Crackdown on the Klan

From the South, the robed riders of the Klan came over the border of North Carolina on a hot July night in 1950. A column of 30-odd cars carried the Ku Kluxers through tobacco, cotton, peanut and sweet potato fields, then drove slowly along the streets of Tabor City (pop. 2,028), a sleepy Tarheel town that likes to call itself the "yam capital of the world."

Except for a few blank shots and a wailing of sirens by the Klansmen, nothing much happened on that first ride. But the invaders soon came back again. They set up fiery crosses, and signed up recruits (at $4 a member). Then followed terror. In the space of a year, the robed riders struck more than a dozen times.

A night-riding mob of 40 or 50 beat up a Negro housewife; it was rumored that they were really after her husband for philandering with a white woman. Other floggings were given to Negro and white victims variously charged with wife beating, failure to attend church, drunkenness, disrespect to parents, laziness. Warnings on Klan stationery were sent to many: one woman was told that there was only one man, specifically named, that she was to go out with. If she went out with anybody else, "steps would be taken." It got so, around Tabor City, that everyone polished up his shotgun, and the question "Have you been kluxed?" became understandable English language.

Not everybody took it lying down. Two newspaper editors, for one good instance, were strongly of the opinion that it was still a free country--or ought to be. Tabor City's Tribune, run by Editor Horace Carter, and the neighboring Whiteville News Reporter lashed out against the "infamous marauders." Their editorials began to attract support and outside attention. State and federal agents began investigating. Finally, last week, the FBI cracked down.

Ten Klansmen were hauled in on charges of kidnaping and flogging a white man and a white woman whom they had transported across the state line. The FBI said that the victims were forced to bend over a car fender, then were beaten with a machine belt nailed to a pick handle. Between blows, the victims were made to pray, and listen to sermons and hymn singing from the Klansmen.

It was one of the Federal Government's sharpest attacks yet on the K.K.K. By choosing a clear-cut case of interstate abduction, the FBI can prosecute under the federal Lindbergh law, which provides a maximum penalty of death. Around Tabor City, at least, some of the robed riders were going to learn that the U.S. is not the fascist state they would like to make it.

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