Mississippi Department of Public Safety officials said they discovered a cache of Ku Klux Klan materials while clearing a closet as the agency prepared to move to a new headquarters. The department said the items, found in a small blue suitcase, included a handbook for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, charters, a robe, recruitment materials, propaganda, meeting notes, ledgers and a list of members who paid or did not pay dues.
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said in a release that Mississippi Highway Patrol troopers and other agents have worked with federal partners “to shed light on the darkness in which groups like the Ku Klux Klan chose to operate.” The department said it transferred the materials to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which plans to process and make the records digitally accessible.
Barry White, the archives’ incoming director, thanked Tindell and said the records will give researchers broader access to documentation that deepens understanding of Ku Klux Klan activities in Mississippi during the 1960s. White said processing the material could take months, the archives said. George Malvaney, writing in his memoir “Cups Up” and quoted by Mississippi Today, said of the robe, “If only that robe could talk.”
The department said the White Knights handbook and related items shed light on a violent chapter in Mississippi history. Mississippi Today and the archives noted the White Knights were among the most violent white supremacist groups of the 1960s and cited their role in campaigns of beatings, bombings and killings aimed at resisting desegregation and voting rights for Black Americans.
Officials also found old Mississippi Highway Patrol folders labeled “Communist Agitators” and “Freedom Riders,” which the department said contain photos and reports on the 1961 riders. The Department of Archives and History said it already displays a Klan robe and arrest photographs of Freedom Riders at the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. The newly transferred records include administrative files, propaganda and meeting minutes that refer to members by number and document the group’s emphasis on secrecy, the archives said.
