In Mississipi: The KKK Suits Up

By Janice Castro

In the room at the Holiday Inn in Tupelo, Miss., there are no towels. But there is a fly swatter with a sign on its handle that reads FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY. A visitor in Tupelo gets told again and again, "This town could be the model for all other Southern towns." On normal Saturday mornings, the main street fills up peaceably with shoppers, black and white, from all over Lee County, plus a sprinkling of reverent tourists looking for Elvis Presley's birthplace.

On this Saturday morning, seven Ku Klux Klansmen are sitting at a table in the Holiday Inn coffeeshop eating grits and scrambled eggs. Wives and children have been put at smaller tables. Out behind the inn, a dozen Mississippi state highway patrolmen are clustered around the trunk of a car, joking and passing out bullets like jelly beans as they draw a day's supply of ammunition. "Did you count 'em? I give you 18, didn't I?" says one. "Now, you know I can't count," comes the reply. One of them tells me they are going to shoot skeet. "Yeah, down at the skeet march," adds another. Every skeet one finds this hilarious.

But the people of Tupelo, torn between sheer incredulity and cold fear, do not find their situation funny. Tupelo (pop. 26,500) managed to tiptoe all the way through the '60s without any civil rights trouble. Ever since spring, though, local blacks have been boycotting stores, first to protest the failure of the city to fire two white policemen accused of beating a black prisoner, then, when the two resigned, to demand more jobs. And here is the Ku Klux Klan threatening a rally and cross-burning outside town on the very day that the United League of North Mississippi, a black civil rights group, has scheduled a protest march. Both groups are headed for the county courthouse. All week little Southern Airway's 18-seat Metros, known locally as "weed eaters," have been pumping in from Memphis and Atlanta, loaded with Klansmen and league supporters from as far away as San Francisco.

In the Waffle House coffeeshop on Gloster Street, Jerry Rice groans, "I think there're a lot of people like me who just can't believe these guys are still running around in sheets. This is 1978." Walter Christian, a local insurance man, grumbles, "Why did they pick Saturday, anyway? Saturday is our busiest shopping day." Most people have a deeper fear. They are pretty sure there will be a shooting. "Life is cheaper down here than in the North," says Mel Blatt, who migrated to Mississippi from New York a few years back. "You don't have to do much to get yourself shot."

Just before noon, 600 blacks step out from the Springhill Missionary Baptist Church on Green Street and head silently for the courthouse, walking three abreast and carrying signs reading SMASH THE KLAN. A police helicopter whirls overhead. The 65-member Tupelo police force is stationed along the route, looking like a seedy version of a TV SWAT team. Most carry 12-gauge pump guns or rifles (some with bayonets), and several big old boys are bulging out of blue bulletproof vests. They look mad. "I walked point for 31 days in a row in Viet Nam," says a young black marcher. "I was tense, but not scared. That's how I feel today."

Meanwhile, down at the auto center, 50 Klansmen are suiting up, clumsily pulling robes and floppy hoods on over their street clothes. Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson, a stocky little man from Denham Springs, La., has arrived in his long gray Chrysler. He likes to tell people it once belonged to President Nixon, and he usually adds regretfully that it is not bulletproof. A shotgun leans against the front seat. Boasts Klansman Gene West of San Antonio: "We've got a whole arsenal of guns here today, all of them concealed."

The Number of KKK members, of course, is secret. No wonder. Most of these Klansmen are older men, and the Klan's recent attempts to pretend that it is a political lobby like any other have been a transparent failure. "Let's face it," Wilkinson later tells me privately. "We had a couple of million members in the '20s, but we haven't got anywhere near that now. We just want to get the same attention from the press that the blacks get."

Finally, 50 robed Klansmen set out for the courthouse, just as the United League is leaving it. Only a few minutes separate them, but it is enough to avoid a confrontation. "It's damned hot in here," one Klansman admits from under his hood. Many marching Klansmen are swinging clubs, and some are carrying Instamatics and snapping pictures of the people, black and white together, packed three deep on the sidewalks. The jewelry store down the street suddenly closes up as the Klansmen approach.

At the courthouse, Mississippi Grand Dragon Douglas Coen, a shipping executive from nearby Saucier, tells the crowd, "The Klan is here today, it was here yesterday, and it will be here tomorrow." Applause. "The Klan will be here forever!" Coen screams, and a few spectators hoot. Wilkinson takes the podium and is saying the KKK is basically a Christian organization when a white man yells, "You symbolize hatred! How can you call yourselves Christians?" Suddenly the crowd rolls forward as several Klansmen rush the heckler. The police grab him quickly. A local newspaperman is arrested too, for taking pictures of the arrest, and both prisoners are whisked off to jail.

The KKK evening rally starts at 7:30 in the auditorium at the edge of town. Police and Klansmen guard the entrance. A country band is playing old standbys (All My Trials, Heartaches by the Number), and every time they play Dixie everyone stands up. Klan ladies in robes are selling hot dogs and Pepsi. Sometimes they sell KKK Tee shirts ($5) and belt buckles ($6), but tonight they simply hand out the KKK gift catalogue ("We have 400 items").

At dark everyone goes outside, where a 25-ft. cross swathed in kerosene-soaked rags stands in a field. Rifle-toting Klansmen guard the perimeter. The others button up the face panels on their hoods. Wilkinson rehearses them, but they are awkward at the ritual. As they wave their arms, they look a bit like high school cheerleaders learning a pom-pom routine. Some cannot see too well through those eyeholes. Slowly they circle the cross, throwing torches at its foot. The flames race upward, and all salute by raising both arms, as if crucified.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.