Transcripts For CNN The People v. The Klan 20240711

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Mobile still had klan in it but they did. We dont tolerate this. We make sure this case does not rest from a criminal standpoint. I stuck to the klanman. If tiger knows, finally cracks. Henry hayes. Got you. Got em. When we think of Michael Donald, how long will it take for his family to get justice, how many years and decades and how much time . A body Of A Black Man found hanging from a tree in mobile, ala alabama. Lynching is a tool to control and oppress black people. This is still happening. People are horrified of the police. It is the modern day lynching. What are we going to do about this. We move forward with people deciding i am bold enough and i am going to miake it change. Beulah may donald took on the most Violence Organization in the united states. This is an incredible story. When Beulah May Donald discovered her son had been hung, strangled and beaten, she seeks to hold the killers of her child accountable. The stakes are high. The only way to get justice is to pursue the killers in criminal court. On all negotiations that were involved. I trusted the lawyer who sold me out. And i ended up giving a plea deal. It was a hard decision. There were threats to my life. Everybody hated me. Everybody hated me. At that point we reached an agreement with jeff session. The agreement was since tiger in criminated Henry Hayes, tiger would be allowed to plea guilty in a civil rights, we would try henry in State Court for Capital Murder. Promises were made to Tiger Knowles for his cooperation. He knew he was a dead man in state prison. If he got convicted in State Court for anything and he went to prison in the state of alabama, it was done for him. I am not a psychologist but it is my opinion, henry murdered Michael Donald to please his father. Ti Ti Tiger knowles and hays and the people, all the organizations they associated with, they wanted to please Bennie Jack Hays, it seems Bennie Jack Hays had control. They did it with his blessing. Benny hays was a Tyrant And Henry was definitely afraid of him. Henry always tries to please his father and it never seems to be good enough. Get it off of me. Mr. Hays told him oh we can do this and nothing would be done to us. I just really believe because typically in the south why people think they can do things and nothing would be done to them. Most people do crimes they feel like theyll never get caught. In the history of the state of alabama only one white man had ever been sentenced to death to the murder of a black person. Most critical factor was to create faith in the Black Community that local Law Enforcement had both the will and the skill to prosecute a white man for Fmurdering A Blac man. If we were successful would demonstrate a Life Of A Black American mattered as much of a life of a white person. So this is black Lives Matter in 1983. When Lyou Look at Michael Donal and the fact that his Mother Beulah may donald had to say Michael Donald life mattered. He was black and his life mattered. Justice for travon. The moral anthem, black Lives Matter came into be in the wake of travon martins death. When it came to emit till, back in 1955 on behalf of a 14yearsold boy, his black life mattered. In the case of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombings for decades, and the little girls in maine, we were literally saying black girls Lives Matter. Early 80s, we have seen the klan numerous times getting away of lynching and acts of violence and no one was held accountable. Henry hays is the Klans Man charged killing Michael Donald in mobile. He was arrested and for the agreement he was turned over. He wanted a Capital Murder Con V Con c conviction. Chris and i flew out there. In october of 1983, we interviewed tiger together and i was forceful but not abusive. I was direct and painfully ca candid. I was the one that told him in that cell that you got an agreement with the federal government, if you fail to tell the whole truth, it does not preclude prosecution by the state if successful, well put him in the Electric Chair and you aint told me the whole truth. Are you ready to join the duers . Those who du more with less asthma. Thanks to dupixent. The Addon Treatment for specific types of moderatetosevere asthma. Dupixent isnt for sudden breathing problems. It can improve Lung Function for better breathing in as little as 2 weeks and help prevent severe asthma attacks. Its not a steroid but can help reduce or eliminate oral steroids. Dupixent can cause serious allergic reactions including anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have rash, shortness of breath, chest pain, tingling or numbness in your limbs. Tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection and dont change or stop your asthma treatments, including steroids, without talking to your doctor. Du more with less asthma. Talk to your Asthma Specialist about dupixent. If your financial situation has changed, we may be able to help. After forty, we need antiaging care that works. Am i right ladies . New from loreal, revitalift Night Serum with pure retinol. International patent pending. Our most potent retinol. So effective, in a clinical test, 100 of women showed reduction of wrinkles. Even deep wrinkles. Powerful results, validated by dermatologists. Its an antiaging superstar new revitalift Night Serum with pure retinol. From loreal paris. Were worth it. I was the one that told him in that cell, Today Is The Day and it is your call. You can tell it all or i am going to present your case to a Grand Jury when i get back to alabama. I just could not fathom why somebody would kill and hang someone from a tree. The motive for the murder of Michael Donald was not known until tiger made the connection between the Anderson Trial and the killing of Michael Donald. Joseph anderson on trial in mobile in 1981. On monday the 16th, the trial of anderson started in the Mobile County courthouse. Ander son accused of Killinga White officer in birmingham. The jury is 11 black people and one white person. It was as topic of educating speculation shall we say that mr. Anderson would either be acquitted or the case would result in a mistrial. The joseph Andersons Trial started a week before michael was killed. I watched the trial the whole week. The fifth day of the trial, the case went to the jury that evening, all of these people congregated and waited to see what the news going to report. The 12 jurors could not reach an agreement. The judge forced to declare a mistrial in the fiveday old case. The news came on and we were watching it. I saw him coming out the courtroom. I got up from the tv and got dressed and went to my sisters house, we talked about it and it was over. Never thought we would be affected by that. On wednesday night. The local klan met on the property of Bennie Hays. At that klan meeting, they discussed what they thought would be the outcome of the trial and Bennie Hays made the statement to the fact that if a black person and he used another word could get away with killing a white cop then we would be able too kill a black person, again, using another term. So Henry And Tiger left the apartment on Hernan Avenue looking for a black person to kill and lynch solely because the klan wanted to send a message. There was fear to Black Community, legislatures would change in the south. And possibly throughout the country. And the hierarchy of the klan viewed it as maybe a spark that started the fire that could not be put out. What we see in american history again and again is this ugly Con Vergence and revenge a the hands of white supremacists. We saw in the way of the Civil War and reconstruction, We Saw it in the 1920s with the je ressurection. This occurs at the moment where Black America has made an advancement of some kind. Bennie hays, basically to cover his Backside And Attempt to protect his son. Klan Bennie Hays, denies it all. Communist dont pick only if you are in their way. I am the one theyre picking on. To get to me they got my son. How can a klansman living in the rural part of Mobile County come up with the money to hire one of the best Defense Attorney around . When these two were identified as killers, The Old Man and Bennie Hays, he hired a man to burn down his house so he can hire a private attorney. He did burn the house and anyway got an insurance se sett settlement. They used it to pay the lawyer for his son Henry Hays. The defense was to attempt to discredit tiger there tiger had cut his deal to save his life and therefore would Say Anything that he was told to say. It was sometimes before lunch, one of the Trial Coordinators came to me and said chris is going to have to leave the case. Mobile countys chris will be suspended. Chris is going to leave immediately. Hell have no contact with the office or nothing. And you are going to have to try the Michael Donalds case. Whoa. Disrupt the st atus quo. Which is why tmobile for business uses unconventional thinking to help your business realize new possibilities. Only one 5g Partner offers unmatched network, support, and valuewithout any trade offs. Hey its me your dry skin im Craving Something were missing. The ceramides in cerave. They help restore my natural barrier, so i can lock in moisture. Weve got to have each others backs. Cerave. Now the 1 dermatologist recommended skincare brand. Ac Dc Back In Black the bowls are back. Applebees irresistabowls all just 8. 99. Oh, okay, if you dont convict the Black Community theyre going to riot. I said oh no. They were concerned about me and maybe drive home in a different Car Everyday and go different route and all that. If prosecutors and Law Enforcement were afraid, if they wanted to take a different Route Home Everyday in order to ensure their safety, what about Beulah May Donald . As a residence of the blpublic housing, can she change her address or take a different Car Home . Can she assign Security Staff to herself . She demonstrated more courage than most people i have seen in my life. Do you believe in your struggle to the point where you would literally lose your life because guess what it is just that dangerous. It is just that dangerous when i open up my Mail And Someone sends to my Home Mail that tells me theyre going to kill me or tweet at me you deserve to be dead, and tweets my address. You are putting your life in danger just for speaking up for truth and justice. When a black woman take on any white assailant or white person who dares to take a life of a black person in the deep south. Beulah donalds life is at risk, she had every reason to be afraid. There was not a baptist is for absolute terror. Guys in the community would come and sit in front of my moms door. I think they call this effort protecting the house and protecting her because the klan was still around mobile. I thought one of the best ways to catch up on exactly what had happened that night, we got with the Fbi And Tiger knowles and we started out at Hernan Avenue and i said okay, well ride the route you did the best you remember because i want to know what happened. He needed to know what tiger was going to say and how he was going to say it. They had u. S. Marshals with them. They had an obligation to make sure that there was no likelihood of any kind. I was getting too heavy involved in a klan and i was getting where i know too much, if anything ever happened, and i whine up being a he said your poppy will be with money. If you write about the klan, you are going to die. The klan and you had all of the naacp and all over there. To imagine criminal courts in the 80s in mobile, alabama where you have a Jury Box where 11 jurors were white and one juror was black of white defendants being held accountable for the death of Michael Donald. The stakes could not be higher and the racial tension could not be higher. The nation is literally watching. Everyone had to have a sense of this being a historical ab aberration. A criminal trial for folks, you have a reason to be afraid and concerned. It is white Supremaciy And America race. Hays father threatened to kill him. If i open my mouth of anything, i would be dead. I was really scared. I moved out of my Mother And Fathers house. Bennie hays coming to my Mamas House looking for me to shut my mouth. When my Mother And Father went to the grocery, i wrote him a note and said i moved out. I could not live here anymore. I honestly believed they would have killed my mom and dad. Security is very tight at the Trial Tom Harrison charged Hays 20yearold went out looking for a Black Man and found Michael Donald. I put Tiger Knowles on the stand and we went through who he is and how did he know him and just asking what happened that night. Hi i put a pistol on his fac and he started begging for his life. If sweat is your bodys natural way of cooling itself down. Then condensation is a beers natural way of saying drink me. Michelob ultra now with a new look. Hey its me your dry skin im Craving Something were missing. The ceramides in cerave. They help restore my natural barrier, so i can lock in moisture. Weve got to have each others backs. Cerave. Now the 1 dermatologist recommended skincare brand. Cyber attacks are relentlessly advancing. To end them, cybereason built a cyber Security Solution so advanced. It can end Attacks Today on computers, mobile devices, servers and the cloud. And deliver futureready protection, keeping you sharp for tomorrow. Join us, the defenders, in our mission. Cybereason. End cyber attacks. From endpoints to everywhere. The body of a young Black Man found lynched style in mobile, alabama. That was more than two years ago. A courtroom heard that killing of the work of a Ku Klux klan. Mrs. Donald did not attend to trial because it would have been too painful. She lost a child and had to relive that would be devastating to any parent. Consider what Beulah Donald was going through trying to secure justice for Michael Donald while grieving his death. Con now in the wake of Eric Gardners death, consider all the mothers behind the hashtags who has children we understand to be human beings. I am a child, the mother and the father and the family, we die a little everyday. What happened to George Floyd brought back so vividly of how my son was killed. There are so many mothers and fathers whose child have been murdered and no one heard about them. They are the nameless and faceless, their pain is the same. When the strietrial started,d not go to any trials. I had gotten so little and the doctor was seeing that i was not eating. I didnt want anything to eat. I had gotten so small. My mom was worried about me. She said, are you all right . Because i drop so much weight so little time. The two or three times i paid attention to henry, he appeared to be scared to death. Every witness i put on was another nail in his coffin. When Tiger Knowles told the Story Everyone was so amazed because if it had not been for him, we would have not known. Tiger pointed to Henry Hays and said together they killed the 19yearold Michael Donald in 1981 because he was black. The klan wanted message to get back alabama not just alabama but the whole united states. We got the rope and the gun and i tied to hang the noose. We were out on a hunt. Thats what we were doing. We were out hunting black m people. They were out hunting black people and they came upon Michael Donald. Just go watch the tape of what happened to ahmaud arbery. Watchmen who had no Authority Drive around and corner off this young Man And Shoot him with a shotgun and his hand and his body. He was an easy target because he was walking by himself. So thats the reason we chose him. I called him over to the car for direction. Henry pulled the car and i as asked mike where the black nightclub was and he gave me the direction. I put a gun to his face and said dont Say Anything. He got in the backseat. The guy had no idea we are going to kill him. We took him. I asked him if he had a girlfriend and he said yes. The last thing he said as far as i remember when he said please dont kill me, i will do anything you want, just dont kill me. When we got out of the car, thats when he attacked me. He gets completely changed. Went from a calm Person And Ahma a Mad Dog and a raging animal. When i think of Michael Knowles describing Michael Donald fighting like ahmad mad. The fact that the killer describing the victim as n nonhuman. That says everything we need to know about hate crime. Tiger knowles is detached from his own humanity, he lost sight of the fact that hes behaving in a beasley matter in an animalistic manner. Michael was a strong person. He was a strong person. So he was justo over powered. He probably got tired. I knew he fought him. I knew he did. And then we killed him. And henry went to get the rope and we put the rope around his neck. Henry was pulling the rope around his neck. Henry and i put him in the truck of the car. Henry cut his throat. And we took him back to mobile. And lynched him. Just imagine that, a person brutally beaten and their throat was cut and then hung from a tree . My god, i mean your heart just just drops and you think of the family of that child because he was 19yearsold. When Tiger Knowles described what he had done, he told us how he felt then. Henry said we are not going to let this nigger fight us like this and not kill him and thats what happened. They really played on this young Mans Courtesy to them. They asked this young man for direction. Stop what he was doing to show them. He was brought up to respect people and try to help people. They took advantage of that. To me thats as low as you can get. He was not brought up that way. After forty, we need antiaging care that works. Am i right ladies . New from loreal, revitalift Night Serum with pure retinol. International patent pending. Our most potent retinol. So effective, in a clinical test, 100 of women showed reduction of wrinkles. Even deep wrinkles. Powerful results, validated by dermatologists. Its an antiaging superstar new revitalift Night Serum with pure retinol. From loreal paris. Were worth it. He was an easy target because he was walking by himself. I called him over the car for direction, i think it was for direction, i pulled the gun and told him to get into the car. When they first got michael into the car, tiger held a gun on him and said take everything out of your pocket. Well, in his Pocket Wuas his wallet that had a Dollar Bill on it. The district testified he had a dollar when he left the house. When we found him that dollar was gone. That constituted robbery. We could prove kidnapping so those two combined with his murder made it Capital Murder. Michael donald is abducted and brutally beaten and strangled and postmortum lynched. There had been over 200 attempts over 100 years to pass federal antilynching legislation. Until this very day we have not done so. Lynching is not a bygone Era But Manifest and in new forms of racial terrorism as we speak and as we tweak. Look what they did to George Floyd on tv. Everybody can see it. Where is the remorse . They lynched him, thats what i call it a lynching still or maybe a different tactic. Some 30 years later and you go this is still happening . A black life still has no value . In this trial, the jury was 11 whites and one black lady. I certainly had some concerns about the makeup of the jury. White people and black people see things differently. We see black folks the film where the police were beating Rodney King in l. A. And we say, police brutality. And white folks see the same film that was on the jury, he resisted arrest. The all white jury going to find him not guilty, and thats been the practice over the years. The klansmen stood Stone Face as the verdict was read. There were gasps in the courtroom. It took the jury 26 minutes to recommend life without patrol. The judge will sentence hayes on january 19th. The state of alabama the way the law works is the jury gets to make the recommendation for sentencing in a capital crime. This particular jury for Henry Hayes recommended life without parole. However, it was in the mid80s. Rejected that recommendation to the jury and instead sentenced him to death. It was the first time since at least the early 1900s, quite possibly longer, that a white had been sentenced to death for a crime committed against a black person in the state of alabama. There was young man born and raised in the south. Im proud to be here when a white man has been sentenced to die for murdering a black. Nobody, not then, not today, 39 years later ought to be, you know, running a victory lap. The only conclusion you can reach is that everybody lost. The families was destroyed from the hatred that went on. It is just a sad situation. It was. Two families were destroyed. Bennie hayes obviously felt that he was so powerful that he was above the law. But in the end, he was brought to his knees and caused the death of his son. You cant give life, so why take it. You kill an innocent person, that person stays with you day and night. A lot of people think dealing with copd is a walk in the park. If i have something to help me breathe better, everything will be fun and nice. But i still have bad days flareups coughs , which can permanently damage my lungs. My lungs need protection against flareups. So its time to get real. Because in the real world our lungs deserves the real protection of breztri. Breztri gives you better breathing symptom improvement, and flareup protection. Its the first and only Copd Medicine proven to reduce flareups by 52 Breztri Wont replace a Rescue Inhaler for sudden breathing problems. It is not for asthma. Tell your doctor if you have a Heart Condition or high Blood Pressure before taking it. Dont take breztri more than prescribed. Breztri may increase your risk of thrush, pneumonia, and osteoporosis. Call your doctor if worsened breathing, chest pain, Mouth Or Tongue swelling, problems urinating, vision changes, or Eye Pain occur. For real protection ask your doctor about breztri. Hey its me your dry skin im Craving Something were missing. The ceramides in cerave. They help restore my natural barrier, so i can lock in moisture. Weve got to have each others backs. Cerave. Now the 1 dermatologist recommended skincare brand. It seemed like a long time coming, but just the fact that it ended upcoming was it was like everybody was praising god and just thanking god and just really, really happy. I think the jubilation was not so much that he received the Death Penalty. It was that the life Of A Black Man in 1984 was determined to have mattered to the extent that, you know, what was said to apply to all and the dignity and the respect and the right to life and liberty, the right not to be targeted for race and killed, that it was realized in that moment in that courtroom. We were pleased with the arrest. We were pleased with the outcome. But mike was a young kid, 19, going to the store. Minding his own business going to the store. Its extraordinarily unusual for any white person to be held accountable for taking the life of a black person. So to the extent that you have a member of the klan being given the Death Penalty for taking the life of a black person, it may not be moral progress, but it is a progress in terms of the recognition of black life. Beulah Mae Donald in many ways embodies, personified the moral nuance, the complexity in the Black Community about the Death Penalty. She grieves over her son, but as a woman of faith is opposed to the Death Penalty and has a forgiving heart. This is a moral calculus that can only be performed by someone who should be eligible for sainthood. We were getting letters from all over the world. I mean, the postman would just get mad because we were getting like 10 or 12 crates a day, per day, of mail from all around the world. All around the world. Beulah Mae Donald having endured the emotional rigors of a criminal trial knew that she wasnt done. It wasnt enough to hold a few individuals accountable. She had to hold the whole united klans of America Accountable for the death of michael. She wanted a victory through a civil trial on behalf of her child, her son, but also other children on behalf of them and their mothers. It was not enough to have a guilty verdict. She understood that there was something much more nefarious at play. And, so, she brought a civil suit against the klan in alabama. This was an opportunity to take down one of the longest standing white supremacist domestic Terrorist Organizations that existed in the nation. Think about this. This is a black woman who has just lost her son to lynching. Finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. Its almost unimaginable. Someone has taken a young man, hung him in a tree. Who would do something this hideous . Michael donald was an innocent good samaritan, not a thug. The mobile Police Department just didnt want to believe that mobile would still have klan in it. But they did. So we kept marching and protesting. Mobile wont take this lying down. The words g

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