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You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them.
Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK.
Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufansky, The New York Times best selling author of The Kennedy Women, chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race based killing in nineteen eighty one and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history, the
klu Klux Klan. On a Friday night in March nineteen eighty one, Henry Hayes and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile, Alabama in their car, hunting for a black man. The young men were members of Clavern nine hundred of the United Clans of America. They were seeking to retaliate after a largely black jury could not reach a verdict in a trial involving a black man accused of the
murder of a white man. The two clansmen found nineteen year old Michael Donald walking home alone Hayes and Knowles abducted him, beat him, cut his throat, and left his body hanging from a tree branch in a racially mixed residential neighborhood. Arrested, charged, and convicted, Hayes was sentenced to death, the first time in more than half a century that the state of Alabama sentenced to white man to death
for killing a black man. On behalf of Michael's grieving mother, Morris D. S, the legendary civil rights lawyer and co founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed a civil suit against the members of the local clan unit involved and the UKA, the largest clan organization, charging them with conspiracy. DS put the clan on trial, resulting in a verdict
that would level a deadly blow to its organization. The lynching brings to life two dramatic trials during which the Alabama Clan's motives and philosophy were exposed for the evil they represented. In addition to telling a gripping and consequential story, Lawrence Lehmer chronicles the KKK and its activities in the second half of the twentieth century and illuminates its lingering effect on race relations in America.
Today. The book that we're featuring this evening is The Lynching, the epic courtroom battle that brought down the Klan, with my special guest, journalist and author Lawrence Lemur. Welcome to the program and thank you for a Greeniness interview. Lawrence Lemur, thanks for having me, Thank you very much for coming on, and we're going to get to talk about an incredibly important book about an incredibly important time, if not the most important time in American history. Unlike your book. Let's
go back to February nineteen fifty six. Morris DS is in his second year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and he's married with a newborn and trying to get his college and law degree in four years. Tell us about Morris D's a little bit about his background and what is he doing in nineteen fifty six. I mentioned he's trying to get he's in school. Tell us more about Morris these a little bit about his character and what is he doing in nineteen fifty six.
Well, Morris Jesu is a tall, sort of incredibly handsome young man. His father is a tenant farmer in the country, in the cotton country outside outside of Montgomery, Alabama. He grows up a segregationist, says, did every practic everybody wipe every other white person in Alabama. Although he had a lot of black friends, and most of his friends are black, and I know that because several of his friends for life, and I interviewed a couple of them from my book.
But he was a segregationist. He had black friends, but those friends wouldn't come in the house and sit down with their family for dinner, that's for sure. So Morris Morris, you know, he realizes that racial things are not right. He has a there's one of the workers, one of the field hands that his father has on his land and he stopped by a state police trooper who says that he's drunk, and he's not drunk at all. Something's happened to his car and they find in this enormous amount.
And Morris is just a teenager. What does he know about the law. But he decides to go to help this this this black fellow, go into court and and you know, and try to get this fine, this try to get this get off this thing because he didn't didn't really get anything wrong, and then go into the courthouse. It's just in a it's just in a country store there and he tells his case and the state troopers says, no, he's drunk. There's no evidence against him. But they find
him three hundred dollars. And this man made about a dollar a day, and three hundred dollars was you know, it's just a devastating amount for him. And at that point, Morris just saw that the life was unfair and black people weren't treated right in Alabama. He understood, he understood that he was a segregationist, but he knew things weren't right.
So he enrolls in college trying to get his law degree, and at that time at the University of Alabama, there is a protest. Again we're talking about aggregation and everyone's a segregationist, and it was the issue at that time, and it was a black woman named Authorine Lucy was trying to become the first black student to attend the school. So this sets up all of the You introduced a lot of characters because they come into play right at
this time. So tell us about this protest and this author and Lucy.
Well, this is crucial in the history of the clan and in the history of the fight against integration because the clan came out and along with college students got out and started rioting against this young woman. It only want in education. She really wasn't a civil rights activist. She wanted a kind of library education and the University of Alabama was the only place you could get what she wanted. And she says, kind of push, she got pushed into this activist's role that she didn't even want.
And Morris had gotten married when he was a senior in high school. His bride got pregnant. He was he had a brand new baby. He didn't have any money. He had to struggle to get through, get through get through college. He did everything he could to make money. He uh, he went to the dorms and he and his wife made sandwiches and they took him around in the dormitories at night. And when he went that night,
all they talked. They were talking about was this black woman trying to get into school and what and what could they do well? The protest was so extreme, like they pushed her out and she did not enter the school. That Morris was a very good Baptist. Some people think because his name is Morris, sees a lot of people think he's Jewish. He's not Jewish. His grandfather named his
three sons after three Jewish businessmen he admired. But but he but he was he was a Baptist and uh he he was the leader of the uh the of the marriage students and the Baptist shirts are on campus. And that Sunday he got up in church and said, you know, this is not right what was done to
to to to missus Lowsey. I mean, it's not it's not what we in Christians, that's not how we should behave Well it was kind of murmuring in the in the church that day, and the minister came to him next week and said, Morris, you know, we don't think you're really that prepared to be the head of the students. Uh have the role you have in the church, and you better back off of that. So the Morris learned right then what would happened to be stood up?
Now you talk about his father. The father was a tenant farmer, but his father did have a great interest in politics and was a gregarious guy and had some connections. So you talk about in the book the first time that des Is inspired politically or interested in politics was with a friend of his father, a Big Jim Folsom. So tell us about that event and how it inspired Morris D's with.
Big Jim Folsom was the kind of character you don't see anymore. It was a bigger than life in every way. It was a six six, wildly overweight, heavy drinker, very much of a populist he was. He was He thought that one day he thought that the white establishment had done everything to keep the poor whites in the poor and the poor blacks from understanding that they had a lot.
They had, they had more together then they had more to gain the working together than they did work in the part and and the and the establishment figured it knew that they created if they flamed racism and kept and kept the white working class and having them to do with blacks, that that was the one way they could keep power. And that's that's what that's what Jim
big Folsom said they were doing. But one day he said that the white working class in the back black working class would get together and there would be a different society, and that's what he was trying to do.
His governor was a very very popular governor, and he'd come out to the the's home for just sit there and get drunk, and just sit there and drink and drink until he could finally hardly walk, and his black aid and chauffeur, you know, picked him up and put him back in the car and drove drove him back to the mansion in Montgomery. But that's the first time that Morris got interested in politics and in the idealistic part of.
Politics, and that interest in politics was not just a passing thing. He was very he was he was seen as very ambitious. So what was his political life and his future as a result of this ambition.
Well, he was terribly ambitious. He wanted to make a lot of money. He had all these uh businesses going with his friend Millard Filler, who eventually started Habitat for Humanity. They were in college together. They had all kinds of businesses. They did the student Guidebook, the student they did, they did,
they did cakes. They figured out that you could see that you could write letters, send letters to the parents and tell him about your son's having his birthday next month, and for five dollars will deliver a cake to his dormitory. And made a lot of money, made all kinds of money, but he's politically ambitious too, and in nineteen fifty eight he took a semester off from school and was George Wallace's campaignman student campaign manager in the state in Wallace's
first run for governor. George Wallace was another poor boy. George Wallace was University of Alabama student and got his law degree from the University of Alabama. Ad did morris Es, and George Wallace knew a smart guy. He had the most brilliant cent of politics of anyone of his generations, other than probably Lyndon Johnson. He understood the white working class, and he knew that segregation was going to end after the nineteen fifty four Supreme Court decision. It's just a
matter of time before he's going to end. But he realized that if he became a militant segregationist, that was the quickest bight of power. He could manipulate these people and motivate them and tell them they'd never be integration, and he could rise to the governorship and maybe the Senate Senate. Who knows where he could go like this, But he was very cynical. He could have been the the clerk of Alabama doing what the president of Clerk of South Africa did in working with Nelson Mandela to
end their part the abhorrent system of apartheid. George Wallas maybe could have done that, it would have been very difficult, but he chose a very different route. In nineteen fifty eight. Morris was there behind him as a student campaign manager.
And Morris not only learned the ins and out of politics in terms of campaigning and what it took to really get out there and get votes and organize people and get them to get them to the vote that day, but also he was privy to exactly what George Wallace thought at the same time the strategy that he employed. So he was aware of the reality behind George Wallace, wasn't.
He well more as these days like to say, well, you know, Walst wasn't that bad. John Patterson's opponent was a lot worse. Well, if you look at the clippings walls during that campaign criticizing Patterson for not being tough enough on segregation, So that doesn't hold. That doesn't hold Lotter. To run for offices in those days, you pretty much had to be a segregationist, and Morris these was supporting a segregationist there's no question about it. And three years later,
three years later, it's a young lawyer. In nineteen sixty one, there was the Freedom Rides, remember the Freedom Rides, and the racial mixed groups came down to the South on the interstate buses and when they reached Birmingham, they were beaten up, bludgeon to get to bludgeons half to death by members of the United Clans of America. And then another bus rises Montgomery, Alabama, the capital of Alabama, and they get out their bludgeoned there just with some some people.
With his injuries they never recovered from. Leading them was a man that Morris ends up his lawyer as a young lawyer. He defends this man. He defends them. Now Morris says, well, I didn't know he was a member of the clan. Well, I don't know how he didn't know, but he says he didn't know. He defended him in the courtroom, and there were some there were other defendants.
One of the other defendants was Robert Shelton. Robert Sheldon was the Imperial Wizard of the United Clans of America, the most powerful clan leader clan leader in the United States, and he too had gone to the University of Alabama. He dropped out, but he was a pre law student. He was a smart young man and became such a rabid segregationist that he decided he would make his career
through the clan. And when he sat in that courtroom and he sees Morris The's defending one of his fellow clan leaders, he thinks legitimately enough that Morris is is pro clan and most of the lawyers a defendant clansmen. They were either klansmen or their pro plan. No, Morris wasn't. And Morris says, well, I just defended him because I think the lawyer defends everybody. But in those days, you
really couldn't do that. When you when you defend the plans, when people said thought certain things about you in any case. When that when that case ended in the courtroom, one of the one of the freedomrunners, came up to Morris's and said, how could you do this? Morris? How could you do this? How how could you be on this side? And he realized how wrong he was. He realized he had to go he had to go different, he had
to go a different route. And three years later, when when four little black girls were killed in Birmingham and the bombing up done by the United Clans of America and done under the instigation of Robert Shelton. Morris saw that and he saw how terrible that was. He went to his Baptist church in Montgomery, outside the country, in the countryside that Sunday. And he was a lay preacher. In those days, you didn't need credentials to be preacher.
You could just get up and preach. He did many Sundays. And he got up that Sunday and he said, you know, my fellow Baptist, you know, we've got these fellow Baptists in Birmingham. We got these fellow Baptists are in trouble. We've got to help them. And the people shouted out, yes, brother, brother Morris, tell us we're gonna we want to help our fellow Baptists. He said, well, there were these four, these four little black girls were killed in the sixteenth
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. We got to help them. And they shout out, Noah, Morris, no, Morris, be quiet. We don't hear about this. We want to hear about this. This is in our business. Stay of your own business. And Morris kept on talking and talking, and they wouldn't listen. And finally he said, well, let's uh, let's pray. Let's shut her eyes and pray. So Morris bowed his head and shut his eyes and prayed for quite a while. He raised his head, opened the eyes and looked down
in the church, and everybody was gone. Everybody's gone. He was ostracized.
He was ostracized by his own family as well well.
He was upset. The next year, the time of the Selma March, famous Selma March. At the beginning of that march UH with Martin Luther King, Morris and his fellow friend and partner Miller Filler Drove drove a bunch of people, civil rights activists who had come flown down. Your ministers basically mainly Lutheran ministers, drove Drove and Selma to take part in the march. That's all I did. He didn't
take part in the march himself. But at that time a state trooper came to his mother's house and says, your son, Morris, he's getting himself in a lot of trouble. He's with us communists. He better stopp being with those communists. There's no telling what's going to happen to him? So that was the thing every everybody's been watched in those days. You went a little just a little bit off off the straight and arrow in term segregation. You were in trouble.
And Morris had walked a little bit off that road.
Now in nineteen fifty six when Morris D's was in the University of Alabama and he was witnessed to this black woman authoring Lucy not being able to get into college, and then you know, a couple thousand people, as you write in your book, cheering and jeering at her, and she was they used some excuse to make sure that she was excluded from that university. Among the protesters you say that day was the important character Robert Shelton, and
also Asa Carter and Robert Chambliss. And he had saw the film Birth of a Nation, you said, and he was an explosives expert. And there was a couple bombings like in Martin Luther over the bus boycott and that they thought might be related to him. So let's talk about Robert Shelton, Asa Carter, Robert Chambliss and what they were doing in nineteen fifty six before we talk about what they're doing in nineteen sixty one.
Okay, they are these socially ditective people. Okay, they they're not church goers, they're not union members, they don't belong to the Rotary Club, they don't have too many friends. And in the Klan they founded to find an identification and purpose. They're lower class, are working class whites, and the whites, most whites look down on them. I think they're white trash. The only people they can look down on are black people, and they don't want black people
to rise up. And at that at the time of Lucy trying to the University of Alabama, Robert Sheldon was a young clansman and he was there and he was taking part in this riot and he just loved it. And a Carter was there. He was a very smart young man, a very talented young man and a clansman. He was there and Robert Chamlis was there. And Robert Chalmers has become notorious later is a bomb maker. We talk about the bomb makers now in terms of the terrorists,
and isis now important role they play? Well. Robert Shelton was the bombmaker for the United Clans of America. He made the bombs that blew up the Birmingham church at the direction of Robert Shelton. Robert Sheldon was there and Asa Carter was a member of He was a member of a clan in Birmingham that castrated a black man. I mean, these were terrible people, the things that they did, but they weren't stupid people. They weren't stupid at all.
Now it's important because you tie in Shelton, and we talked about the governor Patterson versus Judge Wallace trying to be governor and them both using segregation, the issue segregation to their benefit, but also accusing each other of belonging or having ties with the KKK, which actually worked out for Patterson, you know amazingly. In your book you chronicle, the thing is is that Shelton had meteorical Ron, as you say to grand Dragon, but there's a really close
relationship with Wallace and Patterson. Tell us about that relationship and how much power does Robert Shelton have as a grand Dragon.
Well, in fifty eight, Robert Sheldon directs the United Clans of America to work for Patterson, who and in the runoff election, Patterson and Wallace with the number twe and two candidates, the runoff is between them. Right before the election, Wallace criticizes the plan. He says that Patterson has the Plan clan support and that's terrible and if he's so, if he wins, the Klan will clan will be in power.
Patterson won, and so Wallace changes too, and he thinks, I want that clan support, and so he goes to Robert Sheldon and four years later he has that support. And it's very important because these clans people, not only the thousands of them, but they'll do things that ordinary supporters won't do. They'll go out at night and they'll rip down the the advertising and the signposts and the billboards for the for your opponent. Don't just rip it down,
they don't care. They'll and they'll threaten people and scare people. They'll scare people in the voting for you. You know, they're very important. And so they helped Wils win election in nineteen sixty two on a very racist, segregationist tech. The famous story in fifty eight when Wils loses and that night and he's just devastated and he goes to the hotel where he's got to talk to his supporters and
who were who are there and to thank them. And he's just in a terrible mood, and he uses the N word and says, I will I will not be out and end again. I'm not going to be out and not end again. And he wasn't. And he took that racist segregation of his theme and built it as strong as he could. He got Robert Sheldon the United Clans to get behind him. They helped him get election
in sixty two. He paid Shelton back. Sheldon was a UH tire worker and the good good Rich plant in tu scussals right on the line, a real worker and Uh well Scott got that company the contract for state tires. And and so Sheldon got out of the plant, got out of doing that, he got a more executive job.
He drive around the state UH doing contracts and talking to those clansmen, and in Wells, Scott Sheldon's father a job as well, and the and then then the Klan was willing to do just what what George Wells wanted. But nobody knew this, and that was the truth the story of the South in those days. People pretended the Klan was this outcast near Duell organization. But the Klan did for the most part what the establishment wanted it to do.
Now, let's get back to uh where Morris D's is in terms of the formation of the Southern Poverty Law Center. When does that happen and what is the impetus for that? Why does he do that? You talked about him being an entrepreneur, so that's where he gets his money, finances this thing himself. So tell us about the reasons for this and the formation of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Well, he makes a fortune, a very smart guy. He and his partner, Millier Frailer, they do book publishing and there there for a time the largest publisher of cookbooks in America. Very smart guys. They make a fortune, they sell the business. I forget I think it was eight or nine million dollars, you know, in the sixties. A lot of money. And he can do what he wants
for the rest of his life. And he realizes that there's a role the civil rights movement, which which we did, modern day civil rights movement, which which we tend to think starts at the time of the Montcoming bus boycott in fifty five sixty six and ends with the death of Luther King. But there's a lot of work to be done, and it wasn't to be done primarily by marchus. Okay, he was to be done with the law, and the law.
Often the role of the law in the civil rights movement has been downplayed because it's much more dramatic and romantic to talk about the marches and the parades and all this and brave people standing up and that they did. But the courts are very important, and particularly the federal courts. Without the federal courts, we would sell have segregation in the South, in a very different America. And so Morris then starts to start the civil rights law firm in
nineteen seventy one. He calls it the Southern Poply Law Center. It's gowing out about poverty, that's what it's called. That's what the civil rights law firms were called at that time. He brings down five young, very smart, young lawyers and they start filing all these lawsuit say, I mean there's just a wealth of things they can follow us. In Sell, Ma, Alabama, for example, on the white part of town, the roads are all paved. On the black part of town, they're
all gravel or dirt. They sues to say that they they got to pay the blacks part of town. They sue to get to integrate the state troopers. There was not a single black state trooper at that time. All kinds of lawsuits do a lot of good work. And Morris is a brilliant fundraiser, and he sends out these letters and gets all of money. Can't believe all the money that cuts pouring in, mainly from northern liberals, to fund this organization.
At the same time, he's not only criticized, he's not only ostracized. It's more serious than that, isn't it.
No. I mean the Southern Popuy Law Center, the offices are firebombed by klansmen, by members of the United Clans of America. At one Christmas he is there with his daughter putting the ornaments on the Christmas tree, and there are two intruders out in his ranch in camouflage uniforms and carrying the software, and they're they're carried off by by by by his own security people. But it was a serious business, and uh, it was scary, and and he just he's a very gutsy guy. He's uh, you know,
he's up helped. He's like he's not even people think of Atticus Fitch. Okay, every every lawyer would like to be Atticus Fitch, the famous hero of Harperlis Killer Mocknberg. Every And I think that that image has ruined more lawyers than anything else, because there never was an Atticus Fitcher,
never was such a person. But Morris is more like like like Oscar Schendler Senel Schendler, the hero of Spielberg's wonderful movie, who was a Wolbanizing Grandiosi's uh self centered uh Nazi businessman who ends up saving thousands of Jews. And Morris is not a morally perfect man, but he does the right thing in the right way. It's the kind of guy that he drives. To know years he would drive his motorcycle one hundred miles an hour debts down the country lanes, and on the weekends he'd go
up and ride in a rodeo. So he in a way liked danger and he and he took chances very feet pop would have would have taken. And the other lawyers at the Sun Private Law Center really didn't like this.
And what did he say to them when they they said, listen, you're endangering this business. Is this just your own concern. They they saw it as his own, his own campaign, his own, his own mission, and not theirs. And what was it what was his response to them?
Well, at the time of these murders, this lynching at the center of my book. Uh. The two murderers eventually were found sentenced, but Morris felt that that wasn't enough. That he had to go after the head of the United Clans of America, Robert Shelton. And so he went to Beulah Donald, the mother of the of the murdered teenager.
Uh.
And uh he got her to file file a civil suit. And that's what he did, and and and the other lawyers at the Southern Private Laws and didn't like this. They didn't like to be in danger. They didn't like Uh. They thought this suit was stupid. They thought the judge, the judge would there was no way. There never was a case of an organization being found guilty for what a couple of its members did. And so they thought
it would It wouldn't work out. It was a waste of resources, was just They eventually all five of them ended up quitting, walking away verything going ahead with this.
Now let's talk about we'll get back to Robert Shelton and and Clavern nine hundred and that faithful meeting that they have that Robert Shelton where where Benny Hayes, Henry Hayes, Tiger Knowles tell us about the meeting you in great description. You talk about the altar and the candle. So describe that scene of this Clavern meeting in a cabin on Benny Hayes's property.
Okay, these guys are just nothing in society, okay, for nothing anybody ever paid any attention to. And in the plan they find identity. And in these quasi religious rituals with the altar, with the cross, with this with the mumbo jungle language. Okay, they just love this stuff. They eat it up. They love to come to this meeting meeting and take part in this. So there's one of these meetings in March of nineteen eighty one, and there
have been a black bankropper in Birmingham. He robbed a bank and when he came out he was trying to escape. He had allegedly killed a white police officer. Now the authorities in Birmingham knew that that he couldn't find a fair trial there, so they brought him down the mobile and the trial was heard before a largely black jury that evening at the clavern meeting, they just decided that.
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If if this guy got offered it was a hung jury, some of the clan numbers go out and find a black person and retribution kill that black person. And so that Friday evening, sure enough, the jury came back with a hung jury. And so James Tiger Knowles and Henry Hays went out looking for a black man. They found this old black gentleman ut talking with telephumble that he was too far away. And then nineteen year old Michael Donald's walking there. He's he lives in the projects with
his mother. He's the youngest of seven children. He said, he's home that evening watching a basketball game. His family's sitting there playing cards, and his aunt says, about eleven o'clock. His aunt says, Michael, you go out and get me a pack of cigarettes. And she gives him a dollar. That's all he had in his billfold. And he goes out to get the cigarettes. And he's walking on that street and on that dark street, and this old black this bureau comes up and Tiger Knowles pulled seventeen year
olds seventeen years old. Tiger Knowles pulls out a gun and orders Michael Donald into the car. Now, Michael Donald's not stupid, and my gought is black, and he knows he's a black Southerner. He knows when what's up. He knows what these people are likely to do doing. Obviously, he's tear They take him away on the countryside and they stop and they order him out of the car. And you know what, this guy is the mildest person imaginable, but he fights back. He fights against them, and they
knock him down and knock him down. They beat him, beat him, beat him, and he gets up again. He gets up again, he gets up three times and finally get him down. He's breathing hard. And they go and get a lynching rope out of the trunk, bring it in and Henry Hays puts his boot on Michael'donald's head forehead and pulls the rope tight and strangle him to death. And then they're not sure. They want to make sure he's dead, so they go and get a knife and
slid his throat. Now you think, wow, they just leave the Why don't they just bury the body or leave them in the woods. They're throw them in the ocean and get on with it. Well, because that's not enough. They got to make a symbol of this. So they throw the body back into the trunk, driving back into mobile and hanging on Herndon Avenue, hanging on the tree there because they want everybody to see see their handiwork.
Now, where did they the two go directly afterwards? And what do as we see later witnesses say, was their appearance.
Well, they they just go back to their friends. This street, there were klansmen the street. There were four houses on that street that had been owned by Benny Hayes, Henry Hayes's father, who was the most powerful plan official in
the southern part of the state. So it was known as the clan habitat, and there were several apartments where the clans went and Tigernoles had blood in his shirt, and when he went in one other clansmen saw the saw the button the shirt and quickly got him to go, got him to go outside and told him about the blood, and he trained his shirt and other clansmen got in cars and went to went to the courthouse and instead of flaming cross there as the symbol of the plans power.
Now it took a little while for the people of the city, or a part of me of the town to realize what had happened. It wasn't an actual lynching because he was strapped to the tree. But tell us what happens with this crowd, this crowd that has gathered, and what's their reaction and who comprises the crowd?
Mostly well, okay, okay, there were a couple of black people who lived in that street, but that was about it. But it was in poor neighborhood, and in the South at that time, the poorer, the neighborhood more like, who's going to be racial mixed? And this was a poor neighborhood, and so these black people started showing up and they cry and manly out of that sort of religious tradition of the South, and they're not embarrassed to show their emotions.
And they cry, and they got down their hands and knees and beat and they beat their fists against the ground because they know what has happened. Okay, they know. Why do they know? Because there was a tradition of lynching in the South. From eighteen seven to nineteen fifty five, there was a lynching of an average over once a week, and they were psychological, psychologically, a brilliant device to intimidate a race. Imagine, if you're a black mother, how do
you raise your son? Do you raise them to stand tall and bold? Or do you raise them when you see a white man come on the sidewalk, you get off the sidewalk and dup your hat. If you want them to stay alive, you'd probably do the latter. So the fear of lynching, it hadn't been a lynching for twenty five years, but the fear of lynching was in the black soul of the South, and they knew what had done. Now, Conversely, the white establishment did not want
to admit that a lynching had happened. Mobile had a much better reputation than Montgomery or Birmingham in terms of racial matters. There was no national publicity but negative about it. They didn't want that to happen. They didn't want it
to be said that there was a lynching. And so four of the five detectives, according to Bob Eddie, who was a state investor who came down, four of the five detectives were racist, okay, and they weren't about to go They weren't looking around to find white people to help black people. And three white con you know, properly
young drug dealers are just near De Willis. They arrested them for the crime and said it was a drug crime, that Michael Donald had been a drug deal going bad, that Michael Donald was buying drugs he hadn't paid, and these three guys had killed him. There was no no, nothing in Michael Donald's reputation, no evidence that he was a drug deal none of this at all, okay, but that's what they said. And the rest of these three young men and they would have they would have put
him in prison. They won't even executed them for crime they didn't commit. But it had to go before a grand jury. Now, grand juries generally do pretty much what the pross he wants them to do, and that's what they do. They're they're just lame lay people. They don't know that much about the law, and they believe in the authorities. But that time, when that when this came before them, they knew, they knew that this was wrong, and so they refused to give an indictment. So so, uh,
these three young went went went went free. But but the authorities and Momobile, they weren't going to go against this crime. And that's why people talk about states rights and they say, oh, we have to have states rights. Yeah, in some ways you have to. Of course they have the states rights. But but the right states rights is often just a subterfuge. It's just another word for racism. I'm sorry. And and in this instance, if they what
did it take it took that morning to lynching. He was the man Michael Figures, who was a state senator, the black states citor, the most powerful black politician in the southern part of the state. He came that morning and he saw and he saw that he took pictures of the of the lynching, and he turned around and took pictures across the street. And you know what it was.
We took picture of white men. One was Benny Hayes, the plan leader, the big plan leader, his son, Henry Hayes, and Tiger Knows, the two murderers and the person, the person that set them out to do this part. And Michael Figure's brother, Thomas Figure, was an assistant US attorney and mobile and he wanted to quit, but he said, if I quit, they aren't going to find there, let me no justice. So he constantly lobbied the Justice Department.
He just lobby the Justice FBI, He lobbied the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department until finally they decided to come down. And they were the ones, through their efforts, through their grand jury and bringing people before the giant grand jury not only once, but two times, three times, four times, finally broke Tiger Knows. He confessed and he was send eventually twenty five years in prison, and Henry
Hayes was convicted and eventually executed. That never would have happened without the Federal governments.
Now the federal government used every available leverage they could, including really digging up a robbery motive, so this would be a capital case, which again because of that leverage, starts making people talk with that kind of pressure, doesn't it.
Well, no, the robbery, that's the state case. That's the case against Henry Hayes when he goes to trial. Finally, at that time in Alabama, you could kill somebody, You could kill five people if you just went and slaughtered them. That was not considered a capital offense for which you could be executed. You had to have committed another crime at the same time, generally robbery. If there was robbery at the same time, then you then you could be
could be sentenced to death. Well, well they what were they going to do or they didn't have capital murder? Well, well, Tiger Knowles had asked Michael Donald to take out his wallet when in the back stat of the buick as they're driving him out to his death, and in the will to Saffy with a dollar bill in it. He was found a few days later in a dumpster in mobile without the dollar that was that They said that was robbery. Well, they had nothing to do with uh,
Henry Hayes was on who was on trial. It only had to do with with his partner the thing. And was it robbery, I don't think so. I mean that mean that somebody could have just found there was no real strong evidence it was robbery, but they wanted to find the murderic for it. But even then, the jury initially you know, sends him to life imprisonment now in Alabama. Then a couple of months later the judge then that that that that that was oversaw the case, then looks
over his verdict and confirms it. He changed the verdict to it to death to death, which it was very very rare, almost unheard of at that time. But that's how much at that time the state wanted to execute somebody and show show that they weren't racist.
In your book, you have an amazing tale of this Benny Hayes, who is the biggest official in the southern part of Alabama at this clavern nine hundred, big influence. He's a big man in town because he owned some properties and he has the cabin where the clavern meets, where the clan meets. But he has his five foot high youngest son who he thinks is a loser. Tell us about that relationship and the relationship with Benny and Henry, and despite that, Henry still does not rat out his father.
Yeah, well Benny is just on this miserable, evil human means you could ever matchine. Okay, everybody said that he beat his wife. He tried to have sex with his daughter in law. One day, he has his dog called White Hope, and the dog tries to kind of get under the fence and get out, so he takes and just cuts all the paws the ends of the pause off the dog. And his son is watching this, and his son just cries, starts to cry. He selp all of this disgusting, terrible thing his father had done to
this beloved dog. And his father just thinks his son is a whimp. He's just a whimp. And so why one of the reasons Henry Hayes goes down and kills the black man man is to prove to his father that he's a real man. He thinks, finally his father will care for him if he kills a black man.
And meanwhile, he's he is secretly and it's interesting you say that his wife overhears that basically it's a reasonable sacrifice, his son for the klan.
Yeah. No, Afterwards, here enemy has done this, done this to get his father's love and I and he thinks now that he's killed his father with respect and watch out for him. But his father says, well, that's okay. If his son, his son has to be excuted. Somebody has to pay the price. And the best it's the son. I mean, just the father doesn't really care. You know, it's terrible for the boy. And Henry on death row,
he imagine what it's like. He's on death row. Most of the prisoners on death row and Alabama on black and there's this racist clansman going into a cell in this in this, in this on death row. He was just terrifying. And in the first few weeks he had people protect him right and left. But after a while, you know, he realizes these black prisoners are his brothers, and he becomes friendly with him. He becomes really friendly
with him, and they really protect him. And the night before he dies, who does he talk to but a black preacher. He talks to a black preacher and for the first time he confesses that he was He was indeed one of the two killers of Michael.
Donald now Morris D's. We didn't talk about the actual meeting with missus Donald. And she is a very very interesting character, and she never attended the trial, but her family did so tell us about that meeting and what she had said to Morris and what he had said to her to get her confidence that he was the right person to handle this and that she could would bother to be You know, she's pretty cynical about white people in general and especially the law. You said, so what convinced her, Well.
She didn't look a black woman of that generation. You know, it's hard to talk about this because I don't know who's listening to this. And I know what I was like when I went down there to research this book. I mean, I thought I knew about the South. I thought I knew about slavery and their repression. But I didn't know anything. Okay, I didn't know how bad it really was. Morrison, I possibly imagined and then for a black woman of Missus Donald's generation, I people would just disappear.
A black person would just disappear. You didn't go to the police for that, that person was gone. Those are the kinds of things that happened not only Lynch, but just disappearances. So all she wanted for her son was some measure of justice. She wanted the people that did this to become responsible and she, you know what, she wanted somebody to remember her son. She wanted people to remember her son. And Morris came to her and she'd learned, uh,
not to trust people. She definitely learned that. And Boris says away with people, and you know when he can talk, he can talk. And he talked to him and he said, you know, we're gonna do this for him. Misus Donald, We're going to do this for your son. And she and she agreed, and when she went along with she couldn't.
She wasn't in the She didn't sit during the murder trial because she was afraid the terrible things would be said about her son, because they said that when they tried to pin the thing on a call her son a drug deal. It was just ridiculous. He was afraid what Henry Hayes might say to going to blame her son. He didn't do that, but she wasn't in the courtroom for that.
Now, what is this his strategy? You say? We talked about his other lawyers saying that it was impossible to do to get this link had never been done before, it was unprecedented. If he failed, it would be disastrous. So what was his What was one of the breakthroughs that he had? What was the thing that he did that that helped move this ahead in terms of getting a conviction like this an unprecedented conviction.
Okay, First of all, he had to show a pattern. Okay, one horrendous act of violence, one terrible act isn't enough. He had to show a pattern. I mean had Look, he had the one of what was done to Michael Donald, and he knew that he believed that Robert Sheldon had put forth the racist philosophy that motivated these people to do that. But that wasn't enough soon for ten million dollars against the clansmen, and that wasn't going to do it.
But so he had to find a pattern. So he tracked down James Thomas Rowe, who had been an FBI informant, who actually, as an informant, had led had led a lot of the clan's most violent actions. I mean, he said I had to do it, but I think he took it. I think it took a little bit too much more pleasure in it. He was in the car on the night at the time of the after Selma marched, when Villa Luosa, the civil rights were an activist from Detroit,
was in her car with a young black man. They were driving people back and forth in the airport and Selma. These four clansmen were in the car and they saw this car with the with the middle aged white women, the young black man, black man and that, and they were going to get this car. And they chased them out in the countryside, going very fast, and he pulled up beside the car and fired bolts into the car
and killed Belos. He kills her, okay, and a lot of people think that the row was one of the people firing those bullets, but because of an FBI infirman, he got off. But he could testify that before they did that, Robert Sheldman said to them, go out and do what you must do. Now, Robert was a smart guy, and the reason he never had any criminal convictions was he was very careful what he said, go out and do what you can do. He didn't set go and murder somebody. But that's all he had to say, was
going what you do what you're doing. That was enough, and that was what Roe testified. Rowe's deposition was used in the in the courtroom, he found an in the THESEUS people found another clansman clans leader, another uh small town in Alabama whose clavern had they had firebombed a black civil rights leader. They'd fired bullets into the home of a white woman as dating a black man when the police chief was worried that the civil rights had gone to the FBI. They had broken to the civil
rights leader's house and sold his papers. And he had been motivated by Robert Shulden coming and talking to his clavern and bragging about the violence against against people's like the Freedom Writers. When the Freedom Writers came in Birmingham, Robert Sheldon, Robert Sheldon wasn't he wasn't going to get out there and start beating up these guys himself. He was the leader, and he was in his Catillac instead of riding this around the streets right near there watching
what was going on. But he was the leader, and so he had motivated these people that's what they should do. So with this, these had the pattern that he needed in that courtroom.
It's interesting he talked about the deal that he had with these troopers in twenty one cars and they had an agreement do what you want to these protesters for fifteen minutes.
Yeah, it's incredible. In Birmingham, I mean, look, look one of immobile, the Klansmen did what they called missionary activists. The favorite missionary activity was to go out and beat up a black person. And why don't you beat them up? And I don't mean just a few you know, hitting them a few times, I mean brutally beating up somebody. And the lion they're just lying cringing on the ground. And before they left them, the first last thing and said to him is you know you don't say anything
to anybody. You go to the police, and the police are klansmen, and we will and we'll kill you. We'll kill you because we we'll hear what you did. So there was a great fear of the police and the Klan, and many of the police in those days were clansmen. So when the Freedom Writers came to Birmingham, the Klansmen were told by the police, by the top police officials, you got fifteen minutes to do whatever you want to these people.
In this time period, that you cover in this book. You talk about George Wallace being shot. We don't have enough time to go into everything, but George Wallace being shot by somebody just wanted to get famous. Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King assassinated, and the tie towards the kind of sentiment that Robert Shelton believed that segregationism,
segregation was going to be forever. He started being investigated, and now he was being he's in court with as the grand Wizard or a grand dragon being implicated in this. So society had it's, at least on the surface, had changed its attitude dramatically in a few short years, to the surprise and dismay of Robert Shelton and some of the supporters.
Yes, and in that jury that heard the trial in nineteen eighty seven, it was an all white jury. It was an all white jury because the clan lawyer made sure there were no blacks, but it was an all white jury that heard that. And the end came down with a seven million dollars verdict. So the South was and that's what things. That's one thing that troubles me today is you have a lot of young intellectuals, probably
more black than white. But anyway, who suggests that things haven't gotten any better, Well, it's a long road and only part way of this there. But things have gotten a lot better. If you go back to what the South was, how wing you deny and how can you deny the struggles that so many people made to get us where we are today? Now.
Morris D's gained a lot of great attention and adulation from this decision where he brought down the Klan tell us about what Morris D's mother had said and the found only had said. And the result of this in terms of recognition, which is really what Missus Donald really wanted. What about that recognition for.
Her son, Well, Missus Donald got that. I mean, this is what she wants. She didn't care about money. I don't want money. I just want justice from my son. And across from the Southern Private Law Center building and Montgomery, they built the Southern Popery Law Center has built this marvelous civil rights museum, this panoramic panorama of the history
of the civil rights movement. And if you think you know everything, believe all that happened, all the violence, all the troubles, all the struggles, and Michael Donald's picture is right there at the beginning to be remembered forever that he's the part of this, just as Martin Luther King was, or Mamad Ali or Ben Garvins, whoever.
What was the fate of Robert Shelton.
Robert Sheldon became this kind of benign, old gentleman who would go to Duncan Donuts and have a cream donut and coffee in the morning, and people had no idea that he'd once been the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.
Benny Hayes is portrayed again as such a vivid, gruesome character in this. You have him in the trial with his cane and his menacing, pointing at witnesses and trying to intimidate people to live as a heart attack during the one of the days of the trial. What happens to Benny Hayes.
Well, he's finally going to be brought to justice, but he's just so old at that point that he dies before he can be brought to trial. But it was the fate of.
Go ahead, go ahead, Sorry.
Well, what was the fate of the others? Well, as I told you that Henry Hayes was executed. James Tagrinas. He spent twenty five years in prison, twenty of them in solitary confinement. He got out. He now believed it or not. Is the Coaster chef. He saved his money. He's got about two hundred fifty thousand dollars and he wants to go back to the Alabama and started restaurant. Yeah, amazing.
And what about the UKA, which was the Again from the ashes of the Klan came Robert Shelton and an even more menacing version of the Klan in the UKA. What was you talk about numbers? Fifty thousand members in America and probably ten times those sympathizers. What is because people do watch for those kinds of numbers. What is his status now of the Klan? It's not gone well?
First of all, First of all, this legal theory that dees and has been usednumber of times against skinhead groups and white nationalists and crypto Nazis and other clan groups. So you don't have any more big organizations, Okay, you've got small organizations, but troubling things. Just a few days ago in Sacramento, there was a kind of neo Nazi groups and state that was having a protest and there were knife fights and ten ten people were injured, you know,
and there are people out there. It's still a very troubling thing there. There's still people with these attitudes. And they picked this stuff up like Dylan Root did last year in Charleston. They pick it up off the internet. They don't have become a member of the organization. It's a very troubling time in our society now, in a very dangerous time.
What did Morris D's go on to h You know, it wasn't the end of his illustrious career, but what else did he do? What else did he go on to do? And his personal life suffered from some of these decisions. But what was a very profound thing is the scene that you have in there where his daughter question what he's doing in his motivations, and then you write about how he convinces her that it's all worthwhile.
Well, his daughter is in the house, they're putting Christmas ornaments on the Christmas tree, and suddenly these two guys in their camouflage outfits, you know, and they saw that rifles coming on to the land to try to kill him, and the security scares him off. But the daughter they've been going to closet and hide, and the daughter is a friend, says their daddy, why do you have to
do this? Why do you do this? And so she brought him down to the trial, the Silver trial, with the Michael Donald trial, and she saw for the first time what her daddy was doing. But he was his life was at risk. And he's a very controversial person. Some people listening to this will will know his name and admire him. Other people just can't stand him. Okay, that's the way it is. He's a controversial figure because he stood up for these things, but his life has
been in danger. He has security, and again people don't like him, say he doesn't need security. He's just showing that up. He's just wasting money on this. But I know for a fact that as recently as ten months ago, there was a serious threat. There was a serious threat.
Incredible, Yeah, incredible. You also talk about it took till one of the incidents in there with the young woman. There finally was a conviction of one of the clan members in twenty ten, and just to show again just a sort of understanding of the time, he only received six months, right, Yeah, But you know, now, is there some you talked about the impact that this Morris D's and in the Michael Donald civil suitcase had on other organized like this to to to be able to bring
them the court and dismantle them. What is Morris D's doing now other than again you say his life is still in danger. But obviously what is he What is he doing right now?
He's the same guy. He's been married five times. He's now living with someone else, and he's very happy. Nobody really loves and he's continuing to do. He still takes these motorcycle trips. I mean, he still works at the Sun Body Law Center. He's just a very dynamic person.
What was the effect of writing this book on you? I know that you had said that there were some things that really amazed you that you had no idea of. And of course this is covering a lot of, you know, incredible history in America. What was the the overall I guess maybe the most profound effect for you doing this entireble corus after ward?
Two, the name Holocaust was not used. It was not until the fifties when Jewish Americans felt it was extremely important to remember this and this was a way to remember it. And so now we all know that. Okay, we all know the Holocaust. We decided it can't happen again, and what a horror that was. I think we have to know this. These problems in this era, the civil rights, the struggle for black equality, the the the the evils of slavery that Obama said was is the original original Americans,
and we all should know that. It's Americans. Not to feel guilty means, come on, it's not about that anymore, but it's part of our history and we all, we all should know this and realize what we've come through. It's very important for all of us.
Absolutely. I want to thank you for coming on and talking about the lynching, the epic courtroom battle that brought down the Klan. It's a fascinating book, Lawrence, and I want to thank you for coming on and sharing it with us. For those that might want to follow your work, or do you do Facebook or you have a website, how people might contact you or find out more about your work.
Yeah, I've got face, I've got Facebook, and I've got website. L e a mr dot com. It is not too much on except in my books, but face by face Facebook too.
Yeah. Well, thank you very much, Lawrence. A fascinating book. Thank you very much once again for coming on talking about it. You have yourself a great Thanks for having me, good night.
Yeah,