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Article: Death of the Ku Klux Klan? // Government, civil suits take effect
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- October 30, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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Once a mighty Southern institution whose hooded members staged
gruesome lynchings and hobnobbed with powerful politicians, the Ku
Klux Klan has fallen on hard times in the land of its birth.
Klan watchers across the South, and even KKK members themselves,
say the so-called invisible empire is at its lowest ebb in decades.
They largely attribute the Klan's dwindling influence and shrinking
membership to the federal government's legal campaign against racial
violence and a rash of successful civil suits filed on behalf of KKK
victims.
The Klan's most crushing setback came in February when an
all-white jury in Mobile, Ala., ordered Robert Shelton's United Klans
of America to pay $7 ...