The Strange Tale of How the Klan's Money Went to the NAACP

By Ken Wells

Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

21 October 1993

LAFAYETTE, La. -- When Roger Harris, Grand Dragon of the Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, read the Times of Acadiana last week, it was enough to turn him whiter than a sheet. He learned in the local weekly that $900 of the Klan's money had gone to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Klan's archenemy, Klanwatch.

In twangy understatement, Mr. Harris says: "I have to swallow hard, I really do."

"It may be the first time in history this has ever happened," says Joe Dennis, vice president of the NAACP's Lafayette chapter. "But frankly, we can use the money."

This is, indeed, a story of how the Klan unwittingly donated money to a black scholarship fund and to Klan investigators; how an independent newspaper publisher struck a mischievous blow for freedom of speech; how trying to honor the spirit of the First Amendment often leads down some pretty strange paths.

It's also about how the Klan, in trying to prettify its racist, violent image, is still often caught with its sheets showing.

In the beginning: Stephen C. May, a Louisiana native, used to sell stereos, but he always wanted to own a newspaper. Now he has one: his second, actually, the Times, a general-interest weekly serving this moderately conservative Cajun prairie town of about 100,000. With a circulation of 32,500, the paper mixes investigative reporting with a broad streak of social consciousness. The mix has made the tabloid both profitable and provocative; not long ago, for example, the Times published a five-page spread on the strain that prolonged recession has had on local race relations.

So it wasn't surprising that, in the Times's Oct. 6 issue, Richard Baudouin, the Times's editor, wrote a column chiding local Christian right groups for their efforts to force the new ABC-TV series "NYPD Blue" off the air on local affiliates. To put it in local parlance, the protest turned out to be something of a tempest in a gumbo pot. One station pulled the program's initial episode, then the whole flap died away.

That would have been that, except that Mr. Baudouin, in decrying efforts at censorship by others, noted that the Times practices what it preaches. Among other things, the paper has long had a liberal policy of accepting political advertisements for groups "mainstream and otherwise" with whom it may not agree, he wrote.

That's when the Ku Klux Klan came calling. A man identifying himself as Robert Magee -- and a local Klansman -- strolled into the paper's compact offices downtown here, holding a copy of Mr. Baudouin's column and wanting to know whether the paper actually meant what it said. Mild-mannered, dressed neatly, he insisted on placing an advertisement laying out the platform chapter; free of the flagrant racist epithets of the old Klan, the proposed ad was full of the innuendo of the new. "The White Race is the irreplaceable hub of our Nation," the ad stated. It went on to list a number of things the Klan supported, among them, "Creating a three-tiered school system with white schools, black schools and integrated schools, thus allowing for freedom of choice."

The ad would take up almost a whole page and cost about $900, an unnerved Times employee told Mr. Magee. He pulled out nine $100 bills and laid them on the counter. He asked for a receipt and walked out.

"It's the classic dilemma for any newspaper," says the taciturn, 45-year-old Mr. May, who had just returned from vacation and learned of Mr. Magee's request only a day before the Times's publication deadline last week. By accepting the ad, the Times risked offending its readers -- and many of its staffers -- with "this cleverly toned-down garbage," Mr. May says. On the other hand, he says, the paper's public statements, repugnance to the Klan aside, would have made it hypocritical not to take it.

"We would have drawn the line at racial slurs and epithets," he adds. But "in the end, we came down on the right to know, the idea that it's better to shine a light on these cockroaches than to pretend that they're not there."

Still, Mr. May felt terrible about taking the Klan's money. Then, driving to work and puzzling over the problem, it hit him: "We'll offer the money to the NAACP." Talking it over with Mr. Baudouin, his editor, they decided to include Klanwatch, the investigative arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Birmingham, Ala., organization that tracks white supremacist groups and supplies intelligence to police agencies nationwide. Of course, there was no guarantee that either group would take the money.

"When we first heard the offer, it was shocking in a way," says the NAACP's Mr. Dennis. But the more the group deliberated, the more it came to the conclusion that "it was a great idea," he adds. He characterizes race relations here as "generally not bad" but there are chronic problems -- including the presence of small but active hate groups like the Klan and the National Association for the Advancement of White People -- that require constant monitoring.

Money is a nagging problem. The local NAACP affiliate, with about 1,200 members, had all but exhausted its coffers in a recent successful effort to end alleged housing discrimination on a local college campus, Mr. Dennis adds. So until Mr. May offered the Klan's money, "our scholarship fund was completely broke."

Edward Ashworth, speaking for Klanwatch, says his organization was also delighted to split the Klan windfall with the NAACP. "We didn't like the ad, but we like the outcome," says Mr. Ashworth.

Thus it was that last week, the Times ran the KKK's ad -- unedited, except for the removal of two cartoonish insignias depicting men in white hoods. On a separate page was a signed editorial by Mr. May and his wife, Cherry Fisher May, the paper's co-publisher, explaining how the paper reached its decision, and where the money went.

Almost immediately, the phones started ringing. At least two of the callers issued anonymous threats, one of them to burn down the newspaper's building, says Mr. May. The calls could have been pranks, he adds, but he has nonetheless turned them over to the Lafayette police department.

"Now why on earth would I want to burn down that place?" says the Grand Dragon Mr. Harris, reached by phone in Choudrant, La., a small town about 150 miles north of here. Mr. Magee, the Klan Grand Titan who placed the ad, declined to comment, referring calls to Mr. Harris.

Though the donation of the Klan's money to the NAACP and Klanwatch was galling, Mr. Harris insists that merely getting the ad in the paper was a triumph. He characterizes the modern Klan as mainstream, and a group with its own crosses to bear. Local Klansmen, for example, prefer to place newspaper advertisements because they've found other methods of communicating hazardous. "We used to pass out leaflets, but hell, it's dangerous to stand out on the side of the road. We've been shot at," he says.

Mainstream avowals notwithstanding, Mr. Harris will only part with the above information after posing pre-interview questions to a journalist: "Are you white and are you Christian? Because if you're black or Jewish, it would be like Ulysses S. Grant trying to interview Robert E. Lee."

Some of Mr. Harris's Klan compatriots, meanwhile, don't seem to share his sense of triumph. In a letter to Mr. May received yesterday, a well-known local Klansman, Darrell Flinn, called Mr. May, who is white, a "race traitor." He accused him of donating the Klan's hard-earned money to the "radical NAACP" and "Zionist owned" Klanwatch to "cover up your greed."

All of which makes Mary Lou Campbell, a telemarketing saleswoman for a sister Times publication, the Dandy Dime, feel better about the whole episode. To Ms. Campbell's initial dismay, the Dime also carried a smaller version of the Klan ad as part of the deal. As the person who handled it, she is in line for a commission. This put her in an extremely awkward position -- she is white and her boyfriend is black.

"I couldn't believe we would run this ad," she says. But then she talked to her boyfriend, who in fact thought it was a terrific joke on the Klan. "Now I know what I'm going to do with my Klan commission," Ms. Campbell says. "I'm going to take my black boyfriend out to dinner."

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