white supremacy today.
Narratives about any part of dissident political history of the United States will always be contested. This is especially the case when such narratives affirm efforts to sabotage white supremacy or to confront empire, or do not conform to fixed notions of nonviolence. There are many worthy books about the political family from which the Committee sprung. The best of the bunch tend to avoid the one-dimensional portrayals of activists either as sainted revolutionaries or as misguided and dangerous insurgents. We have attempted to live up to their examples. If any insight on this history is to be successful, it must explore the real-world motivations, politics, assessments, and context of the people it examines. This has pushed us to rely on interviews with veterans of the Committee and to grapple with their contributions and failures. Any direct quote from a member or their associates represents the viewpoint of the speaker, not that of all of the former members. It also caused us to examine the gaps between what activist organizations like the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee thought would come of their actions and what eventually transpired. We walked away from our long conversations with them in awe of their courage, appreciative of their theoretical work, and sometimes perplexed by their strategic choices.
Researching this history was surprisingly easy in terms of gathering archival materials. Those involved wrote extensively and debated publicly, making their case in published statements, graphic flyers, and booklets. Many of the people we interviewed who were in the Committee, or close to it, have continued to organize.
The materials we used to research this history all have strengths and biases. We studied the Committee’s own newspapers to understand its positions, campaigns, and organizational evolution. We conducted more than four dozen interviews, many with former Committee members, some with those who worked with them, and some with those who were critical of the group’s approach. We examined commercial newspaper coverage of major events to which the Committee was responding. We read declassified FBI documents, including accounts from undercover agents. We scoured toolkits generated by a variety of organizations within the anti-Klan movement of time.
Throughout this book, we have attempted to define words and terminology close to the way radical activists in the 1970s and 1980s did. The meanings of words change over time as they are tested through debate and social struggle. No one definition of any of these terms was ever universally accepted. We define white supremacy as a system that delivers economic and social advantages to white people at the expense of people of color. This system is multi-layered and includes practices and advantages delivered to those who do not personally subscribe to ideas of racial superiority. The particular type of white supremacy discussed in this book is that propagated by the far right—those who actively organize and promote racial subjugation. While those of the far right always keep the option of violence on the table, they also incorporate other tactics, electoral and otherwise, to advance their agenda. Conversely, anti-racism is shorthand for the political project of undermining or eliminating both individual racism and systemic white supremacy. Dr. Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s description of racism is particularly useful in expanding the endgame of systemic white supremacy: “Racism, specifically, is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death.”38
Any definition of fascism is bound to be incomplete. A good start is offered by Matthew N. Lyons: “Fascism is a revolutionary form of right-wing populism, inspired by a totalitarian vision of collective rebirth, that challenges capitalist political and cultural power while promoting economic and social hierarchy.”39 We add that the social hierarchy mentioned here typically includes politics that embrace the genocide and/or intolerance of groups based on their ethnicity or religious background. In academic circles, the racial aspect of fascism is often debated, with some positing that fascism doesn’t need to be racist in order to be fascist. That debate can be held elsewhere. For the purposes of this study, we could not find a single fascist organization active in the United States during the 1980s that did not embrace genocide and expulsion. We also point to the value of understanding fascism adjectivally, rather than as a noun, to help understand its adaptive nature. In other words, an arguably democratic government may display fascistic behavior without being considered a totalitarian government.
The 1980s also saw what the Committee described as the “Nazification of the Klan”—a process by which sectors of the white supremacist movement jettisoned notions of working within the United States system and committed themselves to the overthrow of the government. In this book, the terms racism and fascism can seem to be used interchangeably, especially when taken from a movement publication or in a direct quote from a participant.
Throughout, we hear activists refer to “the state” and denounce “state violence.” We think of the state as the sum total of the dominant legal, social, and cultural institutions. By this definition, state violence is violence carried out or implicitly sanctioned by these institutions. As we will read, the concept of state violence is often complicated by implicit or explicit collaboration with or tolerance of non-state violence. For example, the line between state and non-state racists is easily blurred when law enforcement does little to protect communities of colors from Klan-like organizations, or when elected officials appear to signal tolerance of such actors.
Closely related to this is the concept of imperialism, the process of a nation or state extending domination over another. As we will explore, fighting imperialism was a core part of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee’s ethical and political mission. The group believed that descendants of colonized people living within the United States belonged to distinct nations within nations. This meant that national liberation and self-determination were the main solutions to imperialism here and abroad. Self-determination in the traditional sense refers to the right of a people to determine their own future and allegiances free of outside interference from a colonial or occupying force. During the time period covered in this book, it also describes the right of oppressed people (or nations) to separate from the larger governments and establish new sovereign nations.
Given the clear rise of white nationalism today, parallels to the resurgence of organized racism experienced during the Reagan years are chilling. We hope that readers with anti-racist commitments will draw their own conclusions after looking at the projects and perspectives of those who were willing to lay on the line almost everything—even their own freedom—in the service of abolishing white supremacy.
ONE
ONE LONG REIGN OF TERROR
“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor, butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”
—George Jackson
Harsh endings punctuated 1977. Elvis Presley performed his last concert, then died unceremoniously from drug-induced cardiac failure on his bathroom floor. Apartheid activist and political leader in South Africa Steve Biko was killed in police custody, a death attributed to massive brain injury. And world-renowned Brazilian soccer star Pelé played his final game. Abrupt beginnings and fantastic distractions filled the holes. Jimmy Carter was inaugurated as the thirty-ninth president of the United States. Rocky won the Academy Award for best picture. The Atari 2600 gaming system made its debut. And legendary English punk band The Clash released its self-titled first album. While the coy hijinks and serial misunderstandings of Suzanne Summer and John Ritter in the sitcom Three’s Company enveloped American pop culture, a lesser known dramatic saga was unfolding.
On June 1, 1977, Khali Siwatu-Hodari, a Black man incarcerated at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, New York, wrote an open letter to plea for support. The Ku Klux Klan was infiltrating prisons in the region, with large numbers of Klansmen holding jobs as guards and prison teachers.
An Open Letter:
On behalf of myself and the men at Eastern Correctional Facility, and all prisoners throughout the state of New York, I issue this open letter as an appeal for support. I am calling on all individuals and groups, and on the press, to support and join our fight against the Ku Klux Klan and other forms of organized racism in New York State. The Klan is a