Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

KU KLUX KLAN • 367camps throughout the country and some affiliated themselves withthe now-defunct Aryan Nations neo-Nazi group. Louis Ray BeamJr., Grand Dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan, became “ambassadorat large” of the Aryan Nations and heir apparent of Aryan Nationsleader Richard Butler. Another more graphic instance of the greaterterrorist inclinations of younger Klan groups is shown by the roleof Frazier Glenn Miller, former neo-Nazi and leader of the CarolinaKnights of the Ku Klux Klan, in instigating the 3 November 1979massacre of five leftist anti-Klan demonstrators in Greensboro,North Carolina.Attempts to curtail Klan activities through criminal and civil lawsuitscontinue, with a mixed record of success. Miller and membersof his White Patriot Army were arrested in 1986 for conspiracy tomurder Morris Dees, the anti-Klan activist lawyer who later encouragedBeulah Donald to sue the UKA in 1987. Miller’s trial revealedalso his acceptance of $200,000 of stolen funds from The Order terrorists.An attempt, however, to convict Louis Beam and other whitesupremacists associated with the Aryan Nations and Klan groups oncharges of sedition and violations of civil rights laws ended in acquittalof those defendants by the Federal District Court in Fort Smith,Arkansas, in April 1988.On 22 April 1997 the FBI thwarted a conspiracy by four membersof the True Knights, a splinter Klan group, to bomb a natural-gasprocessing plant near Boyd, Texas, and to rob an armored car.On 24 July 1998 the Macedonia Baptist Church, which had beenburned by Klan members in 1995, won a judgment of $37.5 millionagainst the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as well as a$15 million judgment against Horace King, the leader of the SouthCarolina–based Klan group. An earlier federal criminal trial hadsentenced the four original arsonists to imprisonment for up to 12years. Both U.S. federal and state courts have reopened many closedcases of Klan violence and murder, in some cases trying defendantson new charges of civil rights violations in order to avoid violation ofdouble-jeopardy protections in cases where the defendants have previouslybeen tried, but acquitted, in state trials. In Mississippi alonesince 1989, prosecutors have reopened 22 murder cases from the civilrights era, making some 25 arrests and achieving 16 convictions.On 21 August 1998 a Mississippi state jury sentenced the formerleader of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Samuel