Officials in Alabama are calling for a small-town newspaper editor to resign because of an editorial calling for the Ku Klux Klan to terrorize Washington, D.C. Goodloe Sutton, the editor and publisher of the Democrat-Reporter in Linden, Ala., wrote the editorial titled “Klan needs to ride again” that ran in the paper last week.
“Time for the Ku Klux Klan to night ride again,” read the Feb. 14 editorial. “Democrats in the Republican Party and Democrats are plotting to raise taxes in Alabama. They do not understand how to eliminate expenses when money is needed in other areas. This socialist-communist idealogy [sic] sounds good to the ignorant, and uneducated, and the simple minded-people.”
“Seems like the Klan would be welcome to raid the gated communities up there,” concluded Sutton. “They call them compounds now. Truly, they are the ruling class.”
Melissa Brown, a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser, spoke to Sutton Monday to confirm he had written the editorial and to clarify his comments. “If we could get the Klan to go up there and clean out D.C., we’d all been better off,” Sutton told the Advertiser.
When asked what he meant by “clean out,” Sutton suggested lynching, saying, “We’ll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them.” When the Advertiser asked whether it was appropriate to call for the lynchings of Americans, Sutton was not swayed.
“It’s not calling for the lynchings of Americans,” said Sutton, whose family has owned the newspaper since 1917. “These are socialist-communists we’re talking about. Do you know what socialism and communism is?”
When asked if he recognized the Ku Klux Klan as a violent and racist organization, the Advertiser reported that Sutton compared it to the NAACP. “A violent organization? Well, they didn’t kill but a few people,” Sutton said. “The Klan wasn’t violent until they needed to be.”LINK
As mentioned before the big problem after Civil War was that although the South was militarily defeated they never ever ever accepted in their hearts that they were wrong. And the South's open dedication to white supremacy was taken up or already shared in one form or another by many whites throughout the US.
Or to put it another way, although the purest most distilled form of white supremacy might be found in the former Confederate states, many Midwestern and Border states featured "Sundown towns" in which Black Americans could not exist in after dark on pain of beating, arrest or death. Some Western states and territories went further and simply banned settlement or residence by Blacks altogether.
I think that a lot of the pain and hatred inflicted on Black Americans post 1865 could have been avoided altogether if there (a) had been reparations paid to former slaves "40 acres and a mule" (b) every last single slave owner had been strung up and made to dance at the end of the hangman's rope and (c) there had been robust education seeking to instruct whites that enslaving, raping and terrorizing blacks was wrong and shameful. Unfortunately none of this happened. So in 2019 we are still dealing with the bitter fruit of white supremacist hatred. It's also worth mentioning that during the nadir of American terrorism against Black people from about 1890~1920 or so, newspapers were essential in calling for, cheerleading for, and even scheduling violence against Black people. The people around back then had children. Their children had children. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. So the racist hatred lives on today. Incidentally this is another example of why I think it's important for Black Americans to be armed. Racists are telling us what they would like to do to us. And they seem to be getting bolder about it.
