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Article: Winning Support With a White-Power Image; Voters Warm to Ex-Klan Leader as Louisiana Establishment Worries
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- February 14, 1989
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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The condition of race relations in America is rarely as black and
white as it seems these days in Old Metairie, a suburb on the
northern rim of New Orleans, where David Duke, former imperial wizard
of the Ku Klux Klan, is running for a vacant seat in the Louisiana
legislature.
People here describe their district as though they were boasting
of the purity of a bar of soap-99.6 percent white. Of the slightly
more than 21,000 registered voters, 46 are black. This is the place
where, two years ago, the Jefferson Parish sheriff told his deputies
to detain any black men walking the streets after sundown.
Only recently, when deputy sheriff J.P. Murphy learned that a
visitor was from Washington, ...