/68.

[381] Miami to Director, 8/13/68, 9/5/68 and 15 attached newspaper articles, and membership application form and questionnaire; Director to Miami, 8/23/68, 9/11/68; Moore to Sullivan, 9/10/68

[382] Tampa to Director, 10/1/68.

[383] Tampa to Director, 1/6/69, 4/4/69.

[384] Tampa to Director, 6/18/69, 7/11/69; Director to Tampa, 6/27/69.

[385] Tampa to Director, 6/18/69(quote); Director to Tampa 6/27/69.

[386] The KOIE’s other unit, in Ocoee, was in the throws of conflict over whether to join the Orlando Unit#12 UKA. Tampa to Director, 7/11/69.

[387] Tampa to Director, 10/3/69.

[388] Miami to Director, 11/7/67; Director to Miami, 11/17/67.

[389] Miami to Director, 12/27/67, 12/29/67, 4/1/68.

[390] Miami to Director, 4/1/68.

[391] Miami to Director, 2/12/69, 2/25/69, 4/14/69, 4/29/69, 5/20/69, 6/20/69, 7/1/69; Director, to Miami, 2/19/69; Drew "Secret Rules Ignored”; idem, "This Is What Klan Man Is Like”; Moore to Sullivan, 5/5/69.

[392] Miami to Director, 2/12/69.

[393] Tampa to Director, 1/6/69.

[394] Tampa to Director, 4/4/69.

[395] Brown None Can Have Richer Memories, 160-161; Tampa to Director, 5/7/69 (quote).

[396] Tampa to Director, 8/12/69, in COINTELPRO-BLACK NATIONALIST HATE GROUPS, Theoharis ed, COINTELPRO.

[397] Director to Tampa, 5/13/69.

[398] Director to Jacksonville, 2/29/68; Tampa to Director, 12/1/70, 3/2/70, 6/1/70, 6/11/70, 6/19/70, 4/5/71; Director to Tampa, 6/19/70, 4/13/71; Miami to Director, 2/12/68, 10/15/69, 10/23/69, 2/20/70, 4/24/70, 5/28/70, 11/5/70, 11/20/70; Director to Miami, 2/26/68, 4/1/70; Moore to Sullivan, 10/21/69, 1/22/70, COINTEPRO-BLACK NATIONALIST HATE GROUPS.

[399] The crisis culminated in a declaration of a state of emergency in Lake Wales and firebombings in Bartow in 1972. Brown, None Can Have Richer Memories, 181-182; Tampa to Director, 10/3/69, 12/31/69; Director to Tampa 1/21/70, 4-10-70; Tampa to Director 3/31/70.

[400] Tampa to Director, 7/2/69.

[401] Tampa to Director, 10/3/69.

[402] Tampa to Director, 12/31/69; Director to Tampa, 1/21/70, 4/10/70.

[403] Tampa to Director, 6/13/69; Director to Tampa, 7/1/69.

[404] Tampa to Director, 7/11/69.

[405] Tampa to Director, 6/20/69; Director to Tampa, 7/25/69.

[406] Tampa to Director, 12/31/69; Director to Tampa, 1/21/70, 4/10/70.

[407] Director to Miami, 2/19/69; Miami to Director, 4/1/70

[408] Miami to Director, 11/26/69, 2/25/70; Director to Miami, 12/12/69, 2/24/70, 3/12/70.

[409] Tampa to Director, 5/26/70; director to Tampa, 6/10/70.

[410] Tampa to Director, 3/31/70.

[411] Miami to Director, 5/15/70, 6/4/70, 7/1/70; Director to Miami, 5/18/70; Moore to Sullivan, 6/8/70 ; Accused Man Facing Check Counts Gives Up" Fort Lauderdale News, January 6, 1970; Jim Guier "Forged Checks Lead To Arrest of 'Minister'" Fort Lauderdale News, May 27, 1970;

[412] “Skirmishes Close Two Florida Schools,” Birmingham News, 11 February 1970, 28; “Melbourne, Fla., Negroes Rampage With Fire Bombs,” Birmingham News, 28 May 1970, 55; “Miami Negro Areas Again Hear Gunshots,” Birmingham News, 17 June 1970, 2’ “Violence in Miami Continues; Roving Mobs Pelt Police,” Birmingham News, 18 June 1970, 18

[413] Tampa to Director, 3/31/70.

[414] Tampa to Director, 6/30/70.

[415] Director to Miami, 9/15/70; Miami to Director, 9/15/70, 9/30/70, 1/6/71.

[416] Miami to Director, 2/6/70, 2/24/70; Domestic Intelligence Division Informative Note, 4/6/70.

[417] Tampa to Director, 10/26/70.

[418] Tampa to Director, 1/5/71.

[419] Tampa to Director, 3/31/71.

[420] Miami to Director, 2/3/71 (quote), 3/24/71, 3/30/71 ; Director to Miami, 2/18/71.

[421] Tampa to Director, 1/5/71, 3/31/71.

[422] Tampa to Director, 4/29/71.

[423] Tampa to Director, 4/29/71.

[424] Tampa to Director, 5/28/71, UKA-FL Tampa File, Section 10; “Cross Burning In Florida-1975 Style,” US News and World Report, 78:25 23 June 1975, 34; “Terror in the Schools,” Fiery Cross, 8:1, 1973, 7 UG Libraries in regular stacks; “School Violence Spreads,” Fiery Cross, 8:3, 1973, 8; Bill Osinski, Ledger Bureau, “Attack by FBI Alleged,” na nd reprinted in Fiery Cross, 8:5, 7. UG Libraries in regular stacks; Bill Osinski, 'Attack by FBI Alleged' Lake Wales Ledger, reprinted in Fiery Cross, 8:6, 1973, 7, (RWCUIL , 51:F16).

[425] Newton, KKK Encyclopedia, 201; “Klan Blamed for 30 Wooden Crosses Set Ablaze Over Florida,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 15 May 1972, 18; “KKK Recruits Members in Lake Wales Fla.,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 21 February 1975, Section 2, 3; “Cross Burning in Florida-1975 Style,” U.S. News and World Report, 23 June 1975, 34. John Paul Rogers remained UKA Grand dragon through at least 1978. Brown, None Can Have Richer Memories, 182, 200, 222-223.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download