Klanwatch: Bringing the Ku Klux Klan to Justice

The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., headed by Morris Dees, was founded in 1971. The nonprofit civil rights law firm specialized throughout the '80s in fighting the Ku Klux Klan. Stanton, who joined the center in 1978, became director of its Klanwatch division in 1985, leaving the firm two years later. In this stirring study he discusses how, in the past decade, the group has beaten the Klan in the cases of Vietnamese shrimpers in Texas under attack by whites; KKK rioters in Decatur, Ala., who attempted to break up a peaceful march by blacks protesting the conviction of a retarded man charged with rape; and in the random murder of a black youth in Mobile, Ala. This last episode resulted in a civil suit that proved the Klan to be an organized conspiracy and won a damage verdict of $7 million for the victim's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, effectively bankrupting the Klan, now an almost-dormant organization with a tiny membership. (June)