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In bed with the Ku Klux Klan

Chapter 24

 

 

  

"Yes, the conspiracy is deeper than that, friends. A lot of you didn't want the Panama Canal given away or Bibles and prayers taken out of schools, did you? Did that start in Russia? No, it started all in this country. My friends, this nation is the biggest promoter of communism than any nation under the sun. A whole lot to think about... and most of you are just thinking about them monkeys running around pulling their own tails.

  

  

You are still aggravated and agitated by all them little monkeys running around yelling: "I'm discriminated against, I want that policeman fired, that mayor thrown out..." and all that kind of junk. And it incites you to want to do something. But friends, the conspiracy is deeper than a bunch of wild jungle-infested Ubangi-lipped niggers. And there's three things you can't give them! Absolutely only three things: You can't give a nigger a fat lip, a black eye and a job! (applause) ...

  

 

  

On another occasion we ran these four niggers down and was ready to... to... (indicating rope-lynching) (applause). We caught them in a hayfield, and just when we were ready to launch our missiles towards their burr-head, somebody behind us said, "Hold it, we have them and we thank you for catching them."

  

  

So they took them down and locked them up. And the next morning the mayor came to our official and said: "Sir, we are sorry, but we had to let them go, because I don't want my town torn up." And these niggers jumped up laughing "Ha, Ha, Ha," and just getting hysterical like monkeys jumping and pulling their tails. (laughter)

  

  

Friends, some years ago the Klan was called to Washington to go before the investigating committee - believe it or not - on the assassination of King. They turned this committee over to two, not blacks, I am going to refer to them as niggers, because they squandered five million of your hard-earned tax dollars to come up with an answer to the assassination of King! Well, first of all: You can't assassinate a nigger! (applause) You assassinate a statesman. You assassinate a man of renowned character and ability. You don't assassinate trash!"

  

  

Such lonesome and despairing losers I cannot help but like. Human beings ready to murder what they call trash have through our negative thinking been oppressed with the basic feeling that they themselves are trash. Their unhealed anger and self-contempt gives them a strange categorical need to hate other people both at the top and the bottom of society.

  

  

The Klan alone would not be so dangerous if it were not an infernal symbol of the common rancorous racism among whites, which becomes so destructive when linked up with the more paternalistic racism of liberals for whom the Klan is a moral safety valve.

  

  

Abominable as the Klan ideology is, and so openly turned against the American Creed, it is easy for most Americans to feel morally elevated in comparison and thereby either not question - or directly justify their own racism which in its insidious but massive innocence is far more dangerous for blacks than the Klan's.

  

  

Later the Klan was to do a great service for the American image abroad when Klansmen under the leadership of Virgil Griffin (seen speaking here) killed five people in Greensboro in 1979. For it thus revealed once again that there is no justice for blacks in America. Although the entire world on TV had seen the Klansmen shoot, they were all acquitted in a federal court and the American people either passively accepted it or didn't hear about it.

  

  

But an old black friend of mine, Willina Cannon, who had organized the demonstration against the Klan, was instead put on trial for "murder" based on a peculiar law which makes it a crime to "help create an atmosphere" in which an actual crime takes place. Willina and I had become friends when we found out that we had nearly identical ideas on almost everything. But she refused to invite me home as she had a deep-rooted distrust of anyone white. I didn't understand her then. Today I do.

  

  

Please note:  I wrote the above about the Klan in my book in 1984 when I actually did not know any Klan people.
Thus I make myself guilty of exactly the same prejudice I accuse them of - of judging people without making an effort to enter their lives and background. Since I would fail my job of fighting racism if I preached hate against anybody, I ask you to get a better understanding of the Klan by reading
my conclusions after I got to know them.

  

  

I have even made friends with Virgil Griffin, who was the Klan leader who organized the Greensboro massacre in which the girlfriend of my best friend, Tony Harris, was killed. Here you see me with Virgil Griffin at a secret Klan rally in the woods of North Carolina in 2003, where I asked him out about the Greensboro massacre. In front of the other Klan men he could not show any remorse, but during a private walk with him in the woods he revealed another side of himself.

 

  

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