Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991 TAG: 9102220626
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By TIM THORNTON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
On the night of Dec. 8, 1966, members of the Klan were bold enough to burn a cross behind the Executive Mansion - and they got away with it. Klan activity had become so brazen that Gov. Mills E. Godwin Jr. decided to meet with Marshall Kornegay, grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, and his deputy in Virginia, Charles Elder.
Remembering the incident years later, Godwin said that he let Kornegay say his piece. Then the governor said his.
"I may have exhibited some displeasure," Godwin recalled, "as I told them of the Virginia law and my own contempt and dislike for their organization and its unlawful practices . . . I added that I intended to utilize, if necessary, our state police and even our National Guard to halt the Klan and to break the back of their activities in Virginia."
After that meeting, according to Godwin, Klan activity gradually declined in the Old Dominion. "To my knowledge," he said, "there has been no revival in Virginia and may it ever so remain."
But what's left of the Klan is trying to revive itself. The Klan claims to have more than 5,000 members in Virginia. Now it's conducting a membership drive in the state. To that end, there have been marches in several Virginia communities in the past several years. Blacksburg was just the latest town to have that dubious honor.
Blacksburg spent months preparing for the Klan's march. The town altered the route the Klan requested, shortening it and keeping it away from the Virginia Tech campus. Blacksburg Town Manager Ron Secrist said the official position was to encourage people to "boycott the actual event so as not to give the Klan an audience." But there was some division about the wisdom of that decision.
"There were two distinct camps," one anti-Klan protester said. "One side supported a boycott and the other felt that staying away would empower the marchers."
Blacksburg Mayor Roger Hedgepeth and Tech President James McComas issued an open letter, urging a boycott. "Hatred is not a spectator sport," they wrote.
The New River Free Press editorialized, "To boycott the march, to turn away and withdraw to the campus or to the shelter of our homes and hand over the streets . . . is to grant power to a group of people that lusts for power and thrives on instilling fear . . . . The `ignore them' strategy is doomed to fail."
On the day of the march, the streets of Blacksburg were nearly empty except for reporters and policemen - about 250 officers from Blacksburg, Radford, Montgomery County and state troopers were on hand to preserve the peace - until shortly before the Klan arrived. By the time the march began, about 500 people lined the streets.
An eight-vehicle convoy brought the Klan into town. The only vehicle that stood out was a white van with "KKK" stenciled on each door. Mounted on top was a Confederate battle flag with "The South Will Rise Again" painted across it.
After donning robes - about half of the marchers wore robes; most wore black jackets or baseball caps with "KKK" across the front - and passing through police checks for weapons, the 30 Klan members gathered in formation, surrounded by a protective circle of state police. Before beginning, the old man with the bullhorn called for the marchers to have "a good peaceful walk like we always do." Then he led them in prayer. As they prayed, a lone voice in the crowd on the sidewalk sang "We Shall Overcome."
Then the Klan marched.
It claimed to have 256 supporters in the crowd - such a precise-sounding figure. If that claim is true, those supporters should be congratulated for camouflaging themselves so well.
The crowd waved anti-Klan and pro-Martin Luther King posters. They taunted the marchers. They chanted "Go Home." They cheered when the marchers finally left.
Between the march and the leaving came the rally. It was hard to hear the speakers. The little bullhorn just couldn't compete with the voices of the anti-Klan demonstrators, but bits and pieces of the speeches got through.
The Klan members accused the anti-Klan demonstrators of being un-American flag-burners. They said the Klan represents what American really stands for. They said "the trash coming out of their mouths" proved the demonstrators were wrong. They told the demonstrators that if not for all the things the Klan opposes, "you wouldn't be like you is today."
The whole thing - march, rally and retreat - took less than a half-hour. "Twenty-two minutes and gone," Blacksburg Police Chief Donald Carey said. "The Klan doesn't have anything to say and they took the time to say it."
"It's kind of humorous, actually," one protester told The Associated Press after the march, "to believe in this day and age these people can accomplish anything by putting on their silly hats and marching."
Maybe. And maybe there is some comfort to be found in the fact that there were only 30 marchers, and that most of them drove in from North Carolina and South Carolina.
But these are people who can pray, as they did at the close of the rally in Blacksburg, for "Jesus Christ to take the hatred out of the hearts" of the people who turned out that day to oppose the Klan - and not see the irony in that request.
These people believe. That is what keeps them from being just a fringe group that dresses funny.
After the cross-burning behind the Executive Mansion and before his meeting with the Grand Dragon, Mills Godwin addressed the Richmond Chapter of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.
He told them: "Men of faith know that throughout history the crimes committed in liberty's name have been exceeded only by those committed in God's name . . . . [T]he forces of oppression, of tyranny, of persecution, and of terror have all come from small beginnings. Many times they have been fed by men who managed to confuse their articles of faith with their personal frustrations. They have grown to monstrous proportions where men of good will have done nothing."
That's a good thing for men of good will to keep in mind.
by CNB