I spent many years in that area including a town that, in the late 70’s, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that the klan might be on street corners on a weekend trying to collect some money. In full regalia. Sort of like the “boot collection” volunteer fireman would do. Yeah, it would make the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Bullshit
And unlike you I was there
The only klan activity I ever saw in Mississippi in the 1970s was at Hardy Jr High in Jackson in early January 1970 when forced busing had just taken effect and a few klan marched out front on Ellis ave and the teachers closed all the blinds
Later in 1976 the Indiana klan came down and marched in Tupelo over a labor disputes at some factory there
A man who worked for my dad as project manager of our pipeline job there turned out to be klan and carried a Thompson class III and attacked an Ole Miss student journalist on camera with his hood off....with an axe handle
The Tupelo paper the Daily Journal
Front page....my dad fired him on the spot
He was from West Virginia....I used to smoke weed and party with him....a Vietnam vet....nobody had any idea
At Oxford and at State late 70s I never saw any klan activity
I was in Oxford 1976-81 and frequented State during the fuzzy buffer period when southern hippies ran State student govt...I knew them
I really dislike when non Mississippians act like the klan was common and had support in the state
The only time the klan was respected in Mississippi was during reconstruction when it could be argued it had a purpose....thst was Wheelers klan to resist occupation
I am 7th generation Mississippian descended from Raspberry Byrd and Pappy Sullivan who founded Sullivan’s Hollow and possibly from Dunbar of Natchez elite
I have personally know. 3 klan members in my whole life and one was from West Virginia as already mentioned and one in Beaumont Texas with whose estranged wife he’d abused I had an affair and one a distant relative via marriage who had allegedly lynched a black rapist in Shubuta Mississippi in the 1920s
I’m sixty and have known 100s of southerners
It ain’t Hollywood and the klan has never been respected by common folk and especially rich folks
And never in big numbers like the Midwest klan of the Wilson era
Why perpetuate canards?
Woman wears a museum forager cap and the south haters rush out to this forum
These threads really show freeperdom in its true nature...not very pretty
What town was that? The only Klan I remember in Mississippi showed up at the state fair for attention, and that had to be mid 80s.