No Fascist USA!. Hilary Moore
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as in the prisons, and it will take a concerted, conscious effort to expose and root it out.
For years we have waged a struggle against the Klan, even while as many as 60 members and sympathizers patrolled outside our cells. We thought we were alone. But now it is clear that the Klan is recruiting from Buffalo to New York City, in the high schools of Ulster and Sullivan Counties, through civic associations, and school boards, in government and openly boasting about their racism in the press.
A massive offensive must be mounted.
Historically, the Klan has operated in secrecy. Two years ago, men at Eastern broke the clandestine organizing of guards and teachers in the prison by exposing none other than the Grand Dragon of the state, Earl Schoonmaker, who was passing out white supremacist literature among white prisoners. State authorities have done little to rid us of this degenerate element, thereby condoning Klan violence against the prisoners. The Klan has used the publicity generated by our exposure to promote its new “nonviolent” image and initiate new recruitment campaigns, continuing to preach its vicious hatred of Black and other Third World peoples.
State authorities use the Klan’s new image to justify their inaction. In the meantime, Klan organizing in this very prison and others is on the rise and reported in detail in newspapers and magazines. The Inspector General has investigated our charges, and a report is now being suppressed by the state government. We can no longer rely at all on the state of New York to carry out even the most minimal defense of our rights.
Therefore, we have taken two courses of action. First of all, we have initiated two federal lawsuits against the Klan, charging harassment and abuse of Black and other Third World prisoners. These suits charge guards as well as officials and give us the power to force the state to reveal what we prisoners already know about the Klan. These suits will be heard in Federal Court in New York City and must be supported. Secondly, we have worked on compiling this press packet, with the aid of outside supporters, to bring the word to the public in as much detail as possible.
We ask that you show your solidarity with our struggle against the Klan by coming out to support the suits this summer, and by using this material to continue to investigate Klan activity all over the state. You, the concerned people and press, are our only hope of broadening the campaign we began here in the prisons three years ago. We will continue to fight the Klan in every way possible here, but the power of a united force, fighting inside and outside against the Klan is our hope of a total victory.
Unite to Smash the Klan!
Khali
Khali Siwatu-Hodari
(nee Frank Abney)
Siwatu-Hodari’s letter coincided with a resurgence of the Klan that followed a long period of decline after peaking out in the 1920s.40 Far from being solely a Southern problem, the Klan wreaked havoc across the United States, including in the Northeast. Building slowly, the Klan infiltrated police departments, prisons, and the military. For incarcerated people, this led to a constant state of siege, harassment, intimidation, and violence.41 In 1974, a brutal beating of an incarcerated Puerto Rican man at Napanoch, New York, led others incarcerated to establish the first chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) behind bars.
Prison guards’ harassment of the incarcerated surged along with increased efforts to sever connections to their outside support. A white woman named Nancy Loori gave up her position as director of volunteer services at Napanoch after receiving death threats. People on the inside contacted outside supporters, alerting them that Klan members were employed by the New York State Department of Corrections. The Klansmen were attempting to prevent incarcerated Black people from utilizing recently established educational programs. Later in 1977, the New York Daily News conducted an investigation into allegations that the Klan staged a rally on land owned by a correctional officer. But this was not exactly breaking news. Since 1974, and consistently throughout the rest of the decade, the New York Daily News exposed not only extensive Klan infiltration and recruitment efforts within Napanoch prison, but incidents in which such infiltrators attacked incarcerated Black people, including firebombing their cells. Reporter Brian Kates observed the growth of the Klan in the North: “Nowhere has their influence been greater than in prisons. In New York alone, Klan units have gained a stronghold among both guards and incarcerated people at correctional facilities in Napanoch, Walkill, and Attica.”42
Shortly before Siwatu-Hodari sent his letter, another major incident publicly revealed the Klan’s activity within state institutions. This time, Klan activity was exposed inside California’s Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton. It was well known that the Klan had a chapter operating on the base. Numerous active-duty white Marines wore KKK symbols, posted threatening flyers in common areas, and carried large knives in order to intimidate Black Marines.43 It was only when long-simmering racial tensions erupted into violence that the situation became news. Although an investigation uncovered that a group of sixteen Klan members on the base were armed with a .357 magnum revolver, clubs, knives, and KKK paraphernalia, it was thirteen Black Marines who were charged with assault after barging into a room and attacking those inside thought to be holding a Klan meeting. The actual KKK meeting was being held in the room next door.
Witnesses testified that Marine Klan members regularly distributed recruiting materials and emblazoned the words “nigger sticker” on their knives. The American Civil Liberties Union represented the Klan in court, prompting the resignation of thirty-five people. Finally, the Marines arrested and transferred one Klan member, Corporal Daniel Bailey, in a last-ditch effort to quell the racial tensions. The events at Camp Pendleton intensified anxieties that the Klan, and other white supremacist groups, were infiltrating the armed forces in preparation for an impending race war.44 This incident contributed to the sense that the Klan, while increasingly marketing itself as a nonviolent cultural institution, was still a paramilitary vigilante group that was allowed to operate within the shadow of state institutions.
Around this time, Judy Gumbo and Stew Albert, two veteran activists living in upstate New York, received Khali Siwatu-Hodari’s letter. Working to bring young white radicals into support organizing for incarcerated people, Judy used her position as a professor at State University New York at New Paltz to build contacts. Together with formerly incarcerated people who were now students, they formed the Inside-Outside Prison Coalition, a campus-based group that leveraged university resources to support people incarcerated for their political actions. The group produced flyers about the plight of political prisoners, organized fundraisers, and screened films about state surveillance, the targeting of activist groups, and the rebellion at Attica State Prison. They also visited incarcerated people during frequent trips to Naponach and other New York state prisons. New Paltz students on parole were the first to introduce outside activists to Siwatu-Hodari, a member of the Black Panther Party and president of the NAACP chapter in the Napanoch prison. These connections were instrumental in creating the conditions for the founding of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee. For instance, Bob Boyle, originally from New York City, was an early member of the Inside-Outside Prison Coalition. He was studying at New Paltz and worked on political prisoner cases through the National Lawyers Guild.
Prison support work in upstate New York began mingling more intentionally with the work in New York City. It wasn’t long before Boyle connected with Lisa Roth, a New Yorker who had worked in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee at her high school and later the Students for a Democratic Society. Roth helped form the group Friends of Assata and Sundiata,45 which was at the forefront of radical organizing. She recalled how, at this time in the late 1970s, the movement was forced to grapple with the realities of imprisoned comrades. “By the early to mid-seventies many former members of the Black Panther Party were in prison throughout New York. So many of us who got our start doing anti-racist support work for the Black Panthers ended up doing support work for incarcerated people.”
Even the most committed activists had trouble understanding the implications of Siwatu-Hodari’s letter. Could staff throughout the New York prison system be members of the Ku Klux Klan? They were skeptical. Roth admitted, “Our initial response was that the prisoners meant that the guards were really, really racist. They couldn’t possibly mean that