WIZ rd- m ritu ,
gr
"We deli vot ,"he ays.
.. h n John P tterson ran for
go mor w decided on Sun
d y night to put one of his
t me on every other tele-
pho pole in th state of Ala-
am . By Monday morning it
w don What 0 her organize
'twn could do that?"
Tha happened in 1958 when
P tterson ran again t George
w 11 , th n a lib ral-l ning
di trict jud . Wallace had a no
t Ion that identification with th
KJ n ould work against his op
ponent. On campaign swings
cross Alab m he hauled a bed
wi h him nd spoke from th
b ck 0 a truck. "Hey John,
wh are you?" Walla would
t unt, and th n peek b n ath
th bedcovers. "You down there
under the sheets with the
Klan?"
Wallace lost. He vowed never
gain to b "ou egged" and
never was. And, with Klan sup-
po , I' in l n
tion in AI ama.
Th Ku Klux Klan was the
creation of six Confederate vet
erans eight months after the
end of the Civil War,
THEY MET ON Christmas
Eve in 1865 in a one-story brick
1 w office kitty-cornered from
t h courthouse in Pulaski. The
building is still standing.
Th war had left their home
land a smoking ruin, its econ
omy in chaos, its society in
urmoil. Time seemed out of
joint as well. As a granddaugh
t r of one of the six noted in a
1 � ) 4 hi tory. Th n gro consid
«rr- i r m ynonymous with
-quahty." 0 th was that.
Th six concocted sort of
fro rnity. Their aim, they
la i m d, w to put a little scare
1 nt ho e p sumptuous Black
f lk see what happen. No
h rm intend . They devi ed
gh lik costumes of hoods and
h ts and composed a hier- .
hy of scary titl : Dragon ,
;. -cl p , Ti ns and the lik
They named th ir circle of
: ) k for h G k word for
'J r -l " kuklo ,fiddl it into Ku-
Klux' nd for ti Hit rat ion :
Kl n. Thu gan a I t-
nur ff ation for K-words. Lik
Klankr ft.
KJ n
KKK,88