--- "A Brief History" continued
a paid agent and informer of the F.B.I. Klansmen were tried, convicted, and sent to prison for "civil rights" violations on Rowe's perjured testimony. Fifteen years later Rowe was indicted by the State of Alabama for the murder.
Though conclusive proof is not yet available, it appears certain that an F.B.I. agent provocateur also placed the explosive charge beneath the steps of a Baptist church in Montgomery, Alabama, that killed six small pickaninnies on their way to Sunday school. Such federally created media events went a long way toward discrediting the Klan in the eyes of the very people it was seeking to preserve.
D2spite this massive Counter-Intelligence Program (Co.In.Tel.Pro. as it was officially known with the F.B.I.) directed against the Klan in Mississippi, the White Knights were the most successful branch of the Order of the 1960's. No people can look with more pride upon the Ku Klux Klan of their state than the sons and daughters of Mississippi.
Pawns Instead of Kings
In retrospect, things can be seen quite differently than they were by the Klansmen of Mississippi in 1962. Fighting the battle as they saw it then, the vast majority of their efforts were directed against the visible and obvious threats to their culture and way o~ life - the Negro and white-Jewish civil rights "Freedom Riders" (as they were erroneously called). Had the efforts of the Mississippi Klan, as well as those of the Klans in other states, been directed against the less obvious but controlling forces behind this concerted drive against civilization, the outcome might have been different. F.B.I. special agents, federal marshals, Justice Department "monitors" and attorneys, federal registrars, federal troops, apostate white "religious leaders," scalawag politicians, Jewish financiers and organizational leaders, and pseudo-intellectual propagators of the so-called civil rights movement were, unfortunately and regrettably, virtually immune to much needed and deserved punishment. Had these culture distorters and destroyers suffered the righteous indignation of the Mississippi patriots, the powers behind the "civil rights" perversion might have soon considered it too expensive (in terms of their lives) to have continued. In sum, while the tactics used against these perverters were correct, the strategy was incorrect - to the extent that it did not go far enough.
This after-the-battle analysis (the war goes on) is in no way meant to detract from the heroic efforts of the Mississippi Klan. Rather, it is instructional, as in a game of chess - the victory is not won by removing the enemy's pawns. Many years after the battles of the 1960's, when the luxury of time and hindsight are available, many Klansmen, and, embarrassingly, many Klan leaders Continue to make this same error! Those who do not know history or perhaps, as might be the case, do not understand it, are condemned by their ignorance or lack of perceptiveness to repeat its mistakes something the movement can ill-afford.
The third Klan emerging in this era was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, chartered in 1956. For the first fifteen years or so it was a rather nebulous group with most of its strength in Louisiana and Tennessee. With the vacuum left by the suppression of the UKA and the White Knights, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan started emerging as the Klan that could fill the gap.
The Fourth Era
In 1974, James Lindsey, also known as Ed White, the Imperial Wizard of KKK, passed away under what some have described as mysterious circumstances. He was succeeded by David Ernest Duke, Grand Dragon of Louisiana and National Information Director, whom Lindsey-White had designated as his successor.
The Knights under David Duke's leadership became the most progressive Klan of the 1970's. A dynamic personality, coupled with an unmatched ability to present a favorable media image of himself and the Klan, helped to greatly alter the false stereotype of ignorance created by the media over the previous twenty years. Presenting himself to the public as a competent, knowledgeable, and professional racist, he attracted many to his ranks. In addition he was able to pull many of the independent Klans into an alliance with his organization. While some of his tactics of openness and media hype generated controversy within the Klan
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