I HAVE A DREAM by MARTIN LUTHER KING JR

For the script follow the link:

http://www.usconstitution.net/dream.html

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ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND WHITE

ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND WHITE
by Dorothy Parker
[Copyright 1927, © renewed 1955 by Dorothy Parker. Originally appeared in The New Yorker magazine, from The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorthy Parker, Introduction by Brendan Gill. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.]

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The woman with the pink velvet poppies twined round the assisted gold of her hair traversed the crowded room at an interesting gait combining a skip with a sidle, and clutched the lean arm of her host.
""Now I got you!" she said. "Now you can't get away!"
"Why, hello," said her host. "Well. How are you?"
"Oh, I'm finely," she said. "Just simply finely. Listen. I want you to do me the most terrible favor. Will you? Will you please? Pretty please?"
"What is it?" said her host.
"Listen," she said. "I want to meet Walter Williams. Honestly, I'm just simply crazy about that man. Oh, when he sings! When he sings those spirituals! Well, I said to Burton, 'It's a good thing for you Walter Williams is colored,' I said, 'or you'd have lots of reason to be jealous.' I'd really love to meet him. I'd like to tell him I've heard him sing. Will you be an angel and introduce me to him?"
"Why, certainly," said her host. "I thought you'd met him. The party's for him. Where is he, anyway?"
"He's over there by the bookcase," she said. "Let's wait till those people get through talking to him. Well, I think you're simply marvelous, giving this perfectly marvelous party for him, and having him meet all these white people, and all. Isn't he terribly grateful?"
"I hope not," said her host.
"I think it's really terribly nice," she said. "I do. I don't see why on earth it isn't perfectly all right to meet colored people. I haven't any feeling at all about it not one single bit. Burton oh, he's just the other way. Well, you know, he comes from Virginia, and you know how they are."
"Did he come tonight?" said her host.
"No, he couldn't," she said. "I'm a regular grass widow tonight. I told him when I left, 'There's no telling what I'll do,' I said. He was just so tired out, he couldn't move. Isn't it a shame?"
"Ah," said her host.
"Wait till I tell him I met Walter Williams!" she said. "He'll just about die. Oh, we have more arguments about colored people. I talk to him like I don't know what, I get so excited. 'Oh, don't be so silly,' I say. But I must say for Burton, he's a heap broader-minded than lots of these Southerners. He's really awfully fond of colored people. Well, he says himself, he wouldn't have white servants. And you know, he had this old colored nurse, this regular old nigger mammy, and he just simply loves her. Why, every time he goes home, he goes out in the kitchen to see her. He does, really, to this day. All he says is, he says he hasn't got a word to say against colored people as long as they keep their place. He's always doing things for them, giving them clothes and I don't know what all. The only thing he says, he says he wouldn't sit down at the table with one for a million dollars. 'Oh,' I say to him, 'you make me sick, talking like that.' I'm just terrible to him. Aren't I terrible?"
"Oh, no, no, no," said her host. "No, no."
"I am," she said. "I know I am. Poor Burton! Now, me, I don't feel that way at all. I haven't the slightest feeling about colored people. Why, I'm just crazy about some of them. They're just like children, just as easy-going, and always singing and laughing and everything. Aren't they the happiest things you ever saw in your life? Honestly, it makes me laugh just to hear them. Oh, I like them. I really do. Well, now, listen, I have this colored laundress, I've had her for years, and I'm devoted to her. She's really a character. And I want to tell you, I think of her as my friend. That's the way I think of her. As I say to Burton, 'Well, for Heaven's sakes, we're all human beings!' Aren't we?"
"Yes," said her host. "Yes, indeed."
"Now this Walter Williams," she said. "I think a man like that's a real artist. I do. I think he deserves an awful lot of credit. Goodness, I'm so crazy about music or anything, I don't care what color he is. I honestly think if a person's an artist, nobody ought to have any feeling at all about meeting them. That's absolutely what I say to Burton. Don't you think I'm right?"
"Yes," said her host, "Oh, yes."
"That's the way I feel," she said. "I just can't understand people being narrow-minded. Why, I absolutely think it's a privilege to meet a man like Walter Williams. Yes, I do. I haven't any feeling at all. Well, my goodness, the good Lord made him, just the same as He did any of us. Didn't He?"
"Surely," said her host. "Yes, indeed."
"That's what I say," she said. "Oh, I get so furious when people are narrow-minded about colored people. It's just all I can do not to say something. Of course, I do admit when you get a bad colored man, they're simply terrible. But as I say to Burton, there are some bad white people, too, in this world. Aren't there?"
"I guess there are," said her host.
"Why, I'd really be glad to have a man like Walter Williams come to my house and sing for us, some time," she said. "Of course, I couldn't ask him on account of Burton, but I wouldn't have any feeling about it at all. Oh, can't he sing! Isn't it marvelous, the way they all have music in them? It just seems to be right in them. Come on, let's us go on over and talk to him. Listen, what shall I do when I'm introduced? Ought I to shake hands? Or what?"
"Why, do whatever you want," said her host.
"I guess maybe I'd better," she said. "I wouldn't for the world have him think I had any feeling. I think I'd better shake hands, just the way I would with anybody else. That's just exactly what I'll do."
They reached the tall young Negro, standing by the bookcase. The host performed introductions; the Negro bowed.
"How do you do?" he said.

The woman with the pink velvet poppies extended her hand at the length of her arm and held it so for all the world to see, until the Negro took it, shook it, and gave it back to her.
"Oh, how do you do, Mr. Williams," she said. "Well how do you do. I've just been saying, I've enjoyed your singing so awfully much. I've been to your concerts, and we have you on the phonograph and everything. Oh, I just enjoy it!"
She spoke with great distinctness, moving her lips meticulously, as if in parlance with the deaf.
"I'm so glad," he said.
"I'm just simply crazy about that 'Water Boy' thing you sing," she said. "Honestly, I can't get it out of my head. I have my husband nearly crazy, the way I go around humming it all the time. Oh, he looks just as black as the ace of. . . Well. Tell me, where on earth do you ever get all those songs of yours? How do you ever get hold of them?"
"Why," he said, "there are so many different . . ."
"I should think you'd love singing them," she said. "It must be more fun. All those darling old spirituals oh, I just love them! Well, what are you doing, now? Are you still keeping up your singing? Why don't you have another concert, some time?"
"I'm having one the sixteenth of this month," he said.
"Well, I'll be there," she said. "I'll be there, if I possibly can. You can count on me. Goodness, here comes a whole raft of people to talk to you. You're just a regular guest of honor! Oh, who's that girl in white? I've seen her some place."
"That's Katherine Burke," said her host.
"Good Heavens." she said, "Is that Katherine Burke? Why, she looks entirely different off the stage. I thought she was much better-looking. I had no idea she was so terribly dark. Why, she looks almost like . . . Oh, I think she's a wonderful actress! Don't you think she's a wonderful actress, Mr. Williams? Oh, I think she's marvelous. Don't you?"
"Yes, I do," he said.
"Oh, I do, too," she said. "Just wonderful. Well, goodness, we must give someone else a chance to talk to the guest of honor. Now, don't forget, Mr. Williams, I'm going to be at that concert if I possibly can. I'll be there applauding like everything. And if I can't come, I'm going to tell everybody I know to go, anyway. Don't you forget!"
"I won't," he said. "Thank you so much."
"Oh, my dear," she said. "I nearly died! Honestly, I give you my word, I nearly passed away. Did you hear that terrible break I made? I was just going to say Katherine Burke looked almost like a nigger. I just caught myself in time. Oh, do you think he noticed?"
"I don't believe so," said her host.
"Well, thank goodness," she said, "because I wouldn't have embarrassed him for anything. Why, he's awfully nice. Just as nice as he can be. Nice manners, and everything. You know, so many colored people, you give them an inch, and they walk all over you. But he doesn't try any of that. Well, he's got more sense, I suppose. He's really nice. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," said her host."I liked him," she said. "I haven't any feeling at all because he's a colored man. I felt just as natural as I would with anybody. Talked to him just as naturally, and everything. But honestly, I could hardly keep a straight face. I kept thinking of Burton. Oh, wait till I tell Burton I called him 'Mister'!"

CHALLENGING SEGREGATION. KEY EVENTS

Challenging segregation

PLESSY v. FERGUSON (1896)

On June 7, 1892, 30-year-old Homer Plessy was jailed for sitting in the "White" car of the East Louisiana Railroad. Plessy could easily pass for white but under Louisiana law, he was considered black despite his light complexion and therefore required to sit in the "Colored" car. He was a Creole of Color, a term used to refer to black persons in New Orleans who traced some of their ancestors to the French, Spanish, and Caribbean settlers of Louisiana before it became part of the United States. When Louisiana passed the Separate Car Act, legally segregating common carriers in 1892, a black civil rights organization decided to challenge the law in the courts. Plessy deliberately sat in the white section and identified himself as black. He was arrested and the case went all the way to the United States Supreme Court. 

Plessy's lawyer argued that the Separate Car Act violated the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. In 1896, the Supreme Court of the United States heard the case and held the Louisiana segregation statute constitutional. Speaking for a seven-man majority, Justice Henry Brown wrote: "A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races -- has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races. ... The object of the Fourteenth Amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either." Justice John Harlan, the lone dissenter, saw the horrific consequences of the decision. "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. ... The present decision, it may well be apprehended, will not only stimulate aggressions, more or less brutal and irritating, upon the admitted rights of colored citizens, but will encourage the belief that it is possible, by means of state enactments, to defeat the beneficent purposes which the people of the United States had in view when they adopted the recent amendments of the Constitution." The Plessy decision set the precedent that "separate" facilities for blacks and whites were constitutional as long as they were "equal." The "separate but equal" doctrine was quickly extended to cover many areas of public life, such as restaurants, theaters, restrooms, and public schools. The doctrine was a fiction, as facilities for blacks were always inferior to those for whites. Not until 1954, in the equally important Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, would the "separate but equal" doctrine be struck down. -- Richard Wormser

Brown v. Board of Education 

After World War II, the NAACP continued to challenge segregation in the courts. From 1939 to 1961, the NAACP’s chief counsel and director of its Legal Defense and Education Fund was the brilliant African American attorney Thurgood Marshall. After World War II, Marshall focused his efforts on ending segregation in public schools. In 1954 the Supreme Court decided to combine several different cases and issue a general ruling on segregation in schools. One of the cases involved a young African American girl named Linda Brown, who was denied admission to her neighborhood school in Topeka, Kansas, because of her race. She was told to attend an all-black school across town. With the help of the NAACP, her parents then sued the Topeka school board. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional and violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice Earl Warren summed up the Court’s decision when he wrote: “In the field of public education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” 

The Southern Manifesto 

The Brown decision marked a dramatic reversal of the ideas expressed in the Plessy v. Ferguson case. Brown v. Board of Education applied only to public schools, but the ruling threatened the entire system of segregation. Although it convinced many African Americans that the time had come to challenge other forms of segregation, it also angered many white Southerners, who became even more determined to defend segregation, regardless of what the Supreme Court ruled.

Although some school districts in border states integrated their schools in compliance with the Court’s ruling, anger and opposition was a far more common reaction. In Washington, D.C., Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia called on Southerners to adopt “massive resistance” against the ruling. Across the South, hundreds of thousands of white Americans joined citizens’ councils to pressure their local governments and school boards into defying the Supreme Court. Many states adopted pupil assignment laws. These laws created an elaborate set of requirements other than race that schools could

use to prevent African Americans from attending white schools. The Supreme Court inadvertently encouraged

white resistance when it followed up its decision in Brown v. Board a year later. The Court ordered school districts to proceed “with all deliberate speed” to end school segregation. The wording was vague enough that many districts were able to keep their schools segregated for many more years. Massive resistance also appeared in the halls of Congress. In 1956 a group of 101 Southern members of Congress signed the Southern Manifesto, which denounced the Supreme Court’s ruling as “a clear abuse of judicial power” and pledged to use “all lawful means” to reverse the decision. Although the Southern

Manifesto had no legal standing, the statement encouraged white Southerners to defy the Supreme Court.

Crisis in Little Rock 

In September 1957, the school board in Little Rock, Arkansas, won a court order to admit nine African American students to Central High, a school with 2,000 white students. Little Rock was a racially moderate Southern city, as was most of the state of Arkansas. A number of Arkansas communities, as well as the state university, had already begun to desegregate their schools. The governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, was believed to be a moderate on racial issues, unlike many other Southern politicians. Faubus was determined to win re-election, however, and so he began to campaign as a defender of white supremacy. He ordered troops from the Arkansas National Guard to prevent the nine African American students from entering the school. The next day, as the National Guard troops surrounded the school, an angry white mob joined the troops to protest the integration plan and to intimidate the African American students trying to register. Television coverage of this episode placed Little Rock at the center of national attention. Faubus had used the armed forces of a state to oppose the authority of the federal government—the first such challenge to the Constitution since the Civil War. Eisenhower knew that he could not allow Faubus to defy the federal government. After a conference between Eisenhower and Faubus proved fruitless, the district court ordered the governor to remove the troops. Instead of ending the crisis, however, Faubus simply left the school to the mob. After the African American students entered the school, angry whites beat at least two African American reporters and broke many of the school’s windows. The mob came so close to capturing the terrified African American students that the police had to take them away to safety. The mob violence finally pushed President Eisenhower’s patience to the breaking point. Federal authority had to be upheld. He immediately ordered the U.S. Army to send troops to Little Rock. By nightfall 1,000 soldiers of the elite 101st Airborne Division had arrived. By 5:00 A.M. the troops had encircled the school, bayonets ready. A few hours later, the nine African American students arrived in an army station wagon, and they walked into the high school. The law had been upheld, but the troops were forced to remain in Little Rock for the rest of the school year.

The Sit-In Movement

In the fall of 1959, four young African Americans—Joseph McNeil, Ezell Blair, Jr., David Richmond, and Franklin McCain—enrolled at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College in Greensboro. The four freshmen became close friends and spent evenings talking about the civil rights movement. In January 1960, McNeil told his friends that he thought the time had come to take action, and he suggested a sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter in the nearby Woolworth’s department store. “All of us were afraid,” Richmond later recalled, “but we went and did it.” On February 1, 1960, the four friends entered the Woolworth’s. They purchased school supplies and then sat at the lunch counter and ordered coffee. When they were refused service, Blair said, “I beg your pardon, but you just served us at [the checkout] counter. Why can’t we be served at the counter here?” The students stayed at the counter until it closed, then announced that they would sit at the counter every day until they were given the same service as white customers. As they left the store, the four were excited. McNeil recalled, “I just felt I had powers within me, a superhuman strength that would come forward.” McCain was also energized, saying, “I probably felt better that day than I’ve ever felt in my life.”

News of the daring sit-in at the Woolworth’s store spread quickly across Greensboro. The following day, 29 African American students arrived at Woolworth’s determined to sit at the counter until served. By the end of the week, over 300 students were taking part.

Starting with just four students, a new mass movement for civil rights had begun. Within two months, sit-ins had spread to 54 cities in 9 states. Sit-ins were staged at segregated stores, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, and swimming pools. By 1961 sit-ins had been held in more than 100 cities. 

The sit-in movement brought large numbers of idealistic and energized college students into the civil rights struggle. Many African American students had become discouraged by the slow pace of desegregation. Students like Jesse Jackson, a student leader at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College, wanted to see things change. The sit-in offered them a way to take matters into their own hands. 

At first the leaders of the NAACP and the SCLC were nervous about the sit-in movement. They feared that students did not have the discipline to remain nonviolent if they were provoked enough. For the most part, the students proved them wrong. Those conducting sit-ins were heckled by bystanders, punched, kicked, beaten with clubs, and burned with cigarettes, hot coffee, and acid—but most did not fight back. They remained peaceful, and their heroic behavior grabbed the nation’s attention.

SNCC 

As the sit-ins spread, student leaders in different states realized that they needed to coordinate their efforts. The person who brought them together was Ella Baker, the 55-year-old executive director of the SCLC. In April 1960, Baker invited student leaders to attend a convention at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina. At the convention, Baker urged students to create their own organization instead of joining the NAACP or the SCLC. Students, she said, had “the right to direct their own affairs and even make their own mistakes.” 

The students agreed with Baker and established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). They then chose Marion Barry, a student leader from Nashville who later served as mayor of Washington, D.C., to be SNCC’s first chairperson. African American college students from all across the South made up the majority of SNCC’s members, although many whites also joined. 

Between 1960 and 1965, SNCC played a key role in desegregating public facilities in dozens of Southern communities. SNCC also began sending volunteers into rural areas of the Deep South to register African Americans to vote. The idea for what came to be called the Voter Education Project began with Robert Moses, an SNCC volunteer from New York. Moses pointed out that the civil rights movement tended to focus on urban areas. He urged SNCC to fill in the gap by helping rural African Americans. Moses himself went to rural Mississippi, where African Americans who tried to register to vote frequently met with violence. 

Despite the danger, many SNCC volunteers headed to Mississippi and other parts of the Deep South. Several had their lives threatened, and others were beaten. In 1964 local officials in Mississippi brutally murdered three SNCC workers as the workers attempted to register African American voters. 

One SNCC organizer, a former sharecropper named Fannie Lou Hamer, had been evicted from her farm after registering to vote. She was then arrested in Mississippi for urging other African Americans to register, and she was severely beaten by the police while in jail. She then helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and she challenged the legality of the segregated Democratic Party at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.

The Freedom Riders 

Despite rulings outlawing segregation in interstate bus service, bus travel remained segregated in much of the South. In 1961 CORE leader James Farmer asked teams of African Americans and whites to travel into the South to draw attention to Reading Check Reading Check Sit-Ins Fight Segregation African American students challenged Southern segregation laws by demanding equal service at lunch counters. How did the NAACP initially feel about the sit-in movement? History the South’s refusal to integrate bus terminals. The teams became known as the Freedom Riders. 

In early May 1961, the first Freedom Riders boarded several southbound interstate buses. When the buses carrying them arrived in Anniston, Birmingham, and Montgomery, Alabama, angry white mobs attacked them. The mobs slit the bus tires and threw rocks at the windows. In Anniston, someone threw a firebomb into one bus, although fortunately no one was killed. 

In Birmingham the riders emerged from a bus to face a gang of young men armed with baseball bats, chains, and lead pipes. They beat the riders viciously. One witness later reported, “You couldn’t see their faces through the blood.” The head of the police in Birmingham, Public Safety Commissioner Theophilus Eugene (“Bull”) Connor, explained that there had been no police at the bus station because it was Mother’s Day, and he had given many of his officers the day off. FBI evidence later showed that Connor had contacted the local Ku Klux Klan and told them he wanted the Freedom Riders beaten until “it looked like a bulldog got a hold of them.” 

The violence in Alabama made national news, shocking many Americans. The attack on the Freedom Riders came less than four months after President John F. Kennedy took office. The new president felt compelled to do something to get the violence under control.

James Meredith 

As the Freedom Riders were trying to desegregate bus terminals, efforts continued to integrate Southern schools. On the very day John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, an African American air force veteran named James Meredith applied for a transfer to the University of Mississippi. Up to that point, the university had avoided complying with the Supreme Court ruling ending segregated education. 

In September 1962, Meredith tried to register at the university’s admissions office, only to find Ross Barnett, the governor of Mississippi, blocking his path. Although Meredith had a court order directing the university to register him, Governor Barnett stated emphatically, “Never! We will never surrender to the evil and illegal forces of tyranny.” 

Frustrated, President Kennedy dispatched 500 federal marshals to escort Meredith to the campus. Shortly after Meredith and the marshals arrived, an angry white mob attacked the campus, and a fullscale riot erupted. The mob hurled rocks, bottles, bricks, and acid at the marshals. Some people fired shotguns at them. The marshals responded with tear gas, but they were under orders not to fire. 

The fighting continued all night. By morning, 160 marshals had been wounded. Reluctantly Kennedy ordered the army to send several thousand troops to the campus. For the rest of the year, Meredith attended classes at the University of Mississippi under federal guard. He graduated the following August. 

Violence in Birmingham 

The events in Mississippi frustrated Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders. Although they were pleased that Kennedy had intervened to protect Meredith’s rights, they were disappointed that the president had not seized the moment to push for a new civil rights law. When the Cuban missile crisis began the following month, civil rights issues dropped out of the news, and for the next several months, foreign policy became the main priority at the White House. 

Reflecting on the problem, Dr. King came to a difficult decision. It seemed to him that only when violence and disorder got out of hand would the federal government intervene. “We’ve got to have a crisis to bargain with,” one of his advisers observed. King agreed. In the spring of 1963, he decided to launch demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama, knowing they would probably provoke a violent response. He believed it was the only way to get President Kennedy to actively support civil rights. 

The situation in Birmingham was volatile. Public Safety Commissioner Bull Connor, who had arranged for the attack on the Freedom Riders, was now running for mayor. Eight days after the protests began, King was arrested and held for a time in solitary confinement. While in prison, King began writing on scraps of paper that had been smuggled into his cell. The “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” that he produced is one of the most eloquent defenses of nonviolent protest ever written. 

In his letter, King explained that although the protesters were breaking the law, they were following a higher moral law based on divine justice. To the charge that the protests created racial tensions, King argued that the protests “merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive.” Injustice, he insisted, had to be exposed “to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.” ; (See page 1056 for more on “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”)

After King was released, the protests, which had been dwindling, began to grow again. Bull Connor responded with force, ordering the police to use clubs, police dogs, and high-pressure fire hoses on the demonstrators, including women and children. Millions of people across the nation watched the graphic violence on television. Outraged by the brutality and worried that the government was losing control, Kennedy ordered his aides to prepare a new civil rights bill. 

The March on Washington 

Dr. King realized that Kennedy would have a very difficult time pushing his civil rights bill through Congress. Therefore, he searched for a way to lobby Congress and to build more public support. When A. Philip Randolph suggested a march on Washington, King agreed. 

On August 28, 1963, more than 200,000 demonstrators of all races flocked to the nation’s capital. The audience heard speeches and sang hymns and songs as they gathered peacefully near the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. King then delivered a powerful speech outlining his dream of freedom and equality for all Americans:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed . . . that all men are created equal. . . . I have a dream that one day . . . the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood. . . . I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream . . . when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing . . . ‘Free at last, Free at last, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’” 

—quoted in Freedom Bound: A History of America’s Civil Rights Movement 

King’s speech and the peacefulness and dignity of the March on Washington had built momentum for the civil rights bill. Opponents in Congress, however, continued to do what they could to slow the bill down, dragging out their committee investigations and using procedural rules to delay votes. ; (See page 1078 for an excerpt from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.)

The Selma March Even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, voting rights were far from secure. The act had focused on segregation and job discrimination, and it did little to address voting issues. The Twenty-fourth Amendment, ratified in 1964, helped somewhat by eliminating poll taxes, or fees paid in order to vote, in federal (but not state) elections. African Americans still faced hurdles, however, when they tried to vote. As the SCLC and SNCC stepped up their voter registration efforts in the South, their members were often attacked and beaten, and several were murdered. 

Across the South, bombs exploded in African American businesses and churches. Between June and October 1964, arson and bombs destroyed 24 African American churches in Mississippi alone. Convinced that a new law was needed to protect African American voting rights, Dr. King decided to stage another dramatic protest. 

In January 1965, the SCLC and Dr. King selected Selma, Alabama, as the focal point for their campaign for voting rights. Although African Americans made up a majority of Selma’s population, they comprised only 3 percent of registered voters. To prevent African Americans from registering to vote, Sheriff Jim Clark had deputized and armed dozens of white citizens. His posse terrorized African Americans and frequently attacked demonstrators with clubs and electric cattle prods. 

Just weeks after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, for his work in the civil rights movement, Dr. King stated, “We are not asking, we are demanding the ballot.” King’s demonstrations in Selma led to approximately 2,000 African Americans, including schoolchildren, being arrested by Sheriff Clark. Clark’s men attacked and beat many of the demonstrators, and Selma quickly became a major story in the national news. 

To keep pressure on the president and Congress to act, Dr. King joined with SNCC activists and organized a “march for freedom” from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, a distance of about 50 miles (80 km). On Sunday, March 7, 1965, the march began. The SCLC’s Hosea Williams and SNCC’s John Lewis led 500 protesters toward U.S. Highway 80, the route that marchers had planned to follow to Montgomery. As the protesters approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which led out of Selma, Sheriff Clark ordered them to disperse. While the marchers kneeled in prayer, more than 200 state troopers and deputized citizens rushed the demonstrators. Many were beaten in full view of television cameras. This brutal attack, known later as “Bloody Sunday,” left 70 African Americans hospitalized and many more injured. 

The nation was stunned as it viewed the shocking footage of law enforcement officers beating peaceful demonstrators. Watching the events from the White House, President Johnson became furious. Eight days later, he appeared before a nationally televised joint session of the legislature to propose a new voting rights law.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 

On August 3, 1965, the House of Representatives passed the voting rights bill by a wide margin. The following day, the Senate also passed the bill. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 authorized the attorney general to send federal examiners to register qualified voters, bypassing local officials who often refused to register African Americans. The law also suspended discriminatory devices such as literacy tests in counties where less than half of all adults had been allowed to vote. 

The results were dramatic. By the end of the year, almost 250,000 African Americans had registered as new voters. The number of African American elected officials in the South also increased, from about 100 in 1965 to more than 5,000 in 1990. 

The passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 marked a turning point in the civil rights movement. The movement had now achieved its two major legislative goals. Segregation had been outlawed, and new federal laws were in place to prevent discrimination and protect voting rights. 

After 1965 the movement began to shift its focus. It began to pay more attention to the problem of achieving full social and economic equality for African Americans. As part of that effort, the movement turned its attention to the problems of African Americans trapped in poverty and living in ghettos in many of the nation’s major cities.

PS Dear students,

I promised you to publish the key events that we discussed in class. Here you go :)

VIDEO. INSIDE THE NEW KKK

INSIDE THE NEW KU KLUX KLAN

I.Vocabulary

a PTSD - a post-traumatic stress disorder

to dwindle - diminish gradually in size, amount or shape

searing - extremely hot or intense

II. Watch the video for the first time and answer the questions:

• What rituals do the Klansmen enact nowadays?
• Who are the Klansmen?
• In what connection are the two places (Martinsville, VA and Tupelo, MS) mentioned in the video?
• What message are the Klansmen trying to send to the society?
• What are the statistics on the KKK provided by the Southern poverty law center?
• Who is Steven Howard? What opinion does he express on the minority groups in the USA?
• Why do the reporters follow Howard to the remote location?

III. Watch the video again and fill in the missing words:

1. For those of you who think burning crosses and hooded rallies are ... of the ... ... ..., think again. Hate groups in america have ... in the past decade and it may surprise you who is among their ... and what their ... is.
2. And the lights fade, they enact a ritual over a century old, but is fresh and ... as the flame they ... .
3. Klansmen are known as the ... ... for a reason. They thrive in secrecy, almost never permitting ... ... .
4. Over the past four months, "nightline" has been granted rare access to the ... .... Their rituals, their people, their message of ... ... .
5. Many of the Klanspeople we've talked to say Barack Obama has been our single most effective ... ... in the last four, five years.
6. It's dangerous, not so much because a whole ... of Klansmen get together in a room and plan to murder 1,000 people with a bomb so, you know, it's the ... ... characters that get frustrated with their leaders that break away, you know, one day, walk out of their house and start shooting. 
7. When we come back, the burning cross that's ... people for generations. And the ... ... the Klan is sending in the era of a black president. 

THE KKK

HISTORY OF SHAME

The Ku Klux Klan was founded as a “social club” in 1866, in Pulaski, Tennessee, but quickly became a terrorist organization in the aftermath of the Civil War and legislation to free slaves. Dressed in sheets and robes to frighten their victims, Klansmen set out on night raids, destroying crops, burning houses and barns and lynching “uppity” negroes. In 1892 alone 169 blacks were lynched. Mass immigration at the turn of the century and fears that America would be swamped by immigrants provided new impetus for the Klan. By the 1925 it could boast 5 million members and another wave of lynchings, shootings and whippings swept the nation. By this time the Klan has added Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labour to its list of enemies. Counter-attacks by the media, the clergy and an increasing number of politicians put the Klan into decline until its resurgence with the Civil Rights era. The brutal murder of three civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964 prompted a congressional investigation into Klan’s activities. During the 70-s Klan membership sank to its lowest point, but it is now once again on the increase.

On a dark, moonless night in rural Alabama, 30 white-robed and hooded figures move like ghosts across a rough stubble field, occasionally tripping and muttering curses under their breath. Each selects a wooden stake fashioned as a crude torch and dunks the end in a bucket of kerosene before forming a circle around a cross 40ft high and just visible in silhouette against the deep purple sky. One torch is lit and the flame is passed from stake to stake until each figure, eyes glittering in the sockets of their pointed hoods, is holding aloft a bright burning flare. In silent salutation to the cross, the torches are waved up and down in unison, then from side to side. One is applied to the base of the cross and the fire licks quickly up the kerosene-soaked burlap wrapped around the timber. Suddenly it bursts into flames, casting a flickering light over the ground and illuminating a weird and sinister tableau. The robed figures march toward, cast their torches into the blaze, then take several steps backwards before saluting fascist-style, right arms and fingertips outstretched, some shouting “White power!” In an America riven once more by racial tension, the Ku Klux Klan, after years of decline, is back in business.

The largest and oldest hate organization in the United States, the Klan's new line is selling the concept of white supremacy as an attainable ideal. Social and economic pointers indicate that it may be on the brink of a boom, nurtured by a faltering economy, rising unemployment and immigration, the Los Angeles riots and a growing climate of intolerance.

The Klan last prospered during the period of mass immigration in the Twenties and the years of the Depression, when lynchings increased in direct proportion to soaring unemployment. The same worries about immigration and economic hardship that have historically inspired racism are returning to haunt America, where racial and ethnic diversity has increased faster in the past 10 years than at any other time in history.

The outcome is the return of the Klan, the festering of white supremacy and an alarming rise in the incidence of assaults and abuses motivated by race, religion or sexual orientation. Klanwatch, a civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Alabama, says it has identified no fewer than 346 white supremacy groups active in the United States, up from 273 a year previously. Many are linked by ideology and technology, creating a loosely structured movement of considerable and worrying strength. 

Hate crimes, ranging in severity from offensive graffiti to assault and murder are escalating every year across America. New York reported 1110 against blacks and Jews last year. In Oregon the incidence increased by 60 per cent in six months; in Orange County, California, hate crimes quadrupled in four years. There were reports of 101 cross-burnings in 1991, compared with 50 the year before.

The Klan recently scored a significant victory when the Supreme Court ruled that cross-burning was protected under the First Amendment as a form of “free speech”. A Minnesota teenager had been prosecuted under a city ordinance for burning a cross on the front lawn of a black family, but the Supreme Court ruled that the ordinance, banning action likely to cause “anger, alarm or resentment...on the basis of race, colour, creed, religion or gender”, was unconstitutional.

“Many people seem to think that old-style hate groups like the Klan are declining,” says Danny Welch, director of Klanwatch. “Actually, the reverse is true. The number of Klan groups has increased from 69 to 97 in 12 months.”     I

The Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, organizers of the cross-burning ritual in Morgan County, Alabama, is the biggest and fastest-growing of the 28 autonomous Klans in the United States. It is led by Pastor Thom Robb, аn ordained minister of the Baptist church, who is also standing as a Republican candidate for the 29th district of the state legislature in Arkansas in November, where he is unlikely to get much support from the governor, presidential hopeful Bill Clinton. In the Klan hierarchy his rank is Grand Wizard, but he prefers to describe himself, less exotically, as the “national director”.

An accomplished and charismatic speaker, Robb is viewed by civil rights experts as the most dangerous of the new breed of white supremacists because of his communication skills, political ambitions and his impressive ability to cloak the underlying message of hatred and intolerance in an avuncular garb of reason and logic.

The “new” Klan does not hate anyone, says Robb, not blacks, not Asians, not Mexicans, not Jews, not homosexuals. Nor does it condone violence in any form, no, sir! All it seeks to do, he claims, is to promote “equal rights for whites”. Is that so contentious, he asks, at a time when immigration into the United States is running at such a rate that within 50 years whites will be a minority? Is that not legitimate, reasonable cause for concern?

It is a creed that strikes chords with many alienated white citizens who would not formerly have associated themselves with the Klan and its long history of mayhem and terror. But things are different now. Poor whites, resenting what they see as jobs, housing and welfare being handed out to minorities at their expense, are looking for scapegoats and are particularly susceptible to the manifesto of the "new" Klan. Thus it is that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have not only doubled its membership in the past 12 months, according to Robb, but it is the only Klan organization to have successfully broken out of the traditional recruiting grounds in the south, setting up cells in Illinois, Idaho, New Jersey, Maryland, Colorado and California.

Unlike most of the Klans, which still operate in secret, the Knights welcome media attention. Although he will not talk about numbers, Robb says he now receives more inquiries about membership every day than he used to get in a month one year ago. “We have to sell the Klan like any other product, get people to understand what we really are and not what they have read about or heard about. So often the perception is that everybody hates the Klan, but on a one-to-one basis the very same person who says publicly he would never join the Klan might privately be for you.” 

“Robb is a master of media manipulation,” says Dan Levitas of the Center of Democratic Renewal in Atlanta, Georgia, an organization that monitors white supremacist groups. “He has constructed a crafted and successful marketing strategy for the Klan. He understands that the old image of the Klansman brandishing a rope and a gun and yelling nigger all the time, with tobacco juice seeping from the corner of his mouth, is no longer helpful to recruiting. He has, in a totally calculated way, set out to mainstream white supremacy ideology, to market a message that plays on the deep-rooted fears of thousands of white Americans. ”

“The Klan reproduces a code of racism and hate and is able to penetrate and infect society when conditions are right, and conditions are right now, with white attitudes becoming increasingly hostile to ethnic minorities. I believe race relations in the United States are going to continue to worsen and the influence of hate groups is going to increase.”

Grand Wizard Robb lives with his family, all members of the Klan, in a cedar cabin he built with his own hands on a 100-acre lot deep in the Ozark mountains in the Boon County, northern Arkansas. It is approached along a dirt road which winds through an abandoned mining settlement and fords several streams. A few dilapidated trailer homes along the road are still occupied. Their owners shade their eyes and peer suspiciously at strangers in out-of-state cars bouncing along the track, while scrawny chickens peck forlornly in the dust around rusting farm equipment, assorted junk and a variety of broken-down trucks, buses and cars.

Boone County is dry and God-fearing. You cannot buy alcohol but you can praise the Lord everywhere, in any one of hundreds of little churches and chapels. The Robb family belongs to an obscure sect called Christian Identity, which holds that Aryans are the true lost tribe of Israel; in Harrison alone (population 9567), their nearest town, there are three  Christian Identity churches.

Some folk say that if you could buy a drink in Boone County you'd get tourists in, but heck, who wants strangers poking their noses in everywhere? Ask the old men who sit in the shade of the oak trees around the courthouse in Harrison and they'll tell you that people don't take too kindly to strangers in Boone County. They will also tell you they don’t take too kindly to ‘nigrahs’ neither. That’s why Boone County is white and that’s why Thom Robb chose it as an ideal place to live 20 years ago.

Robb is 47, the son of a sometime builder and sales clerk. He grew up in Detroit and Tucson, Arizona, where he met Muriel, his future wife. Married and ordained by the age of 21, he opened his own print shop and began publishing right-wing tracts with a strong bias towards anti-Semitism and white supremacy. The tide of illegal immigrants flooding into Arizona across the Mexican border prompted them to move, in 1971, to Arkansas, where Robb found work in a factory and launched his own newspaper, The Torch, to propagate his increasingly extremist views. In 1979 he joined the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, then led by an aspiring and telegenic Louisiana politician called David Duke.

Duke set the style for the "new" Klan, publicly denouncing violence and racial terrorism while privately espousing both. He toned down inflammatory rhetoric in favour of a more tempered, populist approach and steered the Knights towards political activism and moderation. Yet behind the facade the Knights remained hardcore racists united by a common obsession – white, Christian, homosexual supremacy.

Robb rose quickly through the ranks of the Knights. When Duke stepped down to form the Advancement of White People, he handed over the reins to Don Black, a young hothead who was soon arrested for taking part in a plot, inspired jointly by the Klan and a neo-Nazi group, to overthrow the government of the Caribbean island of Dominica. While in prison, Black entrusted the leadership to Robb and another lieutenant who promptly ousted Black and put themselves in charge. Robb became the Grand Wizard in 1989. He is, he says, a full-time Klan leader, supporting himself and his family (although only in part, since his wife works in a local factory) from subscriptions to his newspaper, voluntary donations and a small stipend from the Klan.

Sitting and talking in the garden – really no more than a small clearing in the woods – of his home in the Ozarks, Robb comes over as the most affable and plausible of men. He answers all questions good naturedly, laughs a lot, and offers apparently rational explanations for his behaviour and beliefs. He could be just another decent husband and father, a regular guy, a scout leader, or a member of the local РТА.

Yet contradictions abound. Tacked to one side of the front door of his house is a typical piece of Americana: a little plaque that says "Welcome friends". Inside, the house is stuffed with hate literature and Klan propaganda.

Robb insists that Christian Identity is simply a shared religious philosophy, rooted in the belief that the Aryans are the true descendants of Israel. It seems harmless enough, if a little far-fetched. Yet Christian Identity also goes under the name of the Aryan Nations, one of the most violent neo-Nazi movements in America. Christian Identity also holds that Jews are the "spawn of Satan", that blacks are subhuman and that only whites will survive an impending worldwide race war.

He professes to advocate "Christian revival and love", the love of family, heritage and culture. Yet his writings, in The Torch and in the Knights' newspaper, the White Patriot, is old-fashioned rhetoric: "We must endorse and support the law of God, which calls for the death penalty to the faggot slime." "I hate Jews. I hate race-mixing Jews. We've let anti-Christ Jews into our country and we've been cursed with abortion, inflation, homosexuality and the threat of war." "When the Negro was under the natural discipline of White authority, White people were safe from Negro abuse and violence...can we really blame the Negro for acting in the savage manner which is his instinct?"

Here is Robb defining, in grotesque parody in the White Parrot, the black man's concept of freedom: "Dat's when A'hs does what A'hs want... Dat's also when A'hs kin have da white girls, da free food stamps..."

The Grand Wizard is far too canny an interviewee to be drawn into such obnoxious discourse during an interview with a foreign journalist. The most he will concede, even then prefaced by the disclaimer that is probably going to sound “awful crude”, is bizarre notion that slavery was a crime inflicted on white people. “Who benefited from slavery? Not us. At least during the time of slavery the blacks earned their keep, but now we give them public housing, food stamps, heat their homes in winter, cool them in the summer, look after them when they are sick, pay for them to have babies. I think the white tax payers in this country have shown more than their share of Christian benevolence towards blacks and do you know, I never hear of any black man standing up and saying thank you.”

On the perceived threat to the future of the white majority in the United States Robb is on surer ground and confident of his figures. "When I was growing up in this country in the Fifties the American population was 92 per cent white. Now we are down to less than 70 per cent. In 50 or 60 years' time the whites are going to be a minority. We think this is a matter of very real, legitimate concern for the future of our people. It's not being paranoid, it’s just a matter of fact – we're being dispossessed of our own land and our own race is in danger of extinction."

How can the Ku Klux Klan avert such a fate? Robb says he would repeal all the civil rights laws forcing people to integrate, because no one, black, brown, yellow or white, really wants to integrate anyway. "Integration has not produced the harmony that the government said it would; it's only produced friction, yet the government acts as if it has some kind of divine mandate written in the heavens that says 'Thou must integrate.' They're experimenting with our blood heritage; I think that's horrifying."

Once the government was off the back of the people, he believes ethnic communities will form naturally because people prefer to be around their own kind, they get along better that way. If that did not work, some kind of "geographical separation" would be necessary. What did this mean? Certain zones designated for certain races? Racial border police? He is not sure how it would be done; it is far away, future generations would be able to work it out. 

He also favours voluntary repatriation of blacks to Africa. "1 see nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying that we should just haul black people across to Africa and drop 'em off on the shore, but I certainly think we should work with all those who want to go back."

All this is explained in genial tones as if it were the most sensible and pragmatic platform imaginable. Only once does Robb expose a raw nerve, when asked about his children. Supposing his daughter, Rachel, now 23 and married, had wanted to date a black man, how would he react? His smile drops. "I would feel," he says slowly, "that she had betrayed me." Would he kick her out? "Absolutely," he replies, without hesitation. What if one of his sons, Nathan, 21, and Jason, 18, turned out to be homosexual? "1 believe homosexuality is a violation of the laws of nature and if either of my sons were homosexual I would consider it an act of treason against everything I believe and everything our people stand for. That son would no longer be welcome in my house; he would no longer be part of our family."

A few minutes' walk from his house, in a sylvan meadow speckled with marigolds and fringed by oak trees, is a campsite where Robb intends to set up a "finishing school" for future Klan leaders, to be called "The Soldiers of the Cross Training Institute". At the moment there exists only a field kitchen, a big marquee, picnic tables and three flagpoles – one for the Stars and Stripes, another for the Confederate battle flag and a third for the white and gold banner of Christian Identity. It looks like a perfect setting for a youth hostel, a base from which apple-cheeked young Americans could set out for healthy hikes through the mountains. But Robb has different ideas – he sees it as a kind of Club KKK, a mecca for ambitious young white supremacists.

Here he intends to run intensive courses for promising Klansmen, teaching them marketing and communication skills, public relations, history and politics. The basic idea is to churn out clones of Duke, his hero. "America has only got one David Duke," he says with a slow smile. "We plan to give America thousands of them." Work is to start soon on building an office, a video production centre, bunkhouses, recreation facilities and lavatories. There will even be a Klan drum and bagpipe marching band, which will use the camp for parade and music practice.

At present the site is used twice a year, for what he calls the "Patriot Day Picnic" in the spring and the Knights' annual congress in the autumn. This year he is expecting some 400 delegates to the congress – about double last year's number.

Robb sees his planned training school as a powerful recruiting tool and an essential element in finally ridding the Klan of what he says is an outdated image, that of night riders on the rampage, shooting and lynching blacks. "We've got to attract bright, positive, intelligent and articulate young people," he says. "Basically, we want people who are already successful in their private lives. We don't want losers joining the Klan.

"We've got our sights set on government. Things can change very quickly in politics – look at what has happened in Russia, Berlin and South Africa. While we are certainly considered as outsiders today, an aberration, by the same token I think that those who oppose us recognize how quickly things can change. Those on the outside today can be on the inside tomorrow."

Robb's dream of the Klan as a respected and accepted political force is the nightmare of civil rights supporters. "Yes, we are very concerned about the Klan," says Tom Halpern of the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors white supremacist groups. "We have to work hard to make sure that people are not hoodwinked by Robb and that they understand the real nature of the Klan – that it is a virulently anti-Semitic and racist organization and always has been, that it is a serious danger, that it attracts to its ranks people who are virtually wedded to the rope and the gun."

It will be several hours before the sun comes up this day in the Ozarks, but Robb and his two sons are already up and about, loading up their green Ford van for the 10-hour drive to Alabama where Robb is to speak at two Klan rallies, in Decatur and Athens. He spends much of his time criss-crossing the country to attend rallies; he has owned the van for only three years, but it has 250,000 miles on the clock. It has a single bumper sticker on the back, "Duke for President", a reminder of the heady days last year when David Duke, having polled a surprising 44 per cent of the vote in the election for governor of Louisiana, briefly announced himself to be a candidate for the White House.

Robb's sons invariably accompany him to Klan rallies. "They love it. You can't beat them away," he says with a grin. Nathan, the elder, works full-time as his father’s assistant; Jason is still at school. They are nice boys – good-looking, well-mannered, forthcoming and friendly. They certainly don't fit the stereotype image of the racist, but they have grown up in the Klan, in all-white Boone County.

On long journeys the boys usually take turns at driving, while Robb works in the back of the van with a mobile telephone and a laptop computer. If ever there is trouble at a rally he can rely on his sons to protect him, but it happens rarely. Once he was hit on the side of the head by a rock, but that was only because he did not duck quickly enough; another time someone took a swing at him with a baseball bat. Usually it's just demonstrators yelling and screaming that they want to kill him, rather than physical violence.

But at Decatur, a little town in north Alabama where he is due to make his first stop, there was serious trouble at a Klan rally a couple of years ago when Klansmen clashed with civil rights demonstrators and a full-scale gun battle broke out. It ended up with the National Guard being called out and the astonished citizens of Decatur witnessing a tank rumbling down their main street.

It is for this reason that the town's police chief has called every possible officer out for tonight's rally, which is due to take place outside the courthouse. At 5 p.m., an hour before it is due to begin, the parking lot in front of the courthouse is milling with law enforcement officers of аll kinds – local police, sheriffs, marshals, drug agents and state investigators. So far, only one Klansman has arrived, a goofy-looking guy with no chin standing on the courthouse steps holding the Stars and Stripes in one hand and the Confederate flag in the other.

Presumably imagining himself a dashing figure in his Klan uniform, he motions his wife and baby daughter out of the way whenever a photographer appears, but there is nothing he can do about his stomach which hangs over his belt, nor his strangely splayed legs which curve outwards from his knees. I ask him why he is carrying the Confederate flag. "To me it is the true flag of the Aryan race," he says, adding helpfully, "that's Aryan with a capital A."

At around 5.30 p.m., Robb's van arrives, leading a small convoy of other vehicles with various bumper stickers, the most favoured being homophobic: "In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Robb's sons, now in uniforms, begin directing the setting up of equipment. Robb eschews a uniform in favour of the corporate look, a well-worn brown suit, striped shirt and tie. By the time all the flags and banners and glowering, Klansmen are in position on the balcony of the courthouse. There are tables set to sell Klan souvenirs – T-shirts with slogans like "Racial Purity Is America's Security", baseball caps, pens, key rings and knives.

The small crowd that has gathered is made up mainly of poor white farmers and blue collar workers, sitting in battered pick-up trunks picking their teeth and swilling cans of soda. A few teenagers have also turned up to demonstrate, but they are told by police that they must have a permit and eventually are persuaded to shut up.

For all the fire and passion that Robb puts into his speech, he could have been delivering the Sermon on the Mount. He learned oratory from fundamentalist preachers and it shows. He strides back and forth on the rostrum, carving the air with his hands and bellowing into a radio microphone, appealing to patriotism and pride and warning of terrible consequences ahead if whites become a minority in America.

Only the Klan was speaking up for whites. "Name me a preacher who stands up and defends the rights of white people. Name me one! Shout his name out so I can hear it! Name me a politician who will stand up and defend the rights of white people. Name me one! How about a school teacher? Or a college professor? Name me one who says I think white people should be proud of who they are. There are none, ladies and gentlemen. THEY HAVE ABANDONED YOU!"

He speaks for half an hour, rarely referring to his notes, and concluding with a promise that Christian revival was coming and all those present could be a part of it, could take a stand for righteousness. "If you do that you'll be given the strength of providence on high, given the courage of He who died on Calvary and America's future can once again take that road from whence she came ... and the future of America will not be dark and dismal, but bright and glorious..."

The crowd manages a few cries of "Amen" and disperses peacefully. More than 20 per cent of Decatur's population is black but none have turned out to protest against the presence of the Klan in their town, because local black community leaders have advised people to stay away, counselling that the best way to deal with the Klan is to ignore it.

It is the same story the following afternoon in Athens, an even poorer town some 20 miles distant. Here a slightly larger crowd – perhaps 200 people – waits in the shade of the shop blinds opposite the courthouse as the Klan sets up its paraphernalia on the courthouse steps. The same goofy guy with the flags is there, still trying to push his wife and child out of the picture, and there is the same heavy police presence, this time with snipers on the rooftops. "I just hope," the police chief mutters under his breath, "this thing gets over quickly and quietly and they will then go away and leave us alone."

So it proves, but not until after Robb has delivered another lengthy speech, again without notes, this time attacking illegal immigration, the free trade agreement and the "November criminals" in Washington. It is an impressive performance. Robb could teach American politicians a thing or two about off-the-cuff public speaking.

That same evening the Klansmen and their wives and children gather on the stubble field in Morgan County for the cross-burning, the highlight of the weekend. In one corner of the field they have set up hay bales for seats, a hotdog and soda stand, another souvenir stall and a loudspeaker system playing country music before the speeches. This time there are no cops present and the Klansmen are talking to their own kind. The speeches arc markedly more inflammatory and greeted with yelps and fascist salutes and shouts of "White power!"

What had started as a seemingly harmless social occasion, faintly reminiscent of a village fete, steadily deteriorates as the night grows darker and the racist demagogy worsens. "Half-breeds" and "non-white mongrels" are now constantly referred to, with contemptuously curled lips. By the time the Klansmen start helping each other into their robes the atmosphere is charged, malevolent. As each dons his pointed hood he falls silent. I try asking one a question, but receive no reply except a cold stare from behind the black eye-sockets in his hood,

Robb had explained earlier how cross-lighting (the term the Klan uses for cross-burning) is actually a deeply Christian ceremony, intended to symbolize the light of Christ dispelling darkness and ignorance. But as the Klansmen trooped out across that field that night, and as the ritual began, and as the hooded figures lit their torches, and as the giant cross burst into flame in the sky, I could only think of the naked terror I would feel if I were standing there and I were black.

GUIDE

Translate the following phrases into English:

• возрождение Клана
• теория превосходства белой расы
• преступление на почве нетерпимости (расовой, религиозной)
• нестабильная экономика
• прогрессирующая безработица
• число нападений и оскорблений
• хорошо образованный и харизматичный оратор
• оправдывать насилие
• обоснованная и разумная причина для беспокойства
• публично осуждать насилие, но негласно его поддерживать
• заклятый расист
• свергнуть правительство
• передать руководство
• отменить закон
• штамповать
• воздерживаться / отказываться от чего-либо
• импровизированные выступления

Match the words with their synonyms:

1. impetus	a) genial, pleasant
2. to escalate	b) unlikely, difficult to believe
3. affable	c) malicious, wicked
4. far-fetched	d) stimulus
5. friction	e) extremely dangerous, harmful
6. virulent	f) to increase
7. malevolent	g) tension

Fill in the correct preposition:

• The KKK quickly became a terrorist organization … the aftermath of the Civil War.

• During the 70-s Klan membership sank … its lowest point, but in the 90-s it was once again … the increase.
• Social and economic pointers indicate that the Klan may be … the brink of a boom.
• Poor whites, resenting what they see as jobs, housing and welfare being handed … … minorities … their expense, are looking … scapegoats.
• Unlike most of the Klans, which still operate … secret, the Knights welcome … media attention.
• On long journeys the boys usually take turns … driving, while Robb works in the back of the van with a laptop computer.