Candidate With KKK Ties Runs For Congress

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By: The Associated Press

HELENA, Mont. — A former organizer for the Ku Klux Klan says he is running as a Republican for Montana's representative in the U.S. House.

John Abarr says he believes he will fare better than people might expect because of a backlash against President Barack Obama. CONTINUE....

Little-Known Black History Fact: Vernon Dahmer

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Vernon Dahmer was a hero and casualty of the civil rights movement. His efforts in voter registration would eventually lead to his death by the Ku Klux Klan, but helped to pull the community of Hattiesburg, Mississippi together. CONTINUE....

Barbour Backtracks, Says Councils 'Indefensible'

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By: Charles Babington, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a potential Republican presidential candidate, said Tuesday he was not trying to downplay the pain that many endured during the South's segregation era when he defended his home town's 1970 public school integration process. CONTINUE....

Haley Barbour Responds to Critics About Civil Rights Quote

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By: Nsenga Burton

The Clarion-Ledger is reporting that Governor Haley Barbour issued a statement Tuesday denouncing the Citizens Council after facing a barrage of criticism for his description of the whites-only group as "town leaders" who kept the KKK at bay in civil rights-era Yazoo City. Barbour's said: CONTINUE....

Miss. Governor Barbour Praises Civil Rights-Era White Supremacist Citizens Councils

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Eric Kleefeld

Gov. Haley Barbour (R-MS), a potential Republican presidential candidate, has an interesting perspective on the tumults of the civil rights era that swept through his Deep South state.

As Barbour recalls it in a new profile in The Weekly Standard, things weren't so bad in his hometown of Yazoo City, which took until 1970 to integrate its schools (though the final event itself is said to have gone on peacefully). For example, Barbour says that there was no problem of Ku Klux Klan activity in the town -- thanks to the Citizens Council movement, an organization that was founded on the basis of resistance to integration and the promotion of white supremacy. CONTINUE....

Teacher in Trouble After Students Don Klan Robes

A Georgia teacher is on administrative leave and could lose her job after she allowed students to don Ku Klux Klan outfits for a high school class project.

Texas Town Readies for Protests in Dragging Case

By: Jeff Carlton

DALLAS (AP) — Police and residents of an eastern Texas town are bracing for dueling protests between black and white extremists over a prosecutor's decision to drop murder charges against two white men accused in the death of a black friend who was run over by a vehicle and dragged beneath it.

The protests Tuesday in Paris are expected to pit members of the New Black Panthers and Ku Klux Klan against one another. Others, including members of the Nation of Islam and a local group, the Concerned Citizens for Racial Equality, also will take part.

Texas Town Readies for Protests in Dragging Case....

Philadelphia Mississippi Elects First Black Mayor

By: Michael H. Cottman

James Young, a Pentecostal minister and self-described “country boy,” choked back tears while talking about his place in history as the first black mayor of Philadelphia, Mississippi, an infamous town where members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three civil rights workers in 1964.

"When you've been treated the way we've been treated ... " Young told CNN recently, as he paused to wipe tears from his cheeks. "That's why it's so overwhelming to be a part of this history."

Young told CNN that he still remembers how the Ku Klux Klan tore through his Mississippi neighborhood and how his father once sat on the living room couch cradling a shotgun, prepared to unload on racist intruders.

A Philadelphia native, Young integrated the local elementary school in the 1960s. He was the only black student in his sixth-grade class. And today, Young is mayor of a city that is trying to move beyond its racist past.

Philadelphia Mississippi Elects First Black Mayor....

Reputed Klansman Appeals Murder Convictions

By: Mary Foster, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - (AP) A reputed Ku Klux Klan member serving three life sentences for his role in the 1964 abduction and killings of two black Mississippi teenagers should not have been convicted because the statute of limitations had expired, his lawyer argued Monday.

James Ford Seale was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy in the abductions of Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee, both 19, who disappeared from Franklin County in Mississippi May 2, 1964. Their decomposed bodies were later pulled from the muddy waters of the Mississippi River.

Kathy Nester, Seale's attorney, said Congress imposed a five-year statute of limitations in 1972, in the same act that abolished the death penalty for kidnapping.

Seale was convicted June 14, 2007.

STORY....