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I'm SOOOOOOOOO glad to see some follow up on this! If I were a young reporter, I'd make a beeline for Grand Dragon Byrd's stompin' grounds and interview every black person over 70 I could find. THEY know who was lynched back then, THEY know where the crosses were burned and THEY know who was behind it. Their memories are long. It's a disgrace that this racist, and in all likelihood, this murdering, cracker has never been called out on this and continues to serve in a leadership role in the demoKKKrat party.

In fairness to Sen. Byrd, noone has ever accused him of participating in a lynching and he has said that he never did. We wanted to know what he did in the Klan and what the Klan was doing in West Virginia during the 1940s when Byrd a member and writing fawning letters about the Klan a few years later.

As the article states, we got no answers except for the incredulous reason given for him joining the Klan.

Byrd said that he joined the Klan for "excitement". Back in those days, the most "exciting" form of family entertainment was lynching. Orchestrated by the Klan, notices would be placed in area newspapers advising the public of the time and place of the planned lynching. On the day of the event, the victim, who had been accused of a crime against a white person, would be taken from the jail, usually with the cooperation of law enforcement personnel, who were usually Klan members themselves. The crowds are spectators were huge, often numbering in the thousands. The victim was then tied to a tree or a post and subjected to a cruel free-for-all of whatever brutality that any spectator might wish to inflict. The victim would be subjected to the common practice of spectators walking up and taking "souvenirs". That is, they would cut off a finger or toe as a memento of the occasion, leaving other spectators to come up individually and take the rest. Ears were also taken in this manner. Another common practice was known as "surgery below the belt" during which other souvenirs were taken. Cries and pleas for mercy by victims were ignored, while families enjoyed picnic lunches with their children, who were routinely taken to these horrible spectacles. The torture usually lasted for several hours, after which the victim was usually burned alive or killed in some other manner, usually in attempt to inflict maximum suffering. During the course of the event, photographers would be busy photographing perpetrators and spectators alongside the victim. These photos were often turned into souvenir postcards, mailed to family and friends.

THIS is the Klan that Bob Byrd joined. It was not the Boy Scouts (which these days gets treated worse than the Klan by liberals).

I submit that it is naive to believe that Byrd could be a member of the Klan and be innocent and ignorant of what was going on. He needs to be held accountable!

For those who are unaware of lynching, I recommend the book "Without Sanctuary" by James Allen. It has graphic photos of actual lynchings, but it's a real eye-opener and offers undisputed truth of what lynchings actually were.