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 didn t want to believe that mobile would still have klan in it. but they did. that s why we kept marching and protesting, letting them know we were going to take this lion down. the admitted klansmen turned to action as the words, guilty of capital murder, sank in. it was the first time since at least the early 1900s that a white had been sentenced to death for a crime committed against a black person in the state of alabama. beulah mae donald is grieving, but also seeking justice for her child. this is a black woman who s just lost her son to lynching. finds the strength to move forward in a civil suit against the klan in alabama. the stakes could not be higher. the body of a black man has been found hanging from a tree in mobile, alabama. lynching is a tool to control and oppr
arresting, charging, and helping to convict four officers who killed a black man. i m so tired of the police saying i was afraid. afraid of what? you got a gun with 15 shots. you can call in backup from everywhere. but what are you afraid of? the klan, at a time when they were being sort of dismantled, they directed many of their members to do, was to go into police departments and other institutions where they would maintain power. the fbi issues a report only a few years ago about the effort of white nationalists to infiltrate law enforcement. this is not some fringe organization that drew this conclusion. it was the united states justice department. we can take this back to the era of slavery. we can think about slave patrols in particular. there were men, mostly men, who were deputized. and it was their responsibility
(vo) get internet that keeps your business ready for anything. from verizon. mrs. donald bankrupted the structure of the organization, but not the mentality. we still got klan in alabama. we don t have to have them because they bankrupt, but that don t mean anything. that ain t going to stop them from hurting people. i know it s not. i know it s not. the settlement in the michael donald case certainly was something that organizers in the white power movement were paying attention to as they planned what was next for their movement. what doesn t destroy us makes
suspected were klan members, but very few of them were actually apprehended. i thought to myself, if i ever get an opportunity to get on the other side of the fighting those that did it, i d do it in a minute. i decided i d go down to mobile and watch michael donald s criminal trial. i wanted to know everything i could. so following the criminal trial, that s when my father, michael figures, and morris dees teamed up to bring a $10 million civil suit against the klan. morris dees came and he talked to my mother. he says, i m going to get everything that you want for you, mrs. donald, because you have been good through this. i don t think i could go through this. he told her that. morris dees and senator michael figures went after the organization rather than the individuals. and a lot of people questioned whether he was going to be successful. the michael donald civil case was the first time that a jury
person to kill. just any black person. we also filed a civil suit against robert shelton when he was the imperial wizard of the united klans of america. my take on robert shelton was that he was very smart. you could tell by the way he organized, the way he dressed. he wore klan uniforms and paraphernalia around klan gatherings and stuff, but not in the public. he was a coat and tie kind of guy. and he set up an organization that was pretty sophisticated. shelton s chapters were responsible for really horrific violence. shelton s people were organized and were vicious. a number of them had military training, and that made them a much more dangerous threat. over the last several months, members of the aryan nations church and other neo-nazi groups have been connected to a whole series of very violent events. the united klans of america, the country s oldest group of ku klux klansmen, is threatened with financial ruin.