The KLAN peaceful??? The KLAN did positive things??? That's sick and anyone who could say that or believe it, is one deceived evil SOB.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/local/11988263.htm Posted on Sun, Jun. 26, 2005
COMMENTARY
When 'good' men go Klan
SOME STILL CLING TO NOTION THAT KKK WASN'T ALL BAD
By Merlene Davis
HERALD-LEADER COLUMNIST
As if it weren't bad enough that we had to endure the long-delayed triple murder trial of former Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen, his defense attorney chose to show how stupid he thinks we are.
Killen's attorney presented, for all to see, former two-term Philadelphia, Miss., Mayor Harlan Majure as a character witness for their client.
Majure said Killen was a "good" man whom he had known for about 50 years. He said he had spoken with Killen at a wake the night the three civil rights workers disappeared from a road in rural Mississippi 41 years ago.
Killen a "good" man?
On cross-examination, the prosecutor asked Majure if he was aware that Killen was a member of the Klan.
Majure said, "No."
Would it have made a difference in his opinion of Killen had he known?
Majure said, "Not necessarily so," adding that the Klan he knew did positive things.
Some of the 200 people in the courtroom gasped.
The prosecutor asked Majure if he knew the Klan beat and murdered people.
Majure said as far as he knew it was a peaceful organization that "did some good things too."
Why would you put a man like that on the stand in defense of your client knowing he would be grilled by the prosecution?
The Klan a peaceful organization?
Please.
At first I simply pushed that silliness out of my mind.
But days later I came across a posting at the Web site of The Neshoba Democrat, the newspaper in Philadelphia, Miss.
It was from Perian Colvin, who said she is Majure's daughter.
In answer to a few harsh comments about Majure, she said her father "is a good (there's that word again) and decent man, a devout Christian, but I doubt you want to hear that."
What Christian would call the Klan peaceful?
Colvin said that had her father been given a chance to fully answer the question as he had intended, we would have heard an explanation of why he considered the Klan peaceful.
"If my dad could have finished his testimony he would have told everybody the Klan did good (again!) things in the 1930's in (Philadelphia). They tried to get white and black men to work and support their families -- not cheat on their wives, etc.," Colvin wrote.
The Klan went after deadbeat dads in the 1930s?
If that is true, and I have no reason to doubt the woman, why would that be her father's image of the KKK, especially after so many horrific murders perpetrated by the Klan in the years since then?
Maybe there was something about the Klan that I didn't know.
Nope. The Klan I know now is the same Klan that Majure grew up with. It's just that the hatred they spewed was never directed at him, but at white Radical Republicans from the north after the Civil War, black people, Jews, Catholics and immigrants.
The KKK got its name from the Greek word "kuklos" which means wheel, circle, or band and the word "clan," which means family.
The first branch of the Klan was established in Pulaski, Tenn., in May 1866. Another local group was formed in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the members were former Confederate Army soldiers, with the first Grand Wizard being Nathan Forrest, a general during the Civil War.
To keep what grip they thought they had in the South from being eroded by Northerners and freed slaves, the men, wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites.
They also targeted immigrants who they thought were voting for the Radical Republicans who were forcing all the changes.
In 1871, a federal grand jury found that the Klan intimidated black people by "breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering."
Nothing about wayward husbands in that summation.
In 1922, a second edition of the Klan organized and grew rapidly gaining elected positions and political power in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine. Membership reached 4 million, making it virtually impossible for any Klansman to be convicted of a crime.
During the World Wars, however, membership declined, coming back in the 1950s with the civil rights movement.
Their main purpose in the Deep South was to keep blacks from voting. In Mississippi, where Majure lived, 42 percent of the population was black in 1960, but only 2 percent was registered to vote.
I'm not seeing evidence of that peaceful organization Majure spoke of. And in such a small town as Philadelphia, Miss., population 7,000, he would have known what his neighbors were up to.
"I told my dad that his friends don't need an explanation, and his enemies won't believe him anyway," Colvin wrote. "If you only knew what a good man he has been all of his life -- ask around you will see ... "
I'm sure Colvin loves her father. I'm pretty sure some of the townsfolk think Majure is a good man.
But protecting a hate-filled domestic terrorist group and painting it prettier than it is or ever was doesn't win high praise from me.
My definition of "good" is a bit different.