Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
The public can now get a glimpse of 1960s Ku Klux Klan materials, including charters and lists of dues-paying Mississippi Klansmen, through collections housed at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
The department announced Wednesday that the materials can be seen in its research library in downtown Jackson. Items are also now available for viewing online.
In March, state Department of Public Safety officials gave Archives and History a cache of KKK materials they stumbled across while cleaning out a closet. The purge was part of a move to the new Public Safety headquarters outside Jackson.
Inside a small blue suitcase, they found a handbook for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent white supremacist group in the 1960s, which carried out at least 10 killings. Officials also found Klan charters, a Klan robe, KKK recruitment materials, propaganda, meeting notes, ledgers and a list of members who paid — or didn’t pay — their dues.
The blue case, robe and hood are in the care of the Two Mississippi Museums operated by Archives and History.
In the move from Jackson to a new building in Rankin County, the Department of Public Safety also found old Mississippi Highway Patrol folders labeled “Communist Agitators” and “Freedom Riders,” which contain photos and reports on the 1961 riders. Trained in nonviolent techniques in Washington and Nashville, they rode interstate buses into the South to challenge segregation laws.
T.B. Birdsong, then-head of the patrol, falsely claimed Communists were behind these rides and Russians had trained two riders in Cuba.
Many of the riders convicted in Mississippi because of their civil rights activities, including the late Congressman John Lewis and other famous activists, were sent to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
The link to materials about the Freedom Riders are also available online.
The long-hidden Klan material gives a glimpse into the dark past when membership for the White Knights soared in Mississippi in the 1960s, reportedly to nearly 100,000 members, and politicians sought their support.
The highway patrol began to document Klan activities in 1964, after Klansmen kidnapped and killed three civil right workers in Neshoba County.
The handbook obtained by state investigators outlined secret rituals, bylaws and operations of the White Knights. The organization created a Voting Registration Committee to “study and watch the negro voting activity” and an Intelligence Committee to “keep accurate and indexed information on people, places and cars.”
