The Klan Unmasked by Kennedy Stetson. Pilgrim David

Author:Kennedy, Stetson.,Pilgrim, David.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780817385750
Publisher: University of Alabama Press

CHAPTER TEN

IN DANIEL'S DEN

“WE'VE got to fix this guy Dan Duke somehow! “Loomis exploded at Columbian headquarters next morning, shaking the latest news story in our faces. “It's his snoopers who arc feeding all this dope to the newspapers, and we've got to put a stop to it! Why don't we stage a meeting in Fairburn—where Duke is Mayor of the town! That would beard Daniel in his den!”

“Damned good idea!” the boys chorused.

So Loomis set the date and ordered a sound-truck to go to beat the bush—to proclaim that the Columbians were coming to “challenge Dan Duke's racial views” in a public meeting on the court-house lawn of his own town.

“Let 'em come!” Duke barked when I told him the news. “I'll grant 'em free speech and even light up the courthouse square for the occasion! I know how to handle these brats! They'll get a reception they won't soon forget!”

“Loomis has more or less ordered me to come along and help hand out Columbian leaflets to the crowd,” I said.

“You'd better stick fairly close to me, then,” Duke said. “You never can tell how a thing like this will turn out. If a scrap breaks out, my friends might rough you up along with the other Columbians.”

“That would be a hell of a note,” I said.

“Well, it won't do for you to duck out, or the Columbians would be through with you. Stay where I can spot you. If trouble comes, I'll have a cop arrest you, and turn you loose later. That way your stock with the Columbians would actually go up, and at the same time I won't have to let any of my people know who you are.”

And so it was arranged.

Several hundred countrymen turned out for the Fairburn affair. I noted the total absence of women and children in the audience, and decided the crowd had come prepared for action.

Burke spoke first.

“Eighty-two years ago on this very court-house lawn,” he began, “our valiant forefathers fought with bullets and bayonets for a noble cause.... We Columbians represent the idealism and racial pride of those warriors of the Confederacy; we aim to carry on the glorious fight. Out aim is to save the South for the white man!”

The first indication that the audience was hostile to the Columbians came when Burke said, looking pointedly at Duke:

“When a man shakes hands with a nigger, we can assume he is in sympathy with the nigger point of view—isn't that right?”

The audience remained ominously silent. Burke repeated his question. The audience still didn't answer, so Burke hurried on.

After Burke, P. M. Adams, one of the Columbians' greybeard adherents, an ex-Shakespearean ham actor currently engaged in peddling baby shoes from door to door, took over the microphone.

The reception given him was even colder than that accorded Burke.

“We don't need you half as much as you need us,” Adams told his audience. “Ninety-five per cent, of the white people in America today are nothing but whited sepulchres who sit idly by

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