REPORTER: Aaron Thomas
STEVE HOWARD, KU KLUX KLAN: Let me say that the cross is an inspiration, a sign of Christian religion and a symbol of faith, hope and love. We do not burn, but light the cross to signify that Christ is the light of the world and that his light destroys darkness.
Cross lighting is a ritual forever associated with some of America's darkest days. But it's not ancient history, it's happening now in the backwoods of Mississippi.
STEVE HOWARD: God giveth men...tall proud men who will not flinch at duty and who will not lie. Amen. Amen!
31-year-old Steve Howard is the Imperial Wizard of the Northern Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
STEVE HOWARD: I’m just not a big fan of blacks in general. To me they’re just a thieving race, just a low, low race. That’s just my opinion and everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but that’s my opinion.
Steve's Klavern meets once a month to plan activities and socialise.
STEVE HOWARD: What you see right here, is pretty much what we do. We do good ol’ Southern cooking and just a lot of good brothers get out here and fellowship with people and get to know one another.
It feels just like a regular barbecue except for how often the conversation turns to race.
MAN: I’ve heard damn white girl that’s all she fucking dates.
MAN 2: Damn niggers treat ‘em better than the whites, I was like what the fuck you…
MAN: Bullshit…
MAN 2: Hell…
MAN: Not around here they don’t….
MAN 2: Calling a white woman a fucking damn ho and a bitch and every damn thing else.
MAN: Dumb-ass nigger-lovers.
While their language is still crude they say the Klan has changed.
MICHAEL CARLTON, KKK SECURITY: Whenever the Klan is mentioned that’s pretty much what everybody looks back on is what happened in the old days. This is, this is, this is a new deal. It’s nothing like that. I mean it’s totally different.
REPORTER: What are the differences?
MICHAEL CARLTON: Probably the lynchings of people and stuff like that.
Murders, rapes, beatings and lynchings were once the KKK's preferred activities. It's hard to single out the worst of it but the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church that killed four black girls in a bible class was probably the most senseless tragedy.
STEVE HOWARD: A lot of organisations have a history of violence, that is one thing bad, but I have to learn to accept it because I will never get people to think different of us.
Despite the KKK's vicious reputation these klansmen say that's all in the past.
MICHAEL CARLTON: We're not out here on the street, we’re not out here gunning folks down, you know. We’re standing up for our people, protecting our people. But we don't do violence and we won't tolerate violence toward our people. That’s not going to happen. But we don’t provoke violence in any ways. We don’t go out messing with innocents… We don’t look for it.
Steve's interest in the Klan began at an early age.
STEVE HOWARD: My mother rented a movie called Mississippi Burning. she rented it and brought that home and there was these guys with hoods on their heads, and I asked my Momma I said who is that… and my Momma told me “that’s the KKK”. I said “Momma they’re mean but I like ‘em”.
The film tells the story of the brutal murders of three civil rights workers by the KKK in Mississippi. For Steve it was like a recruitment ad.
STEVE HOWARD: I saw that movie when I was eight years old, and I had a fascination with the Klan. I remember when I was coming up having dreams about the Klan. I would dream about them. And I would dream about having a church and nothing but robed Klansmen being in it and being the preacher of it and stuff like that when I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old. I’ve always had a fascination with it.
The Klan's robes and hoods were originally designed to hide the member's identity so they could attack without fear of reprisals.
STEVE HOWARD: The Klan always has everything on the left side. The belt, everything you do in the Klan is on the left side.
But Steve Howard feels he has no reason to hide.
STEVE HOWARD: That's pretty much how you do it man. That's pretty much it.
REPORTER: What does it feel like when you're wearing it?
STEVE HOWARD: I always feel great when I put on one. It makes me feel like a superhero y’know. That’s the way I feel. Makes me feel like a person, makes me feel like I belong to something, so that’s how I feel usually. I enjoy wearing it, means a lot to me.
It's estimated there are about 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in America today, there is no national organisation - it's a network of small groups like Steve Howard's Klavern.
STEVE HOWARD: Hello Iuka, Mississippi. We are the North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. We are not here to place judgement on you or anybody else.
Let’s go. Y’all ready? Let’s do it. Let’s go.
We have come here to wake up our people, to tell our people to stop hiding behind their doors, and to stop being scared of your so-called black brothers and sisters.
Turn it on.
Turn it off. That ain’t it.
Wrong one.
Is it on? Yeah, it’s on. Alright.
I pray to the Lord, I get on my knees everyday and I thank the Lord. Thank you Lord for making me a white man. Lord, I’m so glad I’m white. That is a blessing. I wouldn’t want to be nothing but the white man. White is a beautiful colour. It’s awesome. I wouldn’t want to be no race-mixer.
I would like for us to have our own country for our own people and that’s what I would like, for us to have our own place to live separate from black people. Segregated but equal is the way I believe.
Half you black folks walk around with them pantyhose on your head. That’s what I call it. Walking around with your pants falling down off your ass. Nobody want to see that. Pull your pants up. Don’t nobody want to care about Luanda and Shawanda and Shanainai who you had sex with last night. Don't nobody care about that. You AIDS infected, herpes carrying... that’s the whole race.
I feel sometimes it is hard to educate people. It’s hard to make people change their minds. Most people have already formed an opinion on us, but until they get to know us and see how we truly are, but most people they don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take the time to learn how we truly are.
A true Klansman is supposed to love all people. Help all people in a way.
Hey, you go… You fit right in with your crowd. There you go… Hey, I don’t talk to no race mixer baby. I don’t talk to race mixers, baby. You stay over there with your own kind baby. We didn’t come up here to stir up trouble Tishomingo county. We didn’t come up here… we come up here to stand tall for our race and our people. Thank you.
Iuka Mississippi! White power! White power! White power! That's it, we're done.
The Klan is clearly not the object of fear it once was and even their critics are more resigned than angry.
BYSTANDER: You don’t see black people out here just mounting up to talk about and denigrate white people, so you know I don’t feel there was anything right about that, which it don’t bother me.
STEVE HOWARD: A lot of these people out here, they are Klan, y’know. This is mainly all a white community, there’s no blacks that live out here. You have a lot of poverty in this certain part of Mississippi. Not a lot of industries, not a lot of jobs. We don’t have a lot of crime up here in north Mississippi and I would like to attribute a lot of that to the Ku Klux Klan cos the Klan is really strong up here. Now more stronger up here than it is in any other part of the state. It’s really strong up here.
I don't tolerate murder, I don't do murder. I don't kill people but I have no problem in this world and I have no problem saying this on this camera, I have no problem with taking somebody, tying them to a tree and whipping them. Giving them an old fashioned whoopin. I don't have a lick of problem doing that. This right here is one of my favourite flags. It's always been one of my favourite flags. It's called the Third National.
This is the emblem of the Ku Klux Klan, it’s called a “meyok” – mysterious emblem of a Klansman.
When we was in Iraq we used something called the Scout Sniper flag and we actually took it from Adolf Hitler and the same flag, the SS flag and Scout Sniper is what that means to me. But I just like the flag cos it looks good, but SS Scout Sniper in Iraq and stuff we used that flag.
This stuff reminds me a lot of my Marine Corps brothers because when I got out of service and everything I didn’t have anything. When I come back I had something I could get into and back into my people and back in to my brothers and stuff like and I didn’t have that. So this is my medication. The Klan is my medication. It soothes me in a lot of ways.
LORENZO ERVIN, ACTIVIST: We can’t allow the KKK to claim that they’re just a benevolent organization of drinking buddies or something like that. They are in fact the continuators of the same kind of criminal organization that has always existed. They stand for white supremacy, terrorism, and murder.
In a member business park I meet Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin… two black activist who want to show me the city's latest racial flashpoint.
LORENZO ERVIN: This is a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest who was the head of the Ku Klux Klan, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan during and after the civil war for about 15 years. He’s a highly controversial figure. He’s seen to be the worst kind of war criminal, the worst kind of racist.
As well as condoning the massacre of three hundred black soldiers after they surrendered during the Civil War… Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the South’s richest slave traders. This park was named after him, but now the city of Memphis has decided to rename it, along with two other parks honouring the Confederacy.
STEVE HOWARD: It would be wrong to change the names of their parks just like it’s wrong for them to do that. Nobody can call themselves a Klansman if you won’t be up their defending that. Because that’s the men that fought for the Klan. That’s the men that fought for southern people. You can’t call yourself a white person and not want to at least go up there and support that, and be proud of what that man did, you know.
JONINA ERVIN: This is a majority black city, at least 63% black African American.
LORENZO ERVIN: 65%.
JONINA ERVIN: 65%. The fact this statue is here in a black majority city is an outrage.
But the park’s renaming soon sparked a reaction among white supremacists.
JONINA ERVIN: So the next thing we hear in the news, that the Klan has decided, “we don’t like this, we’re going to have a protest.” In February, they submitted their request for a permit to hold a rally protest downtown at the county courthouse.
On the day of the Klan's protest rally tensions are running high. An overwhelming security force made it hard to see the Klan and impossible hear them. It wasn't hard to hear the voices of their critics.
CROWD: Ban the Klan. Ban the Klan the Klan.
WOMAN: I think it is the end of an era for the Klan. I hope. It’s taken a long time and this maybe kind of a last-ditch effort or stand.
MAN: They had all, just about 4 or 5 different types of police task force here. Complete waste of time, complete waste of the city’s money, a complete waste of our tax dollars.
REPORTER: Does the Klan worry you at all in Memphis?
MAN: Not at all, not at all. They don’t worry me at all. It’s all but diminished. All but diminished.
STEVE HOWARD: It went good. I think everything went wonderful.
REPORTER: Do you feel you got your message across?
STEVE HOWARD: Oh very much so. Very much so. They had them separated a little bit too far from us, but for the most part I think it went well. We came and that’s all that matters. We’re going to have some more fun here in a minute. When you light a cross, you signify that Christ, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. It is not to terrorise people, it is not to do anything like that. That’s all it’s for.
Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: Klansman, I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: Klansman, I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen, about-face. Klansmen, march. Klansmen, for God.
KLANSMAN: For God.
STEVE HOWARD: Klanmen for Mississippi.
KLANSMAN: For Mississippi.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen for the Ku Klux Klan.
KLANSMAN: For the Ku Klux Klan.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen, approach the cross, do not turn your back on the cross.
Klansmen, behold the fiery cross still brilliant. All of the troubled history failed to quench its frame.
KLANSMAN: Beautiful cross light. Very emotional. It's a feeling that you can't explain. It just lights your soul and makes you want to reach out and spread Christianity more to our race and to the whole world.
STEVE HOWARD: …If you’re white, you’re my brother and sister as long as you ain’t a race-mixer…
I’m very happy with the turn-out we had and I think the movement is growing. I think we’re just going to grow into the masses is what I think.
KLANSMAN: White power! White power! White power!
STEVE HOWARD: In some shape or form the Klan will be here forever - always.
Reporter/Camera/Editor
AARON THOMAS
Producer
ALLAN HOGAN
Researcher
EVE LUCAS
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN
Additional footage “Mississippi Burning”, Orion Pictures Corporation
STEVE HOWARD, KU KLUX KLAN: Let me say that the cross is an inspiration, a sign of Christian religion and a symbol of faith, hope and love. We do not burn, but light the cross to signify that Christ is the light of the world and that his light destroys darkness.
Cross lighting is a ritual forever associated with some of America's darkest days. But it's not ancient history, it's happening now in the backwoods of Mississippi.
STEVE HOWARD: God giveth men...tall proud men who will not flinch at duty and who will not lie. Amen. Amen!
31-year-old Steve Howard is the Imperial Wizard of the Northern Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
STEVE HOWARD: I’m just not a big fan of blacks in general. To me they’re just a thieving race, just a low, low race. That’s just my opinion and everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but that’s my opinion.
Steve's Klavern meets once a month to plan activities and socialise.
STEVE HOWARD: What you see right here, is pretty much what we do. We do good ol’ Southern cooking and just a lot of good brothers get out here and fellowship with people and get to know one another.
It feels just like a regular barbecue except for how often the conversation turns to race.
MAN: I’ve heard damn white girl that’s all she fucking dates.
MAN 2: Damn niggers treat ‘em better than the whites, I was like what the fuck you…
MAN: Bullshit…
MAN 2: Hell…
MAN: Not around here they don’t….
MAN 2: Calling a white woman a fucking damn ho and a bitch and every damn thing else.
MAN: Dumb-ass nigger-lovers.
While their language is still crude they say the Klan has changed.
MICHAEL CARLTON, KKK SECURITY: Whenever the Klan is mentioned that’s pretty much what everybody looks back on is what happened in the old days. This is, this is, this is a new deal. It’s nothing like that. I mean it’s totally different.
REPORTER: What are the differences?
MICHAEL CARLTON: Probably the lynchings of people and stuff like that.
Murders, rapes, beatings and lynchings were once the KKK's preferred activities. It's hard to single out the worst of it but the 1963 bombing of an Alabama church that killed four black girls in a bible class was probably the most senseless tragedy.
STEVE HOWARD: A lot of organisations have a history of violence, that is one thing bad, but I have to learn to accept it because I will never get people to think different of us.
Despite the KKK's vicious reputation these klansmen say that's all in the past.
MICHAEL CARLTON: We're not out here on the street, we’re not out here gunning folks down, you know. We’re standing up for our people, protecting our people. But we don't do violence and we won't tolerate violence toward our people. That’s not going to happen. But we don’t provoke violence in any ways. We don’t go out messing with innocents… We don’t look for it.
Steve's interest in the Klan began at an early age.
STEVE HOWARD: My mother rented a movie called Mississippi Burning. she rented it and brought that home and there was these guys with hoods on their heads, and I asked my Momma I said who is that… and my Momma told me “that’s the KKK”. I said “Momma they’re mean but I like ‘em”.
The film tells the story of the brutal murders of three civil rights workers by the KKK in Mississippi. For Steve it was like a recruitment ad.
STEVE HOWARD: I saw that movie when I was eight years old, and I had a fascination with the Klan. I remember when I was coming up having dreams about the Klan. I would dream about them. And I would dream about having a church and nothing but robed Klansmen being in it and being the preacher of it and stuff like that when I was 8, 9, 10, 11 years old. I’ve always had a fascination with it.
The Klan's robes and hoods were originally designed to hide the member's identity so they could attack without fear of reprisals.
STEVE HOWARD: The Klan always has everything on the left side. The belt, everything you do in the Klan is on the left side.
But Steve Howard feels he has no reason to hide.
STEVE HOWARD: That's pretty much how you do it man. That's pretty much it.
REPORTER: What does it feel like when you're wearing it?
STEVE HOWARD: I always feel great when I put on one. It makes me feel like a superhero y’know. That’s the way I feel. Makes me feel like a person, makes me feel like I belong to something, so that’s how I feel usually. I enjoy wearing it, means a lot to me.
It's estimated there are about 8,000 members of the Ku Klux Klan in America today, there is no national organisation - it's a network of small groups like Steve Howard's Klavern.
STEVE HOWARD: Hello Iuka, Mississippi. We are the North Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. We are not here to place judgement on you or anybody else.
Let’s go. Y’all ready? Let’s do it. Let’s go.
We have come here to wake up our people, to tell our people to stop hiding behind their doors, and to stop being scared of your so-called black brothers and sisters.
Turn it on.
Turn it off. That ain’t it.
Wrong one.
Is it on? Yeah, it’s on. Alright.
I pray to the Lord, I get on my knees everyday and I thank the Lord. Thank you Lord for making me a white man. Lord, I’m so glad I’m white. That is a blessing. I wouldn’t want to be nothing but the white man. White is a beautiful colour. It’s awesome. I wouldn’t want to be no race-mixer.
I would like for us to have our own country for our own people and that’s what I would like, for us to have our own place to live separate from black people. Segregated but equal is the way I believe.
Half you black folks walk around with them pantyhose on your head. That’s what I call it. Walking around with your pants falling down off your ass. Nobody want to see that. Pull your pants up. Don’t nobody want to care about Luanda and Shawanda and Shanainai who you had sex with last night. Don't nobody care about that. You AIDS infected, herpes carrying... that’s the whole race.
I feel sometimes it is hard to educate people. It’s hard to make people change their minds. Most people have already formed an opinion on us, but until they get to know us and see how we truly are, but most people they don’t want to do that. They don’t want to take the time to learn how we truly are.
A true Klansman is supposed to love all people. Help all people in a way.
Hey, you go… You fit right in with your crowd. There you go… Hey, I don’t talk to no race mixer baby. I don’t talk to race mixers, baby. You stay over there with your own kind baby. We didn’t come up here to stir up trouble Tishomingo county. We didn’t come up here… we come up here to stand tall for our race and our people. Thank you.
Iuka Mississippi! White power! White power! White power! That's it, we're done.
The Klan is clearly not the object of fear it once was and even their critics are more resigned than angry.
BYSTANDER: You don’t see black people out here just mounting up to talk about and denigrate white people, so you know I don’t feel there was anything right about that, which it don’t bother me.
STEVE HOWARD: A lot of these people out here, they are Klan, y’know. This is mainly all a white community, there’s no blacks that live out here. You have a lot of poverty in this certain part of Mississippi. Not a lot of industries, not a lot of jobs. We don’t have a lot of crime up here in north Mississippi and I would like to attribute a lot of that to the Ku Klux Klan cos the Klan is really strong up here. Now more stronger up here than it is in any other part of the state. It’s really strong up here.
I don't tolerate murder, I don't do murder. I don't kill people but I have no problem in this world and I have no problem saying this on this camera, I have no problem with taking somebody, tying them to a tree and whipping them. Giving them an old fashioned whoopin. I don't have a lick of problem doing that. This right here is one of my favourite flags. It's always been one of my favourite flags. It's called the Third National.
This is the emblem of the Ku Klux Klan, it’s called a “meyok” – mysterious emblem of a Klansman.
When we was in Iraq we used something called the Scout Sniper flag and we actually took it from Adolf Hitler and the same flag, the SS flag and Scout Sniper is what that means to me. But I just like the flag cos it looks good, but SS Scout Sniper in Iraq and stuff we used that flag.
This stuff reminds me a lot of my Marine Corps brothers because when I got out of service and everything I didn’t have anything. When I come back I had something I could get into and back into my people and back in to my brothers and stuff like and I didn’t have that. So this is my medication. The Klan is my medication. It soothes me in a lot of ways.
LORENZO ERVIN, ACTIVIST: We can’t allow the KKK to claim that they’re just a benevolent organization of drinking buddies or something like that. They are in fact the continuators of the same kind of criminal organization that has always existed. They stand for white supremacy, terrorism, and murder.
In a member business park I meet Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin… two black activist who want to show me the city's latest racial flashpoint.
LORENZO ERVIN: This is a statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest who was the head of the Ku Klux Klan, the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan during and after the civil war for about 15 years. He’s a highly controversial figure. He’s seen to be the worst kind of war criminal, the worst kind of racist.
As well as condoning the massacre of three hundred black soldiers after they surrendered during the Civil War… Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the South’s richest slave traders. This park was named after him, but now the city of Memphis has decided to rename it, along with two other parks honouring the Confederacy.
STEVE HOWARD: It would be wrong to change the names of their parks just like it’s wrong for them to do that. Nobody can call themselves a Klansman if you won’t be up their defending that. Because that’s the men that fought for the Klan. That’s the men that fought for southern people. You can’t call yourself a white person and not want to at least go up there and support that, and be proud of what that man did, you know.
JONINA ERVIN: This is a majority black city, at least 63% black African American.
LORENZO ERVIN: 65%.
JONINA ERVIN: 65%. The fact this statue is here in a black majority city is an outrage.
But the park’s renaming soon sparked a reaction among white supremacists.
JONINA ERVIN: So the next thing we hear in the news, that the Klan has decided, “we don’t like this, we’re going to have a protest.” In February, they submitted their request for a permit to hold a rally protest downtown at the county courthouse.
On the day of the Klan's protest rally tensions are running high. An overwhelming security force made it hard to see the Klan and impossible hear them. It wasn't hard to hear the voices of their critics.
CROWD: Ban the Klan. Ban the Klan the Klan.
WOMAN: I think it is the end of an era for the Klan. I hope. It’s taken a long time and this maybe kind of a last-ditch effort or stand.
MAN: They had all, just about 4 or 5 different types of police task force here. Complete waste of time, complete waste of the city’s money, a complete waste of our tax dollars.
REPORTER: Does the Klan worry you at all in Memphis?
MAN: Not at all, not at all. They don’t worry me at all. It’s all but diminished. All but diminished.
STEVE HOWARD: It went good. I think everything went wonderful.
REPORTER: Do you feel you got your message across?
STEVE HOWARD: Oh very much so. Very much so. They had them separated a little bit too far from us, but for the most part I think it went well. We came and that’s all that matters. We’re going to have some more fun here in a minute. When you light a cross, you signify that Christ, Jesus Christ is the light of the world. It is not to terrorise people, it is not to do anything like that. That’s all it’s for.
Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: Klansman, I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansman, do you accept the light?
KLANSMAN: Klansman, I accept the light.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen, about-face. Klansmen, march. Klansmen, for God.
KLANSMAN: For God.
STEVE HOWARD: Klanmen for Mississippi.
KLANSMAN: For Mississippi.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen for the Ku Klux Klan.
KLANSMAN: For the Ku Klux Klan.
STEVE HOWARD: Klansmen, approach the cross, do not turn your back on the cross.
Klansmen, behold the fiery cross still brilliant. All of the troubled history failed to quench its frame.
KLANSMAN: Beautiful cross light. Very emotional. It's a feeling that you can't explain. It just lights your soul and makes you want to reach out and spread Christianity more to our race and to the whole world.
STEVE HOWARD: …If you’re white, you’re my brother and sister as long as you ain’t a race-mixer…
I’m very happy with the turn-out we had and I think the movement is growing. I think we’re just going to grow into the masses is what I think.
KLANSMAN: White power! White power! White power!
STEVE HOWARD: In some shape or form the Klan will be here forever - always.
Reporter/Camera/Editor
AARON THOMAS
Producer
ALLAN HOGAN
Researcher
EVE LUCAS
Original Music Composed by VICKI HANSEN
Additional footage “Mississippi Burning”, Orion Pictures Corporation