With the calendar having officially downshifted into autumn, it’s time to get ready for all the seasonal festivals that make this time of year such a delight. There’s the Bluff Park Art Show, the Butterbean Festival in Pinson, Kentuck in Northport, and, oh yes, the New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Fall Fest in Adamsville.
Nothing suggests “fall fun” quite like the fragrance of a freshly burned cross.
To be fair to Adamsville, this festival of bigotry is actually planned for a site in nearby Shady Grove, an unincorporated part of Jefferson County. However, when Marissa Mitchell reported the story on ABC 33/40, she said some members of the Adamsville community “are on edge” after hearing about the event, scheduled for Oct. 24-26.
Mr. Michael Nabors said, “It’s almost like a wildfire,” though I think having the Klan in your area for a weekend may be more akin to having fire ants. State Representative Juandalynn Givan admits, “We don’t know if they are coming wearing hoods or on motorcycles or brandishing guns.” My guess is they’ll be wearing T-shirts one size too small, in pickup trucks adorned with hard-to-decipher bumper stickers, and if they brandish anything, it’ll probably be cell phones, as they try to figure out where they took the wrong turn trying to get to the Fall Fest.
I actually used to work next door to the Ku Klux Klan. That was in the early 1970s, when the studios of radio station WJRD were located on University Boulevard in downtown Tuscaloosa, one flight up from a print shop run by a small businessman named Robert Shelton, who also happened to be the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
Viewed through the window of his shop, Shelton looked neither imperial nor wizardly, but like a B.F. Goodrich tire plant worker, which he used to be before becoming a full-time professional bigot. I never saw any actual print work conducted in his shop, or work of any other kind. Every time I glanced in, there were groups of men smoking and talking around a display case in the front that contained Klan knickknacks, such as cigarette lighters emblazoned with Confederate battle flags. For that matter, I never saw any Klan work being done there, though UKA membership at that time numbered in the thousands. The Wizard’s lair was reputedly a place called the Anglo-Saxon Club elsewhere in Tuscaloosa.
The WJRD staff had two counts against it, Klan-wise; it was integrated and it played decadent rock music 24 hours a day. Thus, our unofficial policy for dealing with the racists downstairs was to pretend they weren’t there. That policy was put to the test early one Sunday morning when I came to work to relieve the all-night DJ for what would ordinarily be an uneventful shift.
As I walked past Queen City Avenue, I noticed that University Boulevard was filled with vehicles of various kinds, and some of the intersections downtown were blocked off by police cars and men in paramilitary garb carrying walkie-talkies.
I made it into the station unaccosted, locked the door and ran upstairs. The all-night guy told me the Klan was running war games in the streets. He pulled me into a storage room in the back and pointed out the window. In the alley behind the building, a Winnebago bristling with antennae was parked outside Shelton’s door. We peeked out the front and, sure enough, there was the Invisible Empire rather visibly playing soldier in the streets under the care and protection of the Tuscaloosa cops.
They all disappeared by 7 a.m. There was no mention of any untoward activity in the next day’s paper. When our station’s newsman made some discreet inquiries of the police, he was told no such thing had ever happened on that Sunday morning or any other. To my knowledge, it never did again.
The next time I bumped into the Klan, I was driving through Asheville, North Carolina in the late 1990s. Making my way toward Thomas Wolfe’s house, I noticed traffic slowing to a crawl to accommodate some sort of march. I hadn’t any place to be in a hurry, so I parked to see what sort of kerfuffle might be afoot. In a block or so, I’d caught up with a procession waving signs proclaiming “No Way KKK” and “2 Busy 2 Hate,” noisily en route to confront a Klan rally at one of the pocket parks nearby.
When we arrived, there wasn’t much to confront. I was reminded of the scene in The Blues Brothers when Jake and Elwood ran into “Illinois Nazis.” There might have been 20 Klan sympathizers altogether, counting men, women and children, and the apparent leader had forgotten one of the first rules of mass street action, namely, always make sure your bull horn is louder than their bull horn. Holler as he might, he was easily out shouted by the throngs of tolerant Ashevillians surrounding his meager cadre. This particular manifestation of evil just didn’t represent much of a clear and present danger.
I suspect that the New Empire Knights of the KKK fall into that category. They have a website, for heaven’s sake, and their Imperial Wizard is named Chuck. Though the Anti-Defamation League asserts that the New Empire is indeed an extremist group, a spokesman for the ADL told Fox 6 that it’s unlikely there’ll be any criminal activity connected to this October shindig. How many terrorist groups have to get a burn permit for their meetings? I have a feeling that the tiny crew assembled in Shady Grove might well wind up using their burning cross to roast coneys.
Don’t get me wrong; unreasoning hatred is alive and thriving in these tumultuous times. It’s just that when sociopaths assemble to plot heinous crimes against their fellow citizens, it is unlikely to be at a Fall Fest.
