The Informant

The Informant
Author: Gary May
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2005-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300129998

An FBI’s informant’s role in the murder of a civil rights activist by the KKK is explored in this “suspenseful and vigorously reported” history (Baltimore Sun). In 1965, Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo drove to Alabama to help organize Martin Luther King’s Voting Rights March from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. But after the march’s historic success, Liuzzo was shot to death by members of the Birmingham Ku Klux Klan. The case drew national attention and was solved almost instantly, because one of the Klansman present during the shooting was Gary Thomas Rowe, an undercover FBI informant. At the time, Rowe’s information and testimony were heralded as a triumph of law enforcement. But as Gary May reveals in this provocative book, Rowe’s history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex. Based on previously unexamined FBI and Justice Department Records, The Informant demonstrates that in their ongoing efforts to protect Rowe’s cover, the FBI knowingly became an accessory to some of the most grotesque crimes of the Civil Rights era—including a vicious attack on the Freedom Riders and perhaps even the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. A tale of a renegade informant and a tragically dysfunctional intelligence system, The Informant offers a dramatic cautionary tale about what can happen when secret police power goes unchecked.

Attack on Terror the FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi

Attack on Terror the FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi
Author: Don Whitehead
Publisher: Ishi Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2012-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9784871873390

On June 21, 1964, three young civil rights workers were arrested by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price and taken to the county jail in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Deputy Price released them at 10:00 PM in a conspiracy with members of the Ku Klux Klan. Shortly after their release, the three were overtaken on a rural road by the members of the Klan. They were then beaten and shot and their bodies buried in an earthen dam. It took 44 days for their bodies to be found and those convicted received light sentences. It took another 40 years before the identity of the informant who revealed the whereabouts of the bodies became known. The identity of "the mysterious Mr. X," the informant, was a closely held secret by the US government for 40 years. Journalist finally uncovered his identity: This is one of many books about this infamous incident. This book was made into a movie, Mississippi Burning. There have been so many books, movies, magazine and newspaper articles about this incident that it is not possible to list them all. The court case was retried in 2005 and new convictions obtained in 2007. Several films have dramatized these events. In 1974, a CBS made-for-television movie aired, Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan, co-starring Wayne Rogers and Ned Beatty. This was followed in 1988 by Mississippi Burning, with Willem Dafoe and Gene Hackman; and in 1990 by Murder in Mississippi.

There’s Something Happening Here

There’s Something Happening Here
Author: David Cunningham
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2004
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520246659

Annotation. Drawing upon thousands of pages of primary source documents, Cunningham examines COINTELPRO's surveillance of both right and left-wing social movements in the 1960s-1980s

The FBI and the KKK

The FBI and the KKK
Author: Michael Newton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN:

"This book begins with their first confrontation in 1922, and examines the similarities, covert collaborations and common goals of the FBI and the KKK. The book traces 80 years of parallel development and the conservative attitudes that drew the FBI and the KKK together, especially in the area of civil rights"--Provided by publisher.

Klansville, U.S.A

Klansville, U.S.A
Author: David Cunningham
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199752028

In 'Klansville, U.S.A.', David Cunningham tells the story of the astounding trajectory of the Klan during the 1960s by focusing on the pivotal and under-explored case of the United Klans of America (UKA) in North Carolina. Why the KKK flourished in the Tar Heel state presents a puzzle and a window into the complex appeal of the Klan as a whole.

Black Klansman

Black Klansman
Author: Ron Stallworth
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2018-06-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1250299039

The #1 New York Times Bestseller! The extraordinary true story and basis for the Academy Award winning film BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver. When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective in the history of the Colorado Springs Police Department, comes across a classified ad in the local paper asking for all those interested in joining the Ku Klux Klan to contact a P.O. box, Detective Stallworth does his job and responds with interest, using his real name while posing as a white man. He figures he’ll receive a few brochures in the mail, maybe even a magazine, and learn more about a growing terrorist threat in his community. A few weeks later the office phone rings, and the caller asks Ron a question he thought he’d never have to answer, “Would you like to join our cause?” This is 1978, and the KKK is on the rise in the United States. Its Grand Wizard, David Duke, has made a name for himself, appearing on talk shows, and major magazine interviews preaching a “kinder” Klan that wants nothing more than to preserve a heritage, and to restore a nation to its former glory. Ron answers the caller’s question that night with a yes, launching what is surely one of the most audacious, and incredible undercover investigations in history. Ron recruits his partner Chuck to play the "white" Ron Stallworth, while Stallworth himself conducts all subsequent phone conversations. During the months-long investigation, Stallworth sabotages cross burnings, exposes white supremacists in the military, and even befriends David Duke himself. Black Klansman is an amazing true story that reads like a crime thriller, and a searing portrait of a divided America and the extraordinary heroes who dare to fight back.

When Evil Lived in Laurel: The "White Knights" and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer

When Evil Lived in Laurel: The
Author: Curtis Wilkie
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2021-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1324005769

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year Finalist for the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing. By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black man, he was a farmer, grocery store owner, and two-time president of the Forrest County chapter of the NAACP. He and Medgar Evers founded a youth NAACP chapter in Hattiesburg, and for years after Evers’s assassination Dahmer was the chief advocate for voting rights in a county where Black registration was shamelessly suppressed. This put Dahmer in the crosshairs of the White Knights, with headquarters in nearby Laurel. Already known as one of the most violent sects of the KKK in the South, the group carried out his murder in a raid that burned down his home and store. A year before, Tom Landrum, a young, unassuming member of a family with deep Mississippi roots, joined the Klan to become an FBI informant. He penetrated the White Knights’ secret circles, recording almost daily journal entries. He risked his life, and the safety of his young family, to chronicle extensively the clandestine activities of the Klan. Veteran journalist Curtis Wilkie draws on his exclusive access to Landrum’s journals to re-create these events—the conversations, the incendiary nighttime meetings, the plans leading up to Dahmer’s murder and its erratic execution—culminating in the conviction and imprisonment of many of those responsible for Dahmer’s death. In riveting detail, When Evil Lived in Laurel plumbs the nature and harrowing consequences of institutional racism, and brings fresh light to this chapter in the history of civil rights in the South—one with urgent implications for today.

Klandestine

Klandestine
Author: William H. McIlhany
Publisher:
Total Pages: 255
Release: 1975
Genre:
ISBN: 9780870002953

Terror in the Night

Terror in the Night
Author: Jack Nelson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 306
Release: 1996
Genre: History
ISBN:

A star Newsman's riveting story of the Ku Klux Klan's Campaign to terrorize Mississippi Jews.

Devils Walking

Devils Walking
Author: Stanley Nelson
Publisher: LSU Press
Total Pages: 382
Release: 2016-10-05
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0807164097

After midnight on December 10, 1964, in Ferriday, Louisiana, African American Frank Morris awoke to the sound of breaking glass. Outside his home and shoe shop, standing behind the shattered window, Klansmen tossed a lit match inside the store, now doused in gasoline, and instantly set the building ablaze. A shotgun pointed to Morris’s head blocked his escape from the flames. Four days later Morris died, though he managed in his last hours to describe his attackers to the FBI. Frank Morris’s death was one of several Klan murders that terrorized residents of northeast Louisiana and Mississippi, as the perpetrators continued to elude prosecution during this brutal era in American history. In Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s, Pulitzer Prize finalist and journalist Stanley Nelson details his investigation—alongside renewed FBI attention—into these cold cases, as he uncovers the names of the Klan’s key members as well as systemized corruption and coordinated deception by those charged with protecting all citizens. Devils Walking recounts the little-known facts and haunting stories that came to light from Nelson’s hundreds of interviews with both witnesses and suspects. His research points to the development of a particularly virulent local faction of the Klan who used terror and violence to stop integration and end the advancement of civil rights. Secretly led by the savage and cunning factory worker Red Glover, these Klansmen—a handpicked group that included local police officers and sheriff’s deputies—discarded Klan robes for civilian clothes and formed the underground Silver Dollar Group, carrying a silver dollar as a sign of unity. Their eight known victims, mostly African American men, ranged in age from nineteen to sixty-seven and included one Klansman seeking redemption for his past actions. Following the 2007 FBI reopening of unsolved civil rights–era cases, Nelson’s articles in the Concordia Sentinel prompted the first grand jury hearing for these crimes. By unmasking those responsible for these atrocities and giving a voice to the victims’ families, Devils Walking demonstrates the importance of confronting and addressing the traumatic legacy of racism.