Related Research Articles
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. According to historian Fergus Bordewich, the Klan was "the first organized terror movement in American history." Their primary targets at various times have been African Americans, as well as Jews and Catholics.
Andrew Goodman was an American civil rights activist. He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) workers murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan in 1964. Goodman and two fellow activists, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, were volunteers for the Freedom Summer campaign that sought to register African-Americans to vote in Mississippi and to set up Freedom Schools for black Southerners.
Michael Henry Schwerner was an American civil rights activist. He was one of three Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) field workers killed in rural Neshoba County, Mississippi, by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner and two co-workers, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, were killed in response to their civil rights work, which included promoting voting registration among African Americans, most of whom had been disenfranchised in the state since 1890.
The White Patriot Party (WPP) was an American anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, homophobic, white supremacist paramilitary political party which was associated with Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan. It was led by its founder, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., through various organizational incarnations. In the mid-1970s, the organization was founded as the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It was involved in the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when a confrontation between Klansmen, Nazis and communists degenerated into a shootout and a mass shooting which left five people dead and twelve people wounded. The organization became the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1980s and it became the White Patriot Party in 1985.
Byron De La Beckwith Jr. was an American murderer, white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan from Greenwood, Mississippi who murdered the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two trials in 1964 on that charge, with all-white male Mississippi juries, resulted in hung juries. In 1994, he was tried by the state in a new trial, which was based on new evidence. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Edgar Ray Killen was an American Ku Klux Klan organizer who planned and directed the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, three civil rights activists participating in the Freedom Summer of 1964. He was found guilty in state court of three counts of manslaughter on June 21, 2005, the forty-first anniversary of the crime, and sentenced to 60 years in prison. He appealed the verdict, but the sentence was upheld on April 12, 2007, by the Supreme Court of Mississippi. He died in prison on January 11, 2018, at age 92.
The murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner, also known as the Freedom Summer murders, the Mississippi civil rights workers' murders, or the Mississippi Burning murders, were the abduction and murder of three activists in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in June 1964, during the Civil Rights Movement. The victims were James Chaney from Meridian, Mississippi, and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner from New York City. All three were associated with the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) and its member organization, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). They had been working with the Freedom Summer campaign by attempting to register African Americans in Mississippi to vote. Since 1890 and through the turn of the century, Southern states had systematically disenfranchised most black voters by discrimination in voter registration and voting.
United States v. Cecil Price, et al., also known as the Mississippi Burning trial or Mississippi Burning case, was a criminal trial where the United States charged a group of 18 men with conspiring in a Ku Klux Klan plot to murder three young civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi on June 21, 1964 during Freedom Summer. The trial, conducted in Meridian, Mississippi with U.S. District Court Judge W. Harold Cox presiding, resulted in convictions of 7 of the 18 defendants. Another defendant, James Edward Jordan, pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution.
Lawrence Andrew Rainey Sr. was an American police officer and white supremacist who served as Sheriff of Neshoba County, Mississippi, from 1963 to 1968. He gained notoriety for his alleged involvement in the June 1964 murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. He was accused of aiding and abetting members of the Ku Klux Klan in the murders by having his officers keep watch over the men's position in town. Rainey was a member of Mississippi's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and had previously gone to court for the shooting of an unarmed black motorist in 1959.
Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan is a 1975 American two-part made-for-television drama film which dramatizes the events following the 1964 abduction and murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. In this, it is similar in theme to the 1988 movie Mississippi Burning, though some names and details were changed, and both productions pick up the approximate storyline of the 1990 TV-movie Murder in Mississippi.
Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian. He died in prison at the age of 82.
Jerry W. Mitchell is an American investigative reporter formerly with The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. He convinced authorities to reopen many cold murder cases from the civil rights era, his investigations providing the basis for prosecutions, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's Simon Wiesenthal". In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization which is active in the United States. It originated in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Imperial Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi were formed in December 1963, when they separated from the Original Knights of Mississippi after the resignation of Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Roughly 200 members of the Original Knights of Louisiana also joined the White Knights. Within a year, their membership was up to around six thousand, and they had Klaverns in over half of the counties in Mississippi. By 1967, the number of active members had declined to around four hundred. Similar to the United Klans of America (UKA), the White Knights are very secretive about their group.
Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer Sr. was an American civil rights movement leader and president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. He was murdered by the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for his work on recruiting Black Americans to vote.
The United League was an African-American social movement in Northern Mississippi established in 1978, during the height of Ku Klux Klan activity in America. The United League's president and founder, Alfred "Skip" Robinson, was moved to act against Klan activity and police brutality in the turbulent American South. Mr. Robinson was a brick mason by trade, but a charismatic preacher in practice. Through his leadership, the black communities of Northern Mississippi effectively tempered police beatings, organized citywide boycotts, prevented black land and property loss, urged armed defense among its members, and elected local blacks into political office.
Wharlest Jackson was an American civil rights activist who was murdered by a car bomb, with evidence of involvement by a white supremacy organization; it has been an unsolved murder since the 1960s. Jackson served as treasurer of the Natchez, Mississippi branch of the NAACP until his assassination by a car bomb, which was placed on the frame of his truck under the driver-side seat. The bomb exploded at approximate 8 p.m. on February 27, 1967. The explosion occurred when he switched on his turn signal on his way home. The explosion caused serious damage to Wharlest's lower torso and he died at the scene. The scene of his death was six blocks away from the site where he was employed, at Armstrong Rubber and Tire Company.
Birth of a Movement is a 2017 American documentary film produced by Northern Light Productions and based on the book Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights by Dick Lehr. The film tells the story of how, in 1915, Boston-based African American newspaper editor and activist William Monroe Trotter waged a battle against D.W. Griffith's technically groundbreaking but notoriously Ku Klux Klan-friendly film The Birth of a Nation based on the book The Clansman by Thomas Dixon Jr. Birth of a Nation prompted a debate about race relations, media representation, and the power and influence of Hollywood that still continues. The film explores the backdrop to this clash between human rights, freedom of speech, and a changing media landscape.
Kathryn Madlyn Ainsworth was an American Ku Klux Klan terrorist. She was killed by law enforcement in 1968 during her failed assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish Mississippian.
David Cunningham is a Professor and Chair of Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis. His scholarship includes social conflict, race-based hate groups, and social movements.
References
- ↑ NPR. Mississippi Spies Sought To Uphold Segregation. February 17, 2010.
- ↑ Wisconsin Public Radio. The Kathleen Dunn Show.
- ↑ LA Times Review. Spies of Mississippi: Espionage in the heart of Dixie.
- ↑ New York Times. State-Sanctioned Snooping to Keep Progress at Bay.
- ↑ The Horn Book. Five Questions for Rick Bowers.
- ↑ Jewish Book Council. Superman is Jewish.
- ↑ Jewish Book Council. Review.
- ↑ Bnai Brith Magazine. Superman And The “Clan Of The Fiery Cross".
- ↑ "SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI". Kirkus Reviews.
- ↑ "These books hold stories about Martin Luther King, civil rights". Kansas City Star. 11 January 2015.
- ↑ "'Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan' Review". Big Shiny Robot June 25, 2015 Jedi Kermit
- ↑ "Superman: A superhero for civil rights". Washington's Top News. February 23, 2012
- ↑ PBS Independent Lens. Spies of Mississippi.
- ↑ "The Civil Rights Movement & More | Best of Apps & Enhanced Books". School Library Journal
- ↑ AARP. Voices of Civil Rights.