JFK and the Ku Klux Klan

[Terri Williams]

there is a large amount of those who have made their life's journey, or a great part of it getting to the essence of the events regarding President Kennedy's death.

Thank you. That is EXACTLY why I am here. I know something you don't know, so I am here to tell you what I know that you don't know and the records don't show.

Of course you have the option of considering what I say or not. While it could be true that I am just crazy and have made this whole thing up, chances are better that I am telling you the truth. What other possible motive could I have for being on this site, saying the things I am saying? Actually, if you are here to try to uncover some of the truth of what happened that day, then my message is for you and you are VERY lucky I have decided to talk.

Please consider what my telling you might do to me. I do get the feeling that not everyone here is on the same page, however.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Paul Trejo]

Of course you have the option of considering what I say or not. While it could be true that I am just crazy and have made this whole thing up, chances are better that I am telling you the truth. What other possible motive could I have for being on this site, saying the things I am saying? Actually, if you are here to try to uncover some of the truth of what happened that day, then my message is for you and you are VERY lucky I have decided to talk.

Please consider what my telling you might do to me.

Terri, I'm glad that Robert Howard cleared a path for you to spread out. Also, I'm sensitive to the pressures you face if you named your suspect -- or even if some people are worried that you might name him.

I will gently advise, however, that you try to be mindful of the details here -- they are seized upon by FORUM critics.

For example, Robert Patterson, following Tom Brady, founded the White Citizens' Councils (WCC) in Indianola Mississippi on 11 July 1954 with the express provision of non-violence. They explicitly named the KKK as people to keep out. Thus -- from a strict viewpoint, we cannot claim that the KKK founded the WCC.

Your statement that the KKK founded the WCC is nonetheless interesting because (1) the KKK and WCC operated in the same geographical area; (2) the KKK was much older than the WCC; (3) The KKK was much larger than the WCC; and (4) the WCC expressed opinions about white-supremacy that were previously only expressed by the KKK in that geographical area.

It is plausible to speculate that the WCC was the phony face of the KKK. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall thought so. This is not a "crazy" idea. It's only that from a strictly factual point of view, some critics are going to hold you to the details.

Also, I realize that you cannot supply us with proof of the identity of the JFK assassin, as you often explained, and I accept that. That does not extinguish my interest in your anecdotes about the Klan in Terry Mississippi. Many Northerners need an "education to reality" when it comes to 25% of the States in the USA that comprise the South. I think this perspective on the South will help to resolve important points about Dallas on 22 November 1963. (Besides that, you did name Guy Banister, and your claims about his activities in Terry are subject to outside verification.)

Dallas is part of the South. The culture in Dallas 1963 would probably surprise most Americans. The system of white-supremacy cannot be swept under the rug in our JFK research; it should be held out in the open, and I think your thread goes farthest in making this happen than any other FORUM thread I know about.

Your posts remind me of The Citizens' Council by Neil McMillen (1972). This classic book explains much about the perceptions of any citizen who grew up in Terry Mississippi in the 1950's and 1960's. For example, the WCC tended to thrive in Southern counties that had 45% or more Black people in the county. The WCC were especially active in Southern counties with more than 65% of Black people, because in those counties, less than .03% of Black people voted (says McMillen) and the status quo depended on keeping the Blacks from voting.

About 30% of the population of Mississippi was Black, but in Terry and Hind County, the number shot up to 45%. This is a very different culture to live in, statistically. People in the North can hardly understand that culture, because the US national average is 10% Blacks. Wherever the White majority status quo was threatened the most, the WCC rose up the strongest.

By comparison, we might easily apply the same pattern to the KKK. The KKK tends to be strongest in those counties with the highest percentage of Black Americans. (Besides that, McMillen admits that the WCC failed to keep the KKK out of its membership in some counties.)

This explains to me why you said, Terri, that the KKK system of white-supremacy in which you were raised was a "system of apartheid." This South African term reminds us that Democracy was devastating to South African apartheid because the population there was a large Black majority. Thus, the repression required to keep down a Black majority became simply inhumane.

This was the problem of the 1950's and the early 1960's in the South. It didn't so much start with Rosa Parks as with Chief Justice Earl Warren -- the judge who gave us Brown v. The Board of Education on 17 May 1954. Two months later, on 11 July 1954, the first WCC was born in Indianola Mississippi, which had a Black majority.

The KKK was awakened from its slumbers. The NAACP appeared suddenly to keep putting pressure on the South on behalf of Brown v. the Board of Education. MLK became their most effective exponent.

The KKK sorely needed an effective face. But what? The WCC emerged as a white-collar white-supremacist group in Mississippi, and it weilded considerable power. Though 1961, the Mississippi public school system successfully evaded implementing Brown v. The Board of Education. They avoided violence -- instead, they ensured that Black complainers lost their jobs and that banks would refuse their mortgages.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited January 22, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Mark Knight]

I look upon the relationship between the KKK and the WCC as similar to that of the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. While the more radical group drew the bulk of the fire from critics, the aims of both were advanced. So while one group tended to keep a level of separation from the other, they moved their agendas down the road in tandem...ironically, another form of "separate but equal," IMHO.

[Terri Williams]

I look upon the relationship between the KKK and the WCC as similar to that of the movements of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. While the more radical group drew the bulk of the fire from critics, the aims of both were advanced. So while one group tended to keep a level of separation from the other, they moved their agendas down the road in tandem...ironically, another form of "separate but equal," IMHO.

Yes, that is a good comparison, only I do not remember any nice white people really 'ruling the roost' so to speak. Sure maybe they were 'Mayor', but their marching orders came from the Klan and they were not about to go up against them. My grandmother was a member of the WCC and she sure 'nuff did march to their command, as well as helped them get their titles, and 'called them up' when needed. So I cannot verify the accounts of Klan being kept out. Maybe they were not 'members', but they WERE in command.

I am not sure if Terry Consolidated School was integrated 1968 or 69. I went to school in Texas in '68, but the 69-70 school year was my last year at Terry School and it was the first year I remember integration. About the only thing that happened that year that ruffled white folks' feathers, was the election of the Queen and Princes of the year.

Traditionally, the prettiest girls got elected. Everyone knew who the candidates were, but that year there were black students voting as well. Since there were not enough black children in the junior and senior classes to actually nominate and vote for a black girl, the black children nominated the two nicest white girls, who were so ugly no one would have ever thought of them as Prom Queen material. The vote being split, the two nice, but ugly, white girls won. A real upset win. White kids didn't know how to take it or what to say. Couldn't say anything to offend the girls who won, but were visibly shocked when the results were in. I guess "dumbfounded" would describe it. As I remember, it was an awkward "Congratulations" from two pretty white girls.

Edited January 22, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

(Besides that, you did name Guy Banister, and your claims about his activities in Terry are subject to outside verification.)

About the only evidence I can think of, would have to be other eye witnesses who saw him there or Byram, Mississippi that summer. I sure wish some one else who was there would come forward. My neck looks so long out here all alone.

Maybe there is a way to trace Bannister's involvement with Terry, if he signed anything regarding the brand new green Ford pick-up truck he gave our town for free in either '62 or '63.

Actually, my grandmother's exact words were "A nice man named Bannister arranged for the town to get the truck for free".

Edited January 23, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

Also, I am not sure, but maybe someone here knows if the wcc kept a record of membership? And I don't think the Klan ever kept records of their membership that they shared. Does anyone know if there is a record of membership for the Klan? Or would there be one for Terry? (which I kinda doubt)

Oh and my grandmother didn't suddenly join the WCC, she joined sometime in the mid 60's, I think. I am not certain that she was a member of the KKK, she was sympathetic to them and practically worshipped them. She did a lot of genealogical work for them and she did call them about Junior. It was she who got him killed by calling Klan on him, so the WCC were not so far removed from the KKK. I believe the WCC was a front for the KKK.

I had seen a Klan robe in her closet, occasionally when I was young, but I asked my brother (who was not in Terry that year; he was in Gulfport) about the robe and our grandmother's involvement with the Klan.

My brother says the robe was not our grandmother's; it belonged to another relative. He also agrees that the Klan ruled the roost in Terry, not the WCC, that they were just pawns more or less.

I am trying to wrap my head around how you think, that the WCC shunned the KKK? Or do you think that there was an animosity between the two groups? You think the WCC made absolutely sure no Klan members joined? They lived, as did I, surrounded by Klan... in the country. They went to church together. In many cases, they were quite literally in bed together. And as I said, sometimes a WCC member (anyone with a grievance the Klan could handle) would call upon the Klan for services.

Interesting statistic about the ratio of blacks to whites in Hinds county. Sounds about right. And I agree that it added more fuel to the fire on the seats of Klan pants back then, to keep schools segregated, as well as public spaces. They feared a mixing of the races, ultimately.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Paul Trejo]

...I do not remember any nice white people really 'ruling the roost' so to speak. Sure maybe they were 'Mayor', but their marching orders came from the Klan and they were not about to go up against them. My grandmother was a member of the WCC and she sure 'nuff did march to their command, as well as helped them get their titles, and 'called them up' when needed. So I cannot verify the accounts of Klan being kept out. Maybe they were not 'members', but they WERE in command...

Terri, your description here reminds me of the movie, George Wallace (1997), starring Gary Sinise and Angelina Jolie, which also portrays the career of presidential candidate George Wallace as deeply in the debt of the KKK in Alabama -- unable to attain office of any kind without bending to their politics.

Ace Carter, one of the most radical and outspoken of the WCC members, as well as a KKK member, wrote speeches for George Wallace. It was Ace Carter who coined Wallace's famous phrase, "segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!"

In response to Brown v. The Board of Education, evidently, the KKK rose up again with a fresh energy. Evidently they pressed George Wallace into their service. That makes me suspect that they pressed Governor Ross Barnett into their service as well. This would fit into the history of JFK's military action against the rioters at Ole Miss University in 1962.

What information do we have about Governor Ross Barnett and the Mississippi KKK?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 23, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Terri Williams]

What information do we have about Governor Ross Barnett and the Mississippi KKK?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Seriously, Ross Barnett's will was never that far removed from the KKK. I would be very much surprised if he was not Klan. He is one of those white people I just took for granted was in the Klan. Almost all white people in Mississippi back then were behind the Klan and anything the Klan did. But not ALL white people. The only white people who were for Meredith, would not have said a word back then. And those white people would have NEVER been on any White Citizens' Council.

The white people, who were what Northerners would call "good people", would never have joined the Klan nor the WCC. They knew it was all the same bunch.

Ross Barnett and George Wallace held racist views, whether or not there was a Klan. The Klan DID hold much power in the south and beyond I suspect, back in the 50's & 60's.

I was just a small child, but I remember how everything changed in the mid fifties. we could no longer visit the Taylors or the Ransom's and my grandmother made Martha walk to and from work after the mid fifties. I thought it was cruel.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

At Christmas break in 1966, after having lived in Syracuse for about an 18 month stint, we moved back to Terry, Mississippi. My mother had bought all my clothes for the school year and they were to NY standards, mini-skirts. When I started back at Terry School, the principal (a new man whose name I forget, Mr Mc Daniel had been replaced) came up to me and sent me home to change my clothes. So I went home and changed, but I had no other clothes, so he was real mad when I came back to school in an even shorter dress.

He called my mother and told her I had to wear knee length skirts.

She told him she had already bought my wardrobe for the school year and that if he didn't like my clothes HE could buy me some new ones.

So Terry School had to let girls wear shorter skirts.

The Klan had put my mother through hell and she was never afraid of them. She DARED them.

As I have said before, my mother worked for NASA in the sixties. She worked for a company called, Brown Engineering based at Redstone in Huntsville. She had backup I suspect the Klan did not want to go up against. She was not the meek little twenty year old they had tortured in the fifties. She had gone out and made the right friends.

I admired the heck out of my mom and tried to emulate her every action. I was I think 14 or 15 then. The town was in an uproar about the coming integration. That's when I visited my friend to tell her that it would not be so bad. Thats when I found out she was Klan. Scared the hell out of me, that little incident, but I cautiously went ahead and was myself anyway. I just didn't go riding my horse outside of town anymore after that. I realized that all those nice white folks who live along the way, might not do a thing to help me if Joyce's father decided to have his way with me, not that he would have ever raped me, but he would have liked to have tortured and killed me that day I bet. Same with Albert Lee Lewis, the man who kicked me off his property when I was 5. I doubted those nice white folks would do a thing to stop those men from doing anything they wanted, to anyone. There was already plenty of proof that that was true.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Paul Trejo]

...My brother says the robe was not our grandmother's; it belonged to another relative. He also agrees that the Klan ruled the roost in Terry, not the WCC, that they were just pawns more or less.

...I am trying to wrap my head around how you think, that the WCC shunned the KKK? Or do you think that there was an animosity between the two groups? You think the WCC made absolutely sure no Klan members joined? They lived, as did I, surrounded by Klan... in the country. They went to church together. In many cases, they were quite literally in bed together. And as I said, sometimes a WCC member (anyone with a grievance the Klan could handle) would call upon the Klan for services...

Terri, when Tom Brady and Robert Patterson founded the WCC in 1954, two months after the Brown v. The Board of Education ruling, they explicitly wrote that to successfully fight the Supreme Court in Congress they would have to avoid violence.

Since the KKK was infamous for violence, they explicitly mentioned that the KKK must stay out of the WCC, otherwise they would not be able to challenge the Supreme Court successfully in the eyes of the USA.

That is a matter of written history -- it can be found in their first writings.

HOWEVER -- it is also a matter of history that the KKK actually did join the WCC in some counties (usually in those counties where the Black citizens were in the majority) and in those counties the KKK did succeed in taking over those WCC chapters.

Here's one well-known example -- Ace Carter was a WCC leader in Alabama, and after one of his speeches in April, 1956, the WCC crowd went out that night and attacked pop singer Nat King Cole. Other acts of severe violence against Blacks were reported about the Northern Alabama WCC, and one reporter said that the WCC in his county could not be distinguished from "the original KKK".

Here's another example: the Montgomery Alabama WCC's were outraged when 26-year old Autherine Lucy was finally permitted by a local court to register for class at the University of Alabama. The WCC protested so viciously that the court refused to uphold its own ruling.

Some folks in the WCC said that the KKK ruined the WCC chances at establishing white-segregation in public schools in States that refused integration. Others said that the WCC had no chance anyway, because white-supremacy ideals will always attract the KKK.

Besides, the white Baptist Church was divided on the issues -- many white ministers would undermine the KKK (and the WCC) every chance they got. On the other hand, the Black Baptist Church would support the Civil Rights workers almost unanimously.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited January 24, 2013 by Paul Trejo

[Terri Williams]

Yes, our vicar did give sermons that had me snickering under my breath. My grandmother was raised a southern Baptist and had attended the Countyline Baptist Church with her parents, mainly her mother, my Granny (since Papa was not much into church) and I too attended that church when living with my great grandparents. Albert Lee Lewis' family went to that church I think. But after my grandmother traced our family back to the Magna Charta, she became Episcopalian (Anglican), in keeping with her royal bloodline.

A Grand Dragon's family attended the Anglican church as well. I cannot recall ever seeing the patriarch of the family in church, however. His family were distant cousins of ours.

It used to amuse me how many churches and how many different kinds of churches, both black and white, there were in Terry, everything from Holy Rollers, to fundamentalist, to several Methodist, several Baptist and a single, small, Episcopalian church. There were no Catholic churches in Terry. One had to travel to Crystal Springs for that. AND there were NO TEMPLES!.... at least not any I remember.

Not only would the WCC and the Klan have had infighting amongst themselves, but there must have been infighting due to all the denominations in the membership.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

My great grandfather was a kind, wise and gentle man. He would not have harmed a flea, although, just like in To Kill a Mockingbird, he did once shoot a mad dog dead, that was coming up the driveway towards us kids. He also would not have gone against the Klan. He followed the rules, yet in the mid fifties, he did not stop giving the Taylors a ride home and he went to pick them up anytime they were expected at our house. He truly cared for those people and knew the road they would have to travel was riddled with bad news. Albert Lee Lewis knew this about him, I suspect, and if he didn't, he sure found out the day Papa closed the door in his face. Albert Lee Lewis would not have gone up against my great grandfather because of who Papa's nephew was, Senator Sam Ervin. Besides, Papa was a good neighbour, for ANYone to have.

I doubt Papa joined ANY group and he made his displeasure known to anyone in the family who did join the Klan. He was not exactly thrilled with the WCC either and I suspect that is why my grandmother waited till after his death to join.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Terri Williams

[Terri Williams]

"... an Intelligence Report investigation, publicized by national television and newspaper reports, made clear what the CCC really was: a hate group that routinely denigrated blacks as "genetically inferior," complained about "Jewish power brokers," called LGBT people "perverted sodomites," accused immigrants of turning America into a "slimy brown mass of glop,"

:trampo

That is so Mississippi!! What a Klan thing to say!

That was an interesting read about the CCC and how it came about, how it has transformed. I gotta wonder if that is a hard or soft CCC.

Edited January 24, 2013 by Terri Williams

[John Dolva]

Hey, Terri, it's been interesting reading your posts. When I was a kid I read this book about a white guy who tinted his skin and travelled through the south and then wrote about it. Your postings have reminded me of that book. I grew up in sweden through the sixties and there was a lot of news, TV Radio Papers covering the situation in the south from a perspective that supported civil rights. I can't remember seeing any of the garbage fed southerners (and anyone relying on the media of the right for the truth) about the world they lived in. It's only since joining the forum I've become aware just how warped a society it was and how it could maintain itself that way. You lived in a whole other world.

[David Andrews]

Terri, you ought to collect these posts and submit them to literary agents - there is useful story told in them, and there might be a book in this. I would keep it Kennedy/KKK focused, however, and leave California and Vancouver for a later book.