Headline Surfer photos® / This image from a KKK recritment flyer among more than a dozen left in front of homes in New Smyrna Beach's Westside, shows the traditional hood and dress attire.
NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- The Rev. Lorenzo Laws, pastor of the Allen Chapel AME Church is livid. And with good reason: More than a dozen recruiting flyers for the Ku Klux Klan were left in front yards of homes across the street from his church in the predominantly African-American Westside community.
"I am absolutely and totally offended that someone at a time like this would come into this community and distribute this type of literature," Laws said Tuesday.
The Rev. Lorenzo Laws reacts to discovery of recruitment Ku Klux Klan flyers left in front yards near his Allen Chapel AME Church in the predominantly African-Americn Westside conmmunirty of New Smyrna Beach
"I am absolutely and totally offended that someone at a time like this would come into this community and distribute this type of literature," Laws said Tuesday.
"I am absolutely and totally offended that someone at a time like this would come into this community and distribute this type of literature," Laws said Tuesday.
FOX 35 TV of Orlando was the first media outlet to report the incident in which several black families in the area of Sheldon Street and North Myrtle Avenue on Sheldon Street found the pamphlets with the infamous hooded images of the KKK on their front yards in plastic wrap and weighted down with fishing lures so they wouldn't blow away.
North Myrtle Avenue resident Timothy Washington, among four residents who filed reports with the New Smyrna Beach PD, was shell-shocked to find one such pamplet in front of his residence when he woke up Tuesday.
"I looked at it and I thought, wow. Still in this day and age we have that type of hate going on, Washington told the Orlando TV Station, adding, "I think there's still some people that are still living in the old mindset and we all as a people have to get past that in order to make this a better world for our children to live in."
New Smyrna Beach cops gathered up a few of the flyers as evidence, but have no leads as to who they belong to, And though the flyers are clearly offensive, they are nonetheless constitutionally protected free speech, a police official said.
Previous Stories on the NSB Westside:
New Smyrna Beach residents celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday with song, speech and prayer Posted Mon, 2012-01-16 19:55
Editor's Note: The MLK story was among nine stories by Headline Surfer® recogzied as an award-winner in the the 2013 statewide Florida Press contest for excellence in journalism.
FAST FACTS: KKK in Florida
The Klan was first organized in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by ex-Confederate soldiers. The first Imperial Wizard was former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest, who disbanded the Klan in 1869 to avoid government sanctions.
The modern Klan was reborn in 1915, when William J. Simmons, an Alabama physician, led a cross-burning ceremony on Stone Mountain, Ga. An effective promoter, Simmons played on anti-black, anti-Catholic, and anti-Jewish sentiment to build the Klan into a formidable power. Simmons was dethroned as imperial wizard in 1922, by Hiram Wesley Evans, and by 1925, the Klan had an estimated 3 million members nationwide. By 1928, however, membership had shrunk to no more than several hundred thousand. During the Depression, the Klan continued to wither away -- except in Florida, which had an estimated 30,000 members. Jacksonville, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa were the most powerful klaverns.
Although Florida Klansmen continued to terrorize African Americans, they expanded their targets to include union organizers, particularly in the citrus belt from Orlando to Tampa. One of the most notorious Klan incidents in Florida history occurred in Tampa in 1937, when labor organizer Joseph Shoemaker was flogged, castrated, and tarred and feathered. Shoemaker eventually died from his injuries. Ironically, one of nine Klansmen indicted for the murder (although they were all freed) was Edward Spivey, from Orange County, who would later play a role in the 1978 re-investigation of Harry Moore's murder. In 1939, Hiram Evans retired as imperial wizard and was replaced by James A. Colescott, who testified before Congress that Florida was the strongest realm in the nation.
The national Klan was effectively put out of business in 1944, however, when the Internal Revenue Service filed a $685,000 lien against the Klan for back taxes from the 1920's. Colescott sold the Imperial Palace in Atlanta and retired to Miami. The Post-War Revival But in the post-war period, a Klan revival was initiated by Dr. Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor, who formed the Association of Georgia Klan, which spread to Florida and at least six other states. On election night of 1948, the Florida Klan paraded from Lake County to Wildwood, marching through several African American neighborhoods, to show support for Dixiecrat presidential candidate Strom Thurmond and attempt to intimidate black voters. In January 1949, Klansmen held a motorcade through Tallahassee, where newly- inaugurated governor Fuller Warren, a former Klansmen himself, denounced them as "hooded hoodlums and sheeted jerks." After "Doc" Green died in August 1949, the national Klan splintered badly, with new, and extremely violent, organizations springing up across the South. I
n Florida, a plumbing contractor named Bill Hendrix chartered the Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and named himself as its head. The Klan's power grew quickly, particularly in Orange County, where its ranks included prominent lawmen, businessmen, and elected officials: Sheriff Dave Starr was a known Klansmen, as were a county commissioner and the city manager of Winter Park. Apopka and Winter Garden were particularly infested: Apopka's police chief, constable and night patrolman all belonged, as did one constable and the justice of the peace in Winter Garden. One businessman estimated that 75 percent of Apopka's male population belonged.
By 1951, however, the Florida Klan was at a crossroads. Harry T. Moore's Progressive Voters' League had registered 100,000 new black voters in the Democratic Party; NAACP branches were challenging Jim Crow ordinances over the use of public golf courses, swimming pools, and libraries; and the 1951 Florida Legislature passed an anti-mask ordinance by an overwhelming margin. The Klan responded with a rash of cross burnings and floggings from the Florida Panhandle to Miami; Hendrix declared war on "hate groups," including the NAACP, B'nai B'rith, the Catholic church, and the Federal Council of Churches of Christ; and then declared himself a candidate for governor. By the summer, the Klan began trying to roll back progress with sticks of 60 percent dynamite, with so many bombings, or attempted bombings, that the northern press dubbed it "The Florida Terror." The Moore bombing turned out to be the 12th bombing of the year.
The biggest impetus to the growth of the Klan in the South was the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. As the civil rights movement begin to grow in the 1960s, the Klan responded violently to the freedom rides, sit-ins and mass demonstrations. Florida remained a Klan stronghold, particularly in the Jacksonville area.
During the 1970s and '80s, the Klan splintered into competing factions and its membership declined. That trend continued in the 1990s. Today, although its numbers are relatively small, Florida has one of the more active Klans, and its commitment to racial hatred and prejudice has not gone away.
