Hung Up on Race

Suspect in the Jordan ambush

A drifter and former member of the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party, he was known for his strong aversion to interracial couples. He was sentenced to life in prison for the August 1980 murders of two black joggers in Salt Lake City. Police also considered him the prime suspect in another shooting that year. Last week Joseph Paul Franklin, 32, was formally charged with the May 1980 ambush of Civil Rights Leader Vernon Jordan in Fort Wayne, Ind.

Jordan, then president of the National Urban League, was severely wounded by rifle fire outside the Marriott Inn as he stepped out of an automobile driven by a white woman. FBI agents reportedly have evidence that Franklin had stayed in two nearby motels around the time of the shooting and later tried to sell a .30-06 rifle, the same type of weapon that fired the bullets wounding Jordan. The rifle has not yet been found. Last week's indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury in Indiana, charges Franklin with violating Jordan's civil rights. If convicted, Franklin, now in the federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill., faces a maximum penalty of a $10,000 fine and an additional ten years in prison.

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