Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey everybody, Molly Conger here. You've probably
Speaker 1: noticed that this is a rerun. No, your podcast app
Speaker 1: isn't glitching. There's no new guy this week. The show
Speaker 1: hasn't been around long enough to have a huge back
Speaker 1: catalog to reach into on days like this, I can't
Speaker 1: dig through the archives and pick an episode from a
Speaker 1: year ago that maybe you missed the first time around,
Speaker 1: or listened to so long ago that you already forgot
Speaker 1: how it ended. But today is the last Thursday in
Speaker 1: the month of November, and in the United States, that's
Speaker 1: a holiday. If it's a holiday you celebrate in whatever way,
Speaker 1: I hope you're enjoying it. I'm not sure how listening
Speaker 1: to weird little guys factors into your holiday enjoyment. That's
Speaker 1: kind of weird. But I'm not here to tell you
Speaker 1: what to do. Running this old episode means I got
Speaker 1: to take a few days off this week to spend
Speaker 1: with my family, which I'm grateful for. I know not
Speaker 1: everybody has that luxury. Whatever you're doing today, I hope
Speaker 1: you've got the day off. Rory, the brilliant mind behind
Speaker 1: the perfect placement of all the music in the show,
Speaker 1: and the guy with the unenviable job of editing out
Speaker 1: all the times I burp into my microphone does not
Speaker 1: have work today, and we should all celebrate that he
Speaker 1: deserves a break from toiling away at the burp removal machine. Sorry, Rory.
Speaker 1: So here's a weird little guy I already told you about,
Speaker 1: and I'll be back next week with new weird guys.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty eight, there is a rash of cross
Speaker 1: burnings in Suffolk. Virginia. Newspapers throughout the late forties and
Speaker 1: all through the fifties assure the reader that there is
Speaker 1: no Ku Klux Klan activity in Virginia. Ooklan groups had
Speaker 1: more or less died out in the mid forties, and
Speaker 1: Virginia wouldn't really see a rise in widespread organized clan
Speaker 1: activity until the threat of integrated schools whipped aggrieved white
Speaker 1: men back into a frenzy in the fifties. But the
Speaker 1: lack of a clear leadership structure or the formal blessing
Speaker 1: of some grand dragon or imperial wizard in some other
Speaker 1: state didn't seem to deter the one hundred men in
Speaker 1: robes who set fire to a twelve foot cross in
Speaker 1: a peanut field in Nurneyville, and whether or not the
Speaker 1: local prosecutor believed that the clan still existed. Everyone in
Speaker 1: the South knows what a burning cross means, and it
Speaker 1: was the third one in that neighborhood in recent months.
Speaker 1: The local prosecutor had simply shrugged, it's not illegal to
Speaker 1: burn a cross. Two thousand members of a local peanut
Speaker 1: workers union approved a resolution demanding a response from the
Speaker 1: governor and Attorney General, writing, we reject the hair splitting
Speaker 1: thinking of some commonwealth authorities regarding what constitutes violation of
Speaker 1: the law. The fact remains that one hundred white robed
Speaker 1: persons burned across in the field of NH. Bradshaw. Whether
Speaker 1: this group was the KKK or a similar organization is
Speaker 1: not important. The tactics of intimidation and terrorism are. That
Speaker 1: same year, nineteen forty eight, twin boys, Barry and Bruce
Speaker 1: Black were born in Pennsylvania. Berry didn't burn that cross
Speaker 1: in the peanut field. He was just a baby then
Speaker 1: given some time to grow. Though his name would one
Speaker 1: day become synonymous with crossburning in Virginia, he was barely
Speaker 1: out of diapers when Virginia did finally outlaw cross burning
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty two, and he was decades into his
Speaker 1: career as a clan leader when he lit the cross
Speaker 1: that would take him all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird. Little guys. There
Speaker 1: is a story that I've been writing and rewriting for years,
Speaker 1: digging deeper into the past while I wait for the
Speaker 1: future to deliver some kind of ending. I have notebooks
Speaker 1: full of scribbled transcriptions of courtroom testimony, and a hard
Speaker 1: drive full of grainy footage, and folders upon folders labeled
Speaker 1: with men's names, each one containing varying degrees of a
Speaker 1: half baked biographical sketch of a man who lit a
Speaker 1: torch one summer night in twenty seventeen. Lately, I'm combing
Speaker 1: back through my notes about the events of August eleventh,
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, because unless something changes in the next week
Speaker 1: or so, I'll be spending a few days in October
Speaker 1: sitting in my favorite seat at the county courthouse. It's
Speaker 1: the aisle seat in the second row, on the day
Speaker 1: defendant's side of the bench. I don't know why that
Speaker 1: one's my favorite, but if I can't sit there, this
Speaker 1: is not right to date, Twelve men who march with
Speaker 1: a torch here in Charlottesville seven years ago have been
Speaker 1: charged under a Virginia law that makes it a felony
Speaker 1: to burn an object with the intent to intimidate. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you about some of those men.
Speaker 1: I am there is some real weird little guy behavior
Speaker 1: going on in a lot of their backstories, but not today.
Speaker 1: As always, we have to start before the beginning. In
Speaker 1: the year and a half since those charges were first filed,
Speaker 1: I've written the case citation Commonwealth v. Black in my
Speaker 1: little notebook probably one hundred times. Commonwealth v. Black was
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court case that held that the original version
Speaker 1: of Virginia's crossburning law was unconstitutional. The law was rewritten
Speaker 1: in response to this challenge, and the current version of
Speaker 1: the statute is what's being used to prosecute the torch marchers.
Speaker 1: So commonwealthy Black, that's all I really needed to know.
Speaker 1: Some clansmen burned across and he challenged the law, and
Speaker 1: he won, and we changed the law. That's good enough
Speaker 1: to get by, But how many times can you write
Speaker 1: a man's name without bothering to find out who he was?
Speaker 1: So I set out to get a little more context
Speaker 1: on the man who brought the case. But what I
Speaker 1: found wasn't just some boring bit of backstory about constitutional
Speaker 1: law and legislative history. I mean, we're definitely going to
Speaker 1: do some of that, but what I found was a
Speaker 1: complicated story of small town bigotry and the people who
Speaker 1: stand up to it. Barry Black was the leader of
Speaker 1: a clan group in Pennsylvania whose hatred touched the lives
Speaker 1: of people whose stories are worth knowing. This episode is
Speaker 1: just the first half of very black story, and we
Speaker 1: won't even get to his precedent setting appeal until next week.
Speaker 1: This week gets just a strange little stroll through some
Speaker 1: of the side characters in the life of a man
Speaker 1: who donned a pointy hood to infringe on the civil
Speaker 1: rights of everyone around him, but just kept going to
Speaker 1: court to fight for his own. So before we can
Speaker 1: talk about a lit tiki torch on a college campus,
Speaker 1: we have to talk about a fiery cross on a hillside.
Speaker 1: We have to talk about Barry Black, the clansman who
Speaker 1: fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: and won. Barry Elton Black and his twin brother, Bruce,
Speaker 1: were born two months before their mother's seventeenth birthday. Their
Speaker 1: twenty three year old father, also named Bruce, didn't stick around.
Speaker 1: When the boys were two, the nineteen fifty census shows
Speaker 1: they were living with their mother at her parents' home,
Speaker 1: and their father was living a few miles down the
Speaker 1: road as a lodger in an elderly divorcees boarding house.
Speaker 1: Barry's obituary says he was a Vietnam veteran, that he
Speaker 1: was in the Navy. That's the only place I found
Speaker 1: that information. Decades of newspaper articles about his clan hijinks
Speaker 1: never mention it. I will absolutely concede that it is
Speaker 1: entirely possible that he joined the Navy right out of
Speaker 1: high school and maybe was on one of the earliest
Speaker 1: deployments of the war. He was eighteen in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: so it's possible, But by nineteen sixty eight he was
Speaker 1: too busy going to jail to go to war. In
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen sixty eight, Barry and his brother
Speaker 1: were caught stripping parts of a car in a salvage yard.
Speaker 1: Two years later, Barry was back in jail again. Reports
Speaker 1: Arry and lack specificity as to exactly why he was
Speaker 1: in jail in nineteen seventy. One report at the time
Speaker 1: says it was a morals charge. Another says it was
Speaker 1: a paternity case. A list of his arrests that appeared
Speaker 1: in an article decades later says he was awaiting trial
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy on charges of bastardery and fornication. Sounds
Speaker 1: like he might have just been guilty of having a
Speaker 1: good time, but he got himself into some extra trouble
Speaker 1: by escaping from the jail. Barry and two other inmates
Speaker 1: climbed a pipe, crawled through an air vent, got into
Speaker 1: the adjoining courthouse, and escaped by jumping out an open
Speaker 1: window in the judge's chambers, and no one even noticed
Speaker 1: the men were missing until Barry's brother called the sheriff
Speaker 1: to say he'd gotten a call from Barry earlier that
Speaker 1: afternoon and he wanted to know if his brother had
Speaker 1: posted bond The sheriff assured Bruce that no, Barry hasn't
Speaker 1: bonded out and he's still in a cell. But he
Speaker 1: was not. Barry was only free for about six hours
Speaker 1: after this daring jail break. The other two men hid
Speaker 1: out in barns for over a week. Before being recaptured,
Speaker 1: but a deputy found Barry limping around town later that
Speaker 1: same evening. He'd broken bones in both of his feet
Speaker 1: jumping out of the judge's window. A judge ordered him
Speaker 1: to pay one hundred dollars fine and the medical costs
Speaker 1: in his paternity case, and he got another year for
Speaker 1: the escape. It's not clear what the paternity case entailed,
Speaker 1: and if there is a secret child out there of
Speaker 1: Berry Black, I couldn't find any record of it. In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, he went back to jail for a
Speaker 1: burglary of an auto parts store, and between stints and jail,
Speaker 1: he married his wife, Judy in nineteen seventy four, and
Speaker 1: they had their first of six children in nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: And then he went back to jail in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six for stealing a gun from his brother. He escaped again,
Speaker 1: this time just walking right out the front door of
Speaker 1: the psychiatric hospital the jail had sent him to for observation.
Speaker 1: But he was out again by nineteen seventy seven, when
Speaker 1: he was arrested for trying to buy a car with
Speaker 1: a check from a closed bank account. This time he
Speaker 1: just caught probation, and he was given probation again when
Speaker 1: he was convicted in nineteen eighty six for illegally possessing
Speaker 1: a revolver. And that's all there really was to know
Speaker 1: about Barry Black until the late eighties. He had a
Speaker 1: couple of kids, his wife worked as a clerk, he
Speaker 1: drove a truck, and after going to jail half a
Speaker 1: dozen times in his twenties, he mostly stayed out of
Speaker 1: trouble except for that gun charge in nineteen eighty six,
Speaker 1: But by nineteen eighty nine he's a legal in his
Speaker 1: local clan. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm
Speaker 1: being dismissive of the Ku Klux Klan as a bunch
Speaker 1: of silly guys in costumes who do live action role
Speaker 1: playing and who would have been better off doing something
Speaker 1: like joining the Society for Creative Anachronism or getting into
Speaker 1: dungeons and Dragons. I don't know. I'm in no way
Speaker 1: trying to minimize the decades and decades of vicious racial terror,
Speaker 1: the violence, the lynchings, the campaigns of terror waged in
Speaker 1: towns across the country for over a century. The clan
Speaker 1: was very real, it was very dangerous. People died, but
Speaker 1: oh my god, do they make it hard to take
Speaker 1: them seriously with their special clan vocabulary a klegal that's
Speaker 1: spelled like beagle, but with a KL upfront. It's an
Speaker 1: official clan office that's basically just the local recruiter. So
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine, Barry was responsible for recruiting new
Speaker 1: members to his local clan chapter. And at this point
Speaker 1: he's still a member of the Invisible Empire of the
Speaker 1: Ku Klux Klan. So the Invisible Empire is the overarching
Speaker 1: national organization with an Imperial Wizard overseeing it. The Empire
Speaker 1: is subdivided into realms by state, and each realm has
Speaker 1: a Grand Dragon, and within each realm there are provinces.
Speaker 1: Each one is made up of, however many counties the
Speaker 1: Grand Dragon sees fit to assign the Grand Titan who
Speaker 1: oversees them. The clan had two main eras, so first
Speaker 1: in the reconstruction era right after the Civil War, and
Speaker 1: then it sort of died out, and then it had
Speaker 1: a second era when it was revived in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: And the second era of the clan kept a lot
Speaker 1: of the goofy nineteenth century made up words, but it
Speaker 1: seems like they lost some of the finer subdivisions. It
Speaker 1: used to be that the Grand Titan could appoint a
Speaker 1: Grand Giant, who could in turn appoint henchmen called goblins.
Speaker 1: I don't think they kept the goblins the second time around,
Speaker 1: which just seems like a huge loss, you know. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so by nineteen ninety Barry is the Grand Titan of
Speaker 1: Western Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania has a Grand Dragon, and the
Speaker 1: Grand Dragon appoints the Grand Titans and Burries the Grand Titan.
Speaker 1: A nineteen ninety one report on clan activity in the
Speaker 1: United States estimates nationwide membership at about four to five
Speaker 1: thousand clansmen, with an estimated three hundred members in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and with most of that activity being in the western
Speaker 1: half of the state in Barry's province. Under Barry's leadership,
Speaker 1: the clan was growing again in western Pennsylvania, and he
Speaker 1: was very active, holding multiple marches in little towns all
Speaker 1: over the state every year, and nobody wanted it. Nobody's
Speaker 1: excited to see the clan. In January of nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: they marched in Westchester, Pennsylvania to protest Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: Junior Day in September of nineteen ninety one, Barry held
Speaker 1: a march in his own hometown of Carmichaels, Pennsylvania. The
Speaker 1: town fought tooth and nailed to prevent it, but he
Speaker 1: was determined to put on a show and even tried
Speaker 1: to rope the ACLU into forcing the town to give
Speaker 1: him a permit. Ultimately, the tiny town resigned themselves to
Speaker 1: this clan invasion, and they didn't make Berry take them
Speaker 1: to court. The town closed down every shop and restaurant
Speaker 1: that day out of protest, and residents lined the streets
Speaker 1: to watch a few dozen men walk about half a
Speaker 1: mile with Barry leading them a chance of what do
Speaker 1: we want white power? When do we want it now? Scoofy.
Speaker 1: The Sener Daily Times ran a story the next day
Speaker 1: with the headline forty Clan members stage march in depressed town.
Speaker 1: Even after reading the article, it's not actually clear whether
Speaker 1: the paper meant the town was depressed like economically. It
Speaker 1: kind of just sounds like the town was just depressed
Speaker 1: at having to look at the clan. Every resident quoted
Speaker 1: in the paper sounded very unimpressed. When man told the paper,
Speaker 1: I think they are a joke, and added Hitler tried
Speaker 1: this once and it didn't work, did it. Barry told
Speaker 1: the paper that his marches weren't a racial thing, but
Speaker 1: that it was about bringing white people together to fight
Speaker 1: for their civil rights and against what he called the
Speaker 1: deterioration of our race. He just wanted to raise awareness
Speaker 1: about important issues, like how the banking system is controlled
Speaker 1: by a Jewish conspiracy, and how the government is giving
Speaker 1: away white men's rights to black people and Asians. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that means, giving them away, like there's
Speaker 1: only a set number of them. Two months later, in
Speaker 1: November of nineteen ninety one, Very Black was elected to
Speaker 1: the office of constable in Johnstown, Pennsylvania's twenty first ward.
Speaker 1: The office of constable is kind of a holdover from
Speaker 1: the olden days. It's kind of a cop, but not really.
Speaker 1: Their function varies from state to state, with powers ranging
Speaker 1: from largely ceremonial to full policing authority. In Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: constables aren't allowed to carry guns. In Vermont, one of
Speaker 1: the main roles of the constable is the destruction of
Speaker 1: dangerous dogs. So yes, there are guys in Vermont running
Speaker 1: for the office of dog murderer and in Pennsylvania. The
Speaker 1: office has undergone some reform in the last few decades,
Speaker 1: but in the nineties the constable's duties were mainly prisoner
Speaker 1: transportation and process service. But it's an elected office, and
Speaker 1: the office he won was for constable in a single
Speaker 1: ward of a borough of a county, and he was
Speaker 1: able to secure a victory without even really running. He
Speaker 1: won with just a few dozen write in votes because
Speaker 1: no one was running. I looked up some recent voter
Speaker 1: turnout stats for Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown's twenty first
Speaker 1: ward had four hundred and four registered voters in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and only one hundred and seven of them
Speaker 1: voted in the November twenty twenty three election. So it's
Speaker 1: not hard to imagine someone mounting a successful write in
Speaker 1: campaign by buying a few rounds at the bar. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't meant to be. There's nothing I can find
Speaker 1: in any local news from that time that indicates there
Speaker 1: was any kind of specific issue. Constable of the twenty
Speaker 1: first ward of the Borough of a County probably doesn't
Speaker 1: have enough to do to really do much damage, But
Speaker 1: a few months in to Barry's six year term as Constable.
Speaker 1: Cambria County District Attorney Timothy Creeney noticed that they had
Speaker 1: a clansman serving papers for the court. How much he
Speaker 1: could really do about that, though it's not against the
Speaker 1: rules to be in the clan, but Barry did have
Speaker 1: a pretty long rap sheet. He'd been arrested for burglary,
Speaker 1: he'd escaped from jail twice, and he had a conviction
Speaker 1: for illegal possession of a firearm. So Creaney filed a
Speaker 1: petition to have Barry removed from office on the grounds
Speaker 1: that Pennsylvania doesn't allow people convicted of what are called
Speaker 1: infamous crimes to hold positions of public trust. The judge agreed,
Speaker 1: and Barry was ordered by the court to cease and
Speaker 1: desist his duties of constable in April of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: just a few months after taking office. When he filed
Speaker 1: his appeal a month later, he walked the papers into
Speaker 1: the courthouse himself, dressed in a white robe, a pointy
Speaker 1: white cap, a green cape, and the kind of sunglasses
Speaker 1: my grandmother wore when I was a kid. A dozen
Speaker 1: robed klansmen waited for him outside the courthouse, and he
Speaker 1: entered the court room with his personal bodyguard, a man
Speaker 1: in fatigues, and a black beret. He was no longer
Speaker 1: just a legal or a Grand Titan. Barry was calling
Speaker 1: himself the Grand Dragon. Now. Over the next few months,
Speaker 1: Barry staged several protests of what he called this violation
Speaker 1: of his civil rights, and he appealed it all the
Speaker 1: way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In October of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four. That court upheld the decision. They agreed that
Speaker 1: his criminal history made him ineligible for the office of constable.
Speaker 1: That same month, several local papers quoted Barry on his
Speaker 1: plans to hold a clan rally in opposition to a
Speaker 1: Halloween parade. He didn't give the quotes to the paper himself,
Speaker 1: but they were his words and in his voice. See,
Speaker 1: in the pre internet days, you couldn't have a website, right,
Speaker 1: so groups like the Klan would distribute flyers with a
Speaker 1: phone number on them, and nobody answers that phone when
Speaker 1: you call, but you get a pre recorded message with
Speaker 1: information about becoming a member, upcoming events, announcements, or just
Speaker 1: racist propaganda. And the Dial of Clan hotline that month
Speaker 1: offered a recorded statement from Barry Black stating that for
Speaker 1: security reasons. The time and exact location will be announced
Speaker 1: with twelve hours notice, saying we have gone to modern technology,
Speaker 1: we use fax machines, etc. But that there would be
Speaker 1: an event that month in protest of a York Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: area Halloween celebration because as a Christian organization, the Klan
Speaker 1: felt that Halloween was Satanic. Just imagine for a second
Speaker 1: it's nineteen ninety four and you get a fax from
Speaker 1: your local clig Rap that the Nighthawks or needed at
Speaker 1: the satanic Halloween parade to enforce white Christian morals. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's baffling, baffling. Klig Grap is the title for the
Speaker 1: clan secretary, and the Nighthawks are the security cards. So
Speaker 1: I guess the klik Grap is going to fax the Nighthawks.
Speaker 1: A few days later, after the local paper ran a
Speaker 1: story about a planned counter demonstration, Barry told the paper
Speaker 1: that he had no such plans and he never said
Speaker 1: anything like that. He was not planning to protest the
Speaker 1: Halloween parade. He said that was just a rumor started
Speaker 1: by fellow clansman Roy Frankhauser, the leader of a splinter
Speaker 1: group called the White Unity Party. Barry explained to the
Speaker 1: reporter that if Frankhauser wanted the White Unity Party to
Speaker 1: be allowed to join Barry's new clan organization, the Keystone
Speaker 1: Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, then Frankhauser would need
Speaker 1: to accept that he didn't have Barry's permission to be
Speaker 1: doing things like holding a press conference about Halloween parades
Speaker 1: and Roy Frankhauser is, I think, another candidate for his
Speaker 1: own episode. He'd been acquitted earlier that year for stabbing
Speaker 1: a man with a pocket knife at a clan conference,
Speaker 1: and at one point claimed to be a government informant,
Speaker 1: although agents from the FBI and the ATF denied that
Speaker 1: on various occasions, sometimes under oath, but I'm not sold.
Speaker 1: He was convicted of obstruction of justice while working for
Speaker 1: Lyndon LaRouche in the nineteen eighties, got convicted of obstruction
Speaker 1: again in a case involving desecration of synagogues in Massachusetts
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and in twenty twenty one, someone made
Speaker 1: an uncited edit to his Wikipedia page claiming that his
Speaker 1: hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, celebrated his death by holding a parade.
Speaker 1: I'll have to dig around on that. I hope it's true,
Speaker 1: but I have a feeling it's not. But in the
Speaker 1: nineties Roy Frank Kauser was beefing with Barry And it's
Speaker 1: hard to say with any kind of certainty, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if it was frank Kauser who met with the
Speaker 1: f in nineteen ninety four. Barry's FBI file has a
Speaker 1: few heavily redacted pages about an aspiring clan informant who
Speaker 1: reported that he was present at a clan meeting when
Speaker 1: Barry Black. Since the Klan had a plan to deal
Speaker 1: harshly with traitors, the informant told the FBI that Barry
Speaker 1: Black had automatic weapons in hand. Grades and to their credit,
Speaker 1: the FBI seems to have taken the tip pretty seriously,
Speaker 1: and in the summer of nineteen ninety four, they opened
Speaker 1: a domestic terrorism investigation into Barry Black. After only a week,
Speaker 1: though the Pittsburgh Field Office downgraded and then ultimately closed
Speaker 1: the investigation, citing the tipster's quote inability to factually corroborate
Speaker 1: any of his allegations to make them believable. So Barry
Speaker 1: is keeping pretty busy through the nineties with his new
Speaker 1: clan group. He's got barades to lead and picnics to
Speaker 1: attend and he's holding regular cross burnings, and by the
Speaker 1: late nineties, these cross burnings are happening across the street
Speaker 1: from the Casanova Lounge, which was Somerset County, Pennsylvania's only
Speaker 1: gay bar. In its brief four years in operation, the
Speaker 1: bar was the site of relentless protests from neighbors, a
Speaker 1: self proclaimed Anabaptist bishop and the clan, as well as
Speaker 1: a target for shotgun blasts and Molotov cocktails. Patricia and
Speaker 1: Merrick Kramer, a straight couple in their fifties with grown children,
Speaker 1: bought an old tavern on Route nine eighty five in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five. They ran at as a restaurant for
Speaker 1: two years before deciding in January of nineteen ninety seven
Speaker 1: to start catering to gay clientele. It was the only
Speaker 1: such establishment for Miles and Miles. Patricia Pat to her friends,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to be Pat's friend said. They had
Speaker 1: customers drive in from as far as Maryland and West
Speaker 1: Virginia for their tea dances, a kind of gay singles
Speaker 1: event whose name is a legacy of an era when
Speaker 1: it was illegal to sell alcohol to known homosexuals. In
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven, Pat Kragmer told a reporter from The
Speaker 1: Washington Blade, we do nothing improper here. We have dancing,
Speaker 1: We served dinner from four to six p m. I
Speaker 1: do all the cooking. The DC based LGBT newspaper had
Speaker 1: reached out to the Kramers after the first time a
Speaker 1: shotgun was fired through the front door, injuring three patrons,
Speaker 1: and that's when street preacher Ron McCrae started showing up.
Speaker 1: If you're old enough to have been politically aware in
Speaker 1: the early Obama years, this may not be the first
Speaker 1: time you've heard of Ron McCray. In two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and now disbarred attorney named Philip Burg filed a lawsuit
Speaker 1: alleging that Barack Obama could not legally become the president
Speaker 1: because he had been born in Kenya. A judge threw
Speaker 1: it out, calling it frivolous and not worthy of discussion,
Speaker 1: which it was, but that's never stopped a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: In December of two thousand and eight, Berg filed a
Speaker 1: motion for an emergency injunction to stop the certification of
Speaker 1: the election. In his ninety six page filing, Ron McCrae's
Speaker 1: name appears over one hundred times so if you have
Speaker 1: any familiarity at all with the birthrism conspiracy, you've probably
Speaker 1: seen some vaguely sourced false claim that Obama's Kenyan grandmother,
Speaker 1: a woman named Sarah, who was his father's stepmother, was
Speaker 1: there in the room when he was born in Mombasa.
Speaker 1: It's not true. To be clear, Barack Obama was not
Speaker 1: born in Mombasa, but the claim originated from a selectively
Speaker 1: edited recording of a phone call Ron McCrae had with
Speaker 1: her via a translator in October two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: and McCrae was an enthusiastic participant in this conspiracy, providing
Speaker 1: a sworn affidavit about the phone call for Berg's lawsuit.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court denied Berg's petition without comment, but mccray's
Speaker 1: hoax was now part of this official record, and conspiracy
Speaker 1: theorists can easily brush off silly complications, like the fact
Speaker 1: that the lawsuit was dismissed as being utterly without merit.
Speaker 1: Once a lie is born, it can become unkillable. The
Speaker 1: White House plumber himself, G. Gordon Liddy, repeated that same
Speaker 1: lie a year later on an episode of Hardball with
Speaker 1: Chris Matthews. Conveniently blurring the facts by claiming that the
Speaker 1: sworn statement was from Sarah Obama herself rather than from McCrae,
Speaker 1: who was merely repeating what he claimed she said to him.
Speaker 2: The preponderance of the evidence is as follows. You've got
Speaker 2: a deposition, which is a sworn statement from the step
Speaker 2: grandmother who says I was present and saw him born
Speaker 2: in Mombasa, CanYa.
Speaker 1: Before he gave birth to one of Birthaism's most stubborn lies.
Speaker 1: Ronnie Marcus McCrae grew up in Texas and claims to
Speaker 1: have been a police officer before turning to street preaching
Speaker 1: in his thirties, but I can't find any particular evidence
Speaker 1: beyond his own claims that he was ever a cop.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteen eighties, he was in western Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: preaching the Word of God to unwilling congregants on street corners.
Speaker 1: He was arrested a handful of times for violating noise
Speaker 1: ordinances or for disorderly conduct, and when he sued the
Speaker 1: authorities in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, nineteen ninety one for violating his rights,
Speaker 1: they paid him seventy five hundred dollars to settle and
Speaker 1: that seems to have been the origin of McCrae's street
Speaker 1: preacher's fellowship. It was a fairly litigious collective of amateur
Speaker 1: street preachers who would screen Bible verses on street corners
Speaker 1: until the police would intervene, and then they would sue.
Speaker 1: And that seems like what he was trying trying to
Speaker 1: do to Patricia Kramer and her customers outside Casanova almost
Speaker 1: every weekend for four years. Ron McCray was the loudest
Speaker 1: and most persistent opponent to the gay bar, but he
Speaker 1: was far from the only one. Don and Lisa Penrod
Speaker 1: lived less than a mile away on a plot of
Speaker 1: land they'd inherited from Don's family. At a town meeting
Speaker 1: shortly after the bar opened, the Penrods were among residents
Speaker 1: complaining about lewd and filthy literature found in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Pat Kramer tried to explain that no, those are flyers
Speaker 1: advertising a glowstick party, saying it's nothing provocative. We don't
Speaker 1: run a dirty bar. After someone fired a shotgun through
Speaker 1: the door of the crowded bar one night in March
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety seven, Don Penrod told the local paper
Speaker 1: that actually he'd forgotten to mention this before, But a
Speaker 1: few days before that happened. Actually, something bad happened to
Speaker 1: him too. Someone had spray painted gay haters you will
Speaker 1: all Die Love pat on his garage. The paper doesn't
Speaker 1: include a photo of this vandalism, or even mention any
Speaker 1: claim that a photo might exist. In separate town meetings
Speaker 1: that spring, Don Penrod claimed that he found hardcore gay
Speaker 1: pornography on his front lawn, and his wife, Lisa Penrod,
Speaker 1: claimed that their child found an abandoned sex toy while
Speaker 1: playing outside. In both instances, the Penrods demand to know
Speaker 1: how they're supposed to explain this perversion to a child.
Speaker 1: I can find no evidence of anyone, aside from the
Speaker 1: Penrods themselves, who ever made any claim to have seen
Speaker 1: either of these things. In April, the Penrods and their neighbors,
Speaker 1: who were disgusted at the idea of even having to
Speaker 1: drive on a road that shared a name with a
Speaker 1: den of sin, successfully petitioned to have the town rename
Speaker 1: Cosunova Road to Hemlock Road. In May of nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: the Penrod invited the clan over Barry Black's Keystone Knights
Speaker 1: used the Penrod's farm as a staging area to park
Speaker 1: down their robes and then march down the street to
Speaker 1: the bar. They spent an afternoon hollering at the empty establishment,
Speaker 1: it's a bar, nobody's there in the middle of the afternoon,
Speaker 1: and then they retired to the Penronz property for a
Speaker 1: cross burning. Patrons at the bar would have been able
Speaker 1: to see the glow from the flames when they pulled
Speaker 1: into the parking lot that Saturday night. Ron McCrae kept
Speaker 1: up his antics outside Casanova, but Barry had bigger things
Speaker 1: going on. Towards the end of nineteen ninety seven, he
Speaker 1: got elected constable again, just as he had in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. He managed to secure a victory in Johnstown's
Speaker 1: twenty first ward on write in votes alone. This time
Speaker 1: though he got one. He got one vote. Nobody was running,
Speaker 1: and I guess nobody else vote, and so he won
Speaker 1: with one. And I can't find any reporting on whether
Speaker 1: or not he was ever asked outright if that one
Speaker 1: vote was his own, But I think it's a safe bet.
Speaker 1: I have to wonder if it was a joke. I mean,
Speaker 1: was he having a private joke with himself or was
Speaker 1: a friend joking about how he had done it last time.
Speaker 1: Did he really think it would work a second time?
Speaker 1: And if he did do this himself, why didn't he
Speaker 1: ask anyone else to do it with him? Was he
Speaker 1: surprised when he found out he was the constable again?
Speaker 1: There's really no way to know. So he's back in
Speaker 1: the saddle as constable. And it seems like nobody noticed.
Speaker 1: It must not be a very demanding job if no
Speaker 1: one noticed that there were no candidates at all for
Speaker 1: the office, and no one said a word when a
Speaker 1: guy who'd been ordered by the state Supreme Court to
Speaker 1: vacate the position just unilaterally voted himself back in. But
Speaker 1: there it was. And in nineteen ninety eight, Casanova is
Speaker 1: entering its second year as Somerset County's only gay bar,
Speaker 1: and things are getting worse. There was another crossburning across
Speaker 1: the street. They got bomb threats. Ron McCrae vowed to
Speaker 1: be out there every Friday and Saturday night until the
Speaker 1: bar was forced to shut down. The Kramers were getting
Speaker 1: death threats in the mail. The front windows were smashed
Speaker 1: out with huge rocks thrown from a passing car, but
Speaker 1: the Cramers weren't going to lie down and take it.
Speaker 1: Speaking later to Professor Todd Hibel for his essay blame
Speaker 1: it on the Casanova, good Scenery and sodomy in rural
Speaker 1: southwestern Pennsylvania, pat said, McCray made a pledge to these
Speaker 1: neighbors that he would have us closed in a week.
Speaker 1: Well that never happened. Never happened because McCrae didn't know
Speaker 1: who I was, and the Cramers weren't alone. Some neighbors
Speaker 1: were on their side, even forming a group called Network
Speaker 1: of Neighbors United against Hate Crimes. And I know you're
Speaker 1: probably trying to spell that out in your mind to
Speaker 1: see if that makes some kind of initialism. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's n NUA HC. It doesn't spell anything. And while
Speaker 1: the local gay community in Somerset County was pretty small,
Speaker 1: the gay community in cities like Pittsburgh and DC were
Speaker 1: rooting for them. A group of gay men from Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: rented a bus to come out to Somerset County for
Speaker 1: a theme night. They called it burn in Hell Night,
Speaker 1: poking fun at the screaming preacher in the parking lot
Speaker 1: who was always telling them that's where they were heading.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen ninety eight, a DC based group
Speaker 1: called the Lesbian Avengers drove three hours to show their
Speaker 1: support for Casanova. Washington City Paper reporter Amanda Ripley joined
Speaker 1: them for the trip. The Avengers danced, drank, mingled, and
Speaker 1: performed some comedic skits for patrons at the bar. Pat Kramer,
Speaker 1: that straight married woman in her fifties ran the bar,
Speaker 1: said I thought that the girls were just wonderful. We
Speaker 1: loved them, and added even some heterosexuals offered them to
Speaker 1: stay in their homes in the future. And Pat beamed
Speaker 1: as she told these girls from out of town that
Speaker 1: a lot of her bar's patrons just call her mother.
Speaker 1: I've always wanted a large family, she explained. Pat's own
Speaker 1: daughter had died a few years earlier after contracting HIV
Speaker 1: from a blood transfusion, and now here she is with
Speaker 1: this gay bar full of chosen family. I wonder it
Speaker 1: doesn't say, but I wonder if it was at her
Speaker 1: daughter's bedside that she first came to see the importance
Speaker 1: of queer community. Her daughter had been infected by a
Speaker 1: blood transfusion, but I have to imagine Pat Kramer met
Speaker 1: patients and caregivers and grieving partners there on the Aids ward,
Speaker 1: and she got a much more intimate look at who
Speaker 1: gay people really were than those straight suburban women were
Speaker 1: getting in nineteen ninety. Before they left DC, on the
Speaker 1: day of their visit to Somerset County, the Lesbian Avengers
Speaker 1: all agreed on the rules of engagement. They were headed
Speaker 1: up there to support Casanova, and things are different out
Speaker 1: in the country. They didn't want to make things worse
Speaker 1: for the gay people who lived there, and they really
Speaker 1: didn't want to end up in the county jail. So
Speaker 1: the rules were no cussing, no taking off your top.
Speaker 1: On the drive up, their lawyer, Kathy reminded them again
Speaker 1: to quote resist the urge to strip down an arm wrestle.
Speaker 1: This isn't DC. So they were on their best behavior
Speaker 1: when they got there. They ignored Ron McCrae and the
Speaker 1: other protesters when they swarmed the women in the parking lot,
Speaker 1: calling them trash and wicked and failures as women, and
Speaker 1: telling them they would never find husbands and that they
Speaker 1: would burn in hell. I'm not sure one of those
Speaker 1: things really bothered. But they just walked into the bar
Speaker 1: and they had a great time. Ripley's article describes mccray's
Speaker 1: teenage sons standing silently in the parking lot next to
Speaker 1: his father, holding a sign that read Casanova customers, child molesters, strippers, whores,
Speaker 1: cross dressers, prostitutes, sodomites, five drunkards, and a handful of wackos.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure which of mccray's sons that would have been,
Speaker 1: but I don't think it was the one who would
Speaker 1: later get arrested for inappropriate sexual contact with a lot
Speaker 1: of underage girls. And when the Avengers walked out into
Speaker 1: the parking lot at little after one am, McCray was
Speaker 1: still there, just as they did every weekend. The protesters
Speaker 1: were there in the parking lot, and they surrounded patrons
Speaker 1: trying to leave the bar. They screamed and threatened and
Speaker 1: blocked them from getting to their van. One protester got
Speaker 1: right in the face of Beth Armitage, a member of
Speaker 1: the Lesbian Avengers, and said, you never know, this night
Speaker 1: might be her last. But they were prepared for this.
Speaker 1: The Lesbian Avengers were no strangers to confrontation. In fact,
Speaker 1: they reveled in it. They were only on their best
Speaker 1: behavior that night for everyone else's sake. They kept their
Speaker 1: heads down and refused to engage on their way into
Speaker 1: the bar earlier that evening, But now they couldn't resist.
Speaker 1: They promised they weren't going to make a scene, they
Speaker 1: weren't going to engage, But it was cold and late,
Speaker 1: and these men screaming slurs at them were keeping them
Speaker 1: from the warmth of their van. So they formed a
Speaker 1: semicircle and began to chant the Lesbian Avengers are fire eaters.
Speaker 1: In September of nineteen ninety two, Hattie May Cohens, a
Speaker 1: black lesbian, and her roommate Brian Mock, a white gay
Speaker 1: man with an intellectual disability, were burned alive in their
Speaker 1: home in Oregon after Neo Nazi's skinheads through Molotov cocktails
Speaker 1: through the windows of her apartment. A month later, at
Speaker 1: a vigil for Cohens and Mock in New York, the
Speaker 1: Lesbian Avengers ate fire for the first time. The fire
Speaker 1: will not consume us. We take it and make it
Speaker 1: our own. Their lawyer had pleaded with him on the
Speaker 1: drive up not to do this tonight. Not here they
Speaker 1: could get charged with public disturbance, and this wasn't a
Speaker 1: friendly place to have to fight a charge. But here
Speaker 1: they were in the snow being told that they would burn,
Speaker 1: so Ron McCrae got to see those lesbians eat the fire.
Speaker 1: He was always threatening people with the Ku Klux claned
Speaker 1: with their burning crosses, and the skinheads with their Molotov cocktails,
Speaker 1: and the street preach with their threats of the fires
Speaker 1: of hell. They're always surprised when a bitch burns back.
Speaker 1: Barry's clan group had staged protests directly outside Casanova in
Speaker 1: May of nineteen ninety seven, but in July of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight, he assured the Kramers that the clan's presence
Speaker 1: in the area had nothing to do with the bar,
Speaker 1: and nothing to do with the fact that the bar's owner,
Speaker 1: Pat Kramer, had just returned from a trip to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. Where she had testified in front of the
Speaker 1: Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on hate crimes legislation. No,
Speaker 1: it had nothing to do with that. The clan was
Speaker 1: just in the neighborhood for an entirely unrelated cross burning.
Speaker 1: Don and Lisa Penrod, that couple who had been active
Speaker 1: in the protest against the bar's presence in the town,
Speaker 1: owned a little bit of land across the street and
Speaker 1: they invited the Klan to have a picnic on their property.
Speaker 1: Their farm had been the site of previous clan rallies
Speaker 1: and cross burnings, and on this July afternoon, they'd be
Speaker 1: hosting the clan's White Pride Day picnic. The picnic did
Speaker 1: not go well. I'll go ahead and spoil it. One
Speaker 1: local paper ran the headline KKK picnic host arrested. The
Speaker 1: two day affair was announced two weeks ahead of the event.
Speaker 1: Local residents who opposed the Klan held their own competing picnic,
Speaker 1: calling it the Unity Picnic at the Laurel Trinity Lutheran
Speaker 1: Church a few miles away. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reported
Speaker 1: that Ron McCray himself stopped by the Unity picnic. He'd
Speaker 1: sent the church a letter denouncing their pastor of the
Speaker 1: week before and accusing members of the congregation of a
Speaker 1: variety of sexual sins. But even Ron McCrae hated the clan.
Speaker 1: I'm not totally sure why he hated the clan, to
Speaker 1: be honest. I mean, his own religious beliefs include the
Speaker 1: idea that sex outside your own race is within the
Speaker 1: Biblical definition of the sin of fornication, so it's not
Speaker 1: like he's not racist, but nevertheless, he apparently enjoyed the picnic.
Speaker 1: About one hundred and fifty people attended, and the local
Speaker 1: paper reported that dinner was served potluck style and speeches
Speaker 1: were given by various state and local civil rights organizations.
Speaker 1: Over at the clan picnic, the police were keeping an
Speaker 1: eye on the Penrod farm, specifically on Barry Black. Barry
Speaker 1: would later explain to a reporter that the reason his
Speaker 1: family friendly picnic was crawling with burly tattooed clansmen with
Speaker 1: pump action riot shotguns is that they were worried that
Speaker 1: the people from the gay bar would come bother them
Speaker 1: and just a little more clan vocabulary. Those security guards
Speaker 1: are the Nighthawks. And while these armed guards were under
Speaker 1: strict orders to prevent media or cameras of any kind
Speaker 1: really from entering the property, Barry invited Dennis Roddy, a
Speaker 1: reporter from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, into the picnic for
Speaker 1: a little tour, and Barry was just so happy to
Speaker 1: show off his event to this reporter from the big city,
Speaker 1: and he made sure to put it on the record
Speaker 1: that there was absolutely no reason to worry about any
Speaker 1: lawlessness going on to the picnic. Not only did the
Speaker 1: Klan count many cops from a variety of counties among
Speaker 1: their membership, Barry himself was in law enforcement. Nobody seemed
Speaker 1: to have noticed up until this point that Barry was
Speaker 1: the constable again. But here he is bragging about it
Speaker 1: to a reporter, and that's going to bite him in
Speaker 1: the ass. Later sometime that afternoon, just as it was
Speaker 1: about time to start setting up the cross that they
Speaker 1: were going to burn when the sun went down, the
Speaker 1: Nighthawks saw something. State Police had made no secret of
Speaker 1: the fact that they were increasing their presence in the
Speaker 1: area that day, just as a precaution. They didn't want
Speaker 1: any chance of these competing picnics and countering one another.
Speaker 1: But in addition to their visible presence in the area,
Speaker 1: the state police had gotten permission from the Penrod's next
Speaker 1: door neighbor to be on their property, and from that
Speaker 1: neighboring property, an undercover state trooper was perched in a
Speaker 1: tree with a telephoto lens. They were acting on a
Speaker 1: tip that Barry was once again illegally in possession of
Speaker 1: a firearm, and they wanted to see if they could
Speaker 1: catch a glimpse of him. Handling a gun. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like they ever did catch Barry holding a gun,
Speaker 1: but almost everyone else was armed to the absolute teeth,
Speaker 1: so when the nighthawks caught a glimpse of a guy
Speaker 1: hiding in the tree line at the edge of the property,
Speaker 1: they bolted for him. State Trooper George Emmig would later
Speaker 1: testify that he was sitting up in that tree on
Speaker 1: the neighbor's property when about ten picnic attendees rushed over
Speaker 1: to the fence line. He identified himself to the armed
Speaker 1: men as a state trooper, and he explained that he
Speaker 1: had the neighbor's permission to be on their property. He
Speaker 1: said it was at that point that Don Penrod pointed
Speaker 1: the rifle at him and said, you're dead. State Police
Speaker 1: Sergeant George Bivins arrived on the scene almost immediately. He'd
Speaker 1: seen the group moving towards Emig's position, and he testified
Speaker 1: that he'd heard Emig trying to explain to the men
Speaker 1: that he was a police officer, and then Bivins heard
Speaker 1: Ronald Bendix, one of the nighthawks, reply that he didn't
Speaker 1: care and they were going to kill him anyway. It
Speaker 1: was at this point that Bivins drew his own weapon
Speaker 1: and the klansmen scattered. And now now the state police
Speaker 1: had a reason to enter the Penrod property before they
Speaker 1: were keeping it at the fence line, but now they're
Speaker 1: giving chase. Michael Abraham was arrested inside the picnic tent.
Speaker 1: Ronald Bendis was found hiding under a blanket, and Adam
Speaker 1: Woyre was also taken into custody, but it doesn't say
Speaker 1: where he was hiding. Don Penrod was nowhere to be
Speaker 1: found that afternoon, but he was arrested a week later
Speaker 1: when the police searched his home. The police confiscated several shotguns,
Speaker 1: a pistol, a ceremonial clan sword, a Tommy gun, and
Speaker 1: a bulletproof vest. But the picnic wasn't canceled. Three members
Speaker 1: had been carted off to jail, but the show must
Speaker 1: go on, and that cross wasn't going to burn itself.
Speaker 1: A few months later, Barry's lawyer was in court arguing
Speaker 1: for the return of those seized items. I'm not quite
Speaker 1: sure what the legal strategy is here, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you have legal standing as the guest at
Speaker 1: a picnic to challenge the search and seizure of someone
Speaker 1: else's property, and the sword was definitely Barry's, but he
Speaker 1: absolutely was not claiming ownership of the submachine gun. But
Speaker 1: the judge did order the police to return Barry's Sarah
Speaker 1: Ammonial Clan sword, but they kept the guns. It took
Speaker 1: a year to sort out, but in the end Don
Speaker 1: Penrod got six months for terroristic threats, followed by two
Speaker 1: years of supervision for the assault. Stephen Bedecks got fourteen
Speaker 1: months for the assault and terroristic threats, Michael Abraham got
Speaker 1: nine months for simple assault, and Adam Moyer was acquitted
Speaker 1: on all accounts. One article notes that Bedecks got more
Speaker 1: time than the others because at the time of the
Speaker 1: incident he was out on parole for a conviction in
Speaker 1: a case related to his role in a cocaine trafficking
Speaker 1: ring that would bring drugs down from New York City
Speaker 1: and distribute them in the Lehigh Valley area. In twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: he was the president of his local chapter of the
Speaker 1: Pagan's Motorcycle Club when he was federally indicted for cocaine
Speaker 1: trafficking again. He spent five years in prison and died
Speaker 1: shortly after his release, but back to Barry. After those
Speaker 1: three Nighthawks were arrested, Don Penrod used his own property
Speaker 1: as collateral to bail out Abraham and Moyer. Bedex was
Speaker 1: held without bond due to the prole violation, and when
Speaker 1: Penrod himself was arrested a few days after the picnic,
Speaker 1: Barry walked into the jail with a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: cashier's check in hand to bail him out. That same week,
Speaker 1: Barry filed a criminal and civil complaint against state police
Speaker 1: Sergeant Bivens, the trooper who drew his gun on the
Speaker 1: klansmen who were pointing their guns at another state trooper,
Speaker 1: and the county prosecutor filed a petition to have Barry
Speaker 1: removed from the office of constable. It's a new prosecutor now,
Speaker 1: that district attorney from the first time around as a
Speaker 1: judge at this point, but the game is the same.
Speaker 1: Barry can't be the constable because he's been convicted of
Speaker 1: too many crimes. Complaining about the police intrusion on his picnic,
Speaker 1: Barry told the local newspaper, the state police are like
Speaker 1: the Gestapo. We are nice white people having a family picnic.
Speaker 1: Where's our first Amendment? Rights to our beliefs, and Barry's
Speaker 1: relationship to the First Amendment is something we'll explore in
Speaker 1: greater detail next week, because that's where I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: it today. We'll pick up next time with Barry's second
Speaker 1: court battle to keep his job as Cambria County Constable,
Speaker 1: and then follow him to Virginia where he'll light the
Speaker 1: cross that takes him all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: Until then, I don't know, try to love your neighbors
Speaker 1: like Pat Kramer did, and don't bring a Tommy gun
Speaker 1: to a family picnic. Welcome back to the second half
Speaker 1: of the story of Barry Black, the Pennsylvania clansman. Barry
Speaker 1: Black's main claim to fame as being the black in
Speaker 1: Commonwealth of Virginia v. Black, the two thousand and three
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case that found Virginia's crossburning statute unconstitutionally overbroad.
Speaker 1: I set out to learn a little more about that
Speaker 1: landmark decision and the life of the man who won it,
Speaker 1: because it comes up often in some cases going on now,
Speaker 1: the prosecutions of the torch bearing white supremacist who came
Speaker 1: to Charlottesville in twenty seventeen, and I found a lot
Speaker 1: more than I bargained for. I don't know what I expected,
Speaker 1: but last week's story of a small town war and
Speaker 1: a rural gay bar complete with side characters like a
Speaker 1: notorious federal informant who worked for Lynton LaRouche and a
Speaker 1: street preacher who was a central figure in the Obama
Speaker 1: Birtherism conspiracy, definitely surprised me. This week, though, we'll actually
Speaker 1: get to Barry's infamous cross burning and the Black acl
Speaker 1: lawyer who fought for the clansmen's rights that victory.
Speaker 3: What worldwide? I said, case present, I said case law,
Speaker 3: and we proved that the law does work. Yet I
Speaker 3: can light across anywhere in the United States of America
Speaker 3: that I want to light it.
Speaker 1: Barry Black fought the law and he won. But a
Speaker 1: new law was born from the ashes of the one
Speaker 1: Barry burned. I'm Molly Conger, this is weird, little guys.
Speaker 1: When we left off last week, Barry Black and his
Speaker 1: Keystone Knights had gotten into a little hot water at
Speaker 1: their white bride picnic. In July of nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: Barry held a clan picnic on a farm owned by
Speaker 1: Don and Lisa Penrod in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, when Berry
Speaker 1: held a clan rally at Kasanova Lounge, the county's only
Speaker 1: gay bar the year prior. The Penrod's farm was the
Speaker 1: pre rally staging area and the site of the post
Speaker 1: rally cross burning later that evening. They weren't just concerned
Speaker 1: neighbors whose opposition to the gay bar made them unlikely
Speaker 1: allies with the clan. They were members. Lisa Penrod in
Speaker 1: fact commanded the women's Auxiliary Unit and served as the
Speaker 1: Imperial Secretary of the Invisible Empire International Keystone Knights of
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan under Berry's leadership, and on July
Speaker 1: twenty fifth, nineteen ninety eight, Don and Lisa Penrod were
Speaker 1: two of the ten clan members standing at the fence
Speaker 1: line on the Penrod farm demanding answers from a man
Speaker 1: in their neighbour's tree. That man turned out to be
Speaker 1: a state trooper, and Don Penrod was one of four
Speaker 1: attendees at the clan picnic who was arrested for threatening
Speaker 1: the trooper at gunpoint. Barry himself posted Don Penrod's ten
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bond the week after the picnic. Cambria County
Speaker 1: district attorney David Tulowitski, filed a petition with the court
Speaker 1: to have Berry Black removed from the office of Constable,
Speaker 1: an elected law enforcement position he'd won by a single
Speaker 1: rite in vote the year prior. History was repeating itself.
Speaker 1: Barry was elected constable of Johnstown's twenty first ward in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one and was removed from office just a
Speaker 1: few months later when the county prosecutor filed a petition
Speaker 1: to have him removed on the grounds that his criminal
Speaker 1: record made him ineligible to hold a position of public trust.
Speaker 1: A judge agreed. Barry appealed that decision and fought it
Speaker 1: all the way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, holding clan
Speaker 1: rallies at court houses and in small towns throughout the
Speaker 1: year and a half long appeals process. The state's highest
Speaker 1: court told Barry in nineteen ninety three that he wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed to be the constable and nothing in the law
Speaker 1: had changed in the five years since. But here he
Speaker 1: was fighting the same fight all over again. This time around,
Speaker 1: he argued that the petition to remove him from office
Speaker 1: was retaliation, pure and simple. The county was punishing him
Speaker 1: for his clan ratal and for the complaint he'd filed
Speaker 1: against the state troopers who arrested his friends at the picnic.
Speaker 1: In mid August of nineteen ninety eight, the issue of
Speaker 1: whether the clansmen could continue operating as constable was with
Speaker 1: the courts. There was no injunction preventing him from acting
Speaker 1: as a law enforcement official, but the county had apparently
Speaker 1: instructed officers of the court to use him to serve
Speaker 1: Warrens as sparingly as possible. In the meantime, Barry's lawyer
Speaker 1: shrugged this off, telling the local paper, I think he's
Speaker 1: pretty well preoccupied with his grand wizardry in the clan,
Speaker 1: and that's true. He was keeping busy, And it was
Speaker 1: in August nineteen ninety eight that Barry Black took a
Speaker 1: road trip. This wasn't Barry's first out of state clan
Speaker 1: field trip. Six people were arrested when the crowd got
Speaker 1: out of control during Barry's opening prayers at a clan
Speaker 1: rally in Millville, New Jersey, in nineteen ninety When Barry
Speaker 1: had lined across burning in Maryland in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: the Washington Post printed the slurs that came out of
Speaker 1: his mouth when clan leaders from six states converged in
Speaker 1: Ohio in nineteen ninety five. Barry told the Cincinnati Inquirer
Speaker 1: that it was like a family reunion and lamented that
Speaker 1: no one ever gives the clan credit for all the
Speaker 1: good things we do. When clansmen in South Carolina came
Speaker 1: under federal investigation for burning down black churches, Barry was
Speaker 1: there at a cross burning in Lexington in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: pledging the support of the Keystone Nights in this legal
Speaker 1: battle to come. No, his lawyer was right. Barry was
Speaker 1: very busy being the grand Wizard. He was always driving
Speaker 1: off to Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, or just the other side
Speaker 1: of Pennsylvania for some appearance at a clan event. This
Speaker 1: trip to Virginia should have been like any of the others,
Speaker 1: show up, make a scene, light across, upset the locals,
Speaker 1: and head home again. But this time was different. The
Speaker 1: Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan packed up their
Speaker 1: white robes and their crossburning supplies and made the six
Speaker 1: hour drive from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to Hillsville, Virginia, a small
Speaker 1: town in Carroll County in Virginia's far southwest. Tip not
Speaker 1: far from the North Carolina border. And here's Barry in
Speaker 1: his own words, talking about the event in an interview
Speaker 1: recorded in two thousand and five for Duke University School
Speaker 1: of Law's Voices of American Law Project.
Speaker 3: What I was doing down there was starting a new den,
Speaker 3: or starting a new clavern, giving the people the books
Speaker 3: to read, telling the people what we expected them and
Speaker 3: how we want them to become pillars in their community.
Speaker 1: Pillars of the community, he says. And when he was
Speaker 1: placed in the back of a deputy's patrol car that night,
Speaker 1: he offered some insight into what he meant by that
Speaker 1: to Carroll County Sheriff's Lieutenant Rick Clark. Here's Virginia's Solicitor
Speaker 1: Roal William Hurd relaying that statement to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 3: What we had in the case of Verry Black was
Speaker 3: he heard.
Speaker 4: That he's from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: He heard that down in Carroll County, blacks and whites
Speaker 5: were holding hands on the sidewalk.
Speaker 1: Barry Black was arrested that night, handcuffed and taken away
Speaker 1: while the cross was still burning, because regardless of why
Speaker 1: he came, what he'd done was a felony here in Virginia.
Speaker 1: The first half of this story opened with a twelve
Speaker 1: foot cross set ablaze in a peanut field in Suffolk,
Speaker 1: Virginia in nineteen forty eight. Local agricultural union workers denounced
Speaker 1: it as an act of terrorism and demanded a response
Speaker 1: from state government officials. After being brushed off by local
Speaker 1: law enforcement, it just wasn't a crime. Newspaper archives for
Speaker 1: the next few years show a frustrating pattern. Crosses were
Speaker 1: burning all over the state, and every time it happened,
Speaker 1: it was dismissed as some isolated incident, some kind of prank,
Speaker 1: some kind of childish active vandalism. Every cross that burned
Speaker 1: in Virginia was written off by newspapers and cops here
Speaker 1: in Virginia, But those same papers ran stories of flaming
Speaker 1: crosses in Tennessee and South Carolina, properly identifying those as
Speaker 1: what they were, a burning line in the sand, keeping
Speaker 1: black Southerners from moving into white neighborhoods, from getting elected
Speaker 1: to office, from gaining civil rights, and from feeling safe
Speaker 1: in their homes. In late nineteen forty nine, a series
Speaker 1: of cross burnings, culminating in an explosion, destroyed the construction
Speaker 1: site for a planned housing project for black residents in Nashville.
Speaker 1: After Judge Wade's wearing open South Carolina's previously whitees only
Speaker 1: primaries to black voters, his home was targeted repeatedly with
Speaker 1: crosses burning on his front lawn in nineteen fifty. But
Speaker 1: the same papers that ran those wire stories from cities
Speaker 1: and other states wrote their own local coverage of cross
Speaker 1: burnings closer to home, with a very different tone. When
Speaker 1: a cross burned in Nashville or Charleston, it's safe to
Speaker 1: say that those cities have racial unrest. Those cities have
Speaker 1: the clan. In the summer of nineteen fifty, several black
Speaker 1: residents of Colonial Beach, Virginia, found a lawsuit to force
Speaker 1: the locality to allow them to swim in a public beach.
Speaker 1: The town relented, there was no need to go to court.
Speaker 1: The beaches are open to all residents. But when those
Speaker 1: black residents and their attorney went to the beach to
Speaker 1: see if that was true, five hundred white men attacked
Speaker 1: the fifteen black beach goers. Later that week, crosses burned
Speaker 1: all down the beach. Another cross was erected and burned
Speaker 1: outside of the Black church, accompanied by rifle fire, and
Speaker 1: the letters k k K were scrawled on sidewalks all
Speaker 1: over black neighborhoods. The town council took no official notice
Speaker 1: of the cross burnings and said they not only had
Speaker 1: no obligation to anticipate on the rest of the beach,
Speaker 1: but it would in fact amount to discrimination to have
Speaker 1: done anything to ensure those black residents could access the beach.
Speaker 1: There was no KKK in Virginia nineteen fifty. Just look
Speaker 1: at any newspaper anywhere in the state. When a woman
Speaker 1: had found a cross burning on her front porch in
Speaker 1: Noffolk in September of nineteen fifty, the police told then
Speaker 1: Offolk Ledger Dispatch that it was only a small cross,
Speaker 1: just two feet high, and quote, the clan usually puts
Speaker 1: on a bigger show. There had been eight cross burnings
Speaker 1: in neighboring Nansaman County in just the last few months.
Speaker 1: But this was probably just mischievous kids. The Bristol, Virginia,
Speaker 1: Tennessee And reported in October of nineteen fifty that the
Speaker 1: twelve foot cross burned on a hillside near the reservoir,
Speaker 1: where it was visible to hundreds of residents, was just
Speaker 1: a prank. There's no way to know what those men
Speaker 1: in hoods were doing up there. A police captain told
Speaker 1: the paper that the Confederate flag left behind was evidence
Speaker 1: that this was obviously just a prank. That same newspaper
Speaker 1: had been running coverage of a clan march in South
Speaker 1: Carolina just six weeks earlier. After letting up across in
Speaker 1: Myrtle Beach, the clan marched into town, surrounding a black
Speaker 1: dance hall. There was a riot. Charlie Fitzgerald stood in
Speaker 1: the doorway of his bar with a gun, but he
Speaker 1: never had a chance to fire it before the mob
Speaker 1: beat him and shoved him into the trunk of a car.
Speaker 1: The clansmen emptied their guns into the sides of the building,
Speaker 1: riddling the walls with bullet holes and shattering all of
Speaker 1: the windows. Amidst all this chaos, one of their own
Speaker 1: took a stray bullet to the back. When his robes
Speaker 1: were removed to the hospital where he died, he was
Speaker 1: wearing a policeman's uniform Underneath. These stories running in the
Speaker 1: same paper may give you some insight into a small
Speaker 1: town police officer's eagerness to explain away these flames on
Speaker 1: a hillside, But you can draw your own conclusions the
Speaker 1: clan was thriving again across the South. In January of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, the state of Georgia outlawed crossburning in
Speaker 1: an effort to stem the tide of this white robed violence.
Speaker 1: In February of nineteen fifty one, crosses were lit outside
Speaker 1: the homes and businesses of black residence in Guchland and
Speaker 1: in Raiko Counties in Virginia. Black families reported seeing half
Speaker 1: a dozen men firing their guns into the air as
Speaker 1: they ran back to their cars after lighting the flames.
Speaker 1: The FBI said it was a local matter. The sheriff
Speaker 1: said it was pranksters. When the local NAACP demanded an investigation,
Speaker 1: the county prosecutor said there is definitely no racial relations
Speaker 1: question connected to the recent cross burnings. By June of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one, Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina had joined
Speaker 1: Georgia in banning cross burning across the South. The crosses burned,
Speaker 1: and there was no question about what it meant except
Speaker 1: when it happened here. The same papers that ran the
Speaker 1: wire stories about the legislative attempts to combat clan activity
Speaker 1: everywhere else said the six foot cross doused and gasoline
Speaker 1: in the middle of Route one in Stafford was just
Speaker 1: a prank. It was just kids messing with traffic. In
Speaker 1: August of that year, a widow and Appamannox was awoken
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night by the sound of
Speaker 1: an explosion. The cross burning on her front lawn had
Speaker 1: ignited the dynamite late at its base. A postcard from
Speaker 1: the clan was left to the scene. The newspaper ran
Speaker 1: the headline crossfire lacks motive, with the sheriff quoted saying,
Speaker 1: my office dropped the matter. It was probably a personal
Speaker 1: thing or just some children. In my haphazard search of
Speaker 1: newspaper archives, I found nearly a hundred of these pranks
Speaker 1: in Virginia in the nineteen fifties. A white cop tells
Speaker 1: white reporter that there's nothing to worry about here. It's
Speaker 1: only a joke. As a black family douses the burning
Speaker 1: embers on their law. No one could see the racial
Speaker 1: terror we already had here at home. It was always kids,
Speaker 1: or vandals or pranksters. But in nineteen fifty two, the
Speaker 1: Virginia State Legislature was finally ready to act, responding to
Speaker 1: reports that Florida Clan leader Bill Hendrix was planning a
Speaker 1: rally in Richmond, and South Carolina clan leader Thomas Hamilton
Speaker 1: was planning to start chapters in more than a dozen towns.
Speaker 1: In Virginia, a bill was introduced to outlaw the wearing
Speaker 1: of masks in public at the urging of religious groups,
Speaker 1: a ban on crossburning was added. The threat of these
Speaker 1: out of town clansmen pushed the bill through without significant pushback,
Speaker 1: and it was signed by Governor John Battle in April
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two. But changing the law didn't change anyone's attitudes.
Speaker 1: Throughout the nineteen fifties, most of the crossburning stories I
Speaker 1: could find were dismissed as pranks, and if I'm being
Speaker 1: entirely honest, some of them might have been. There were
Speaker 1: several crossburnings in Newport News that teenage boys eventually confessed to,
Speaker 1: with one cross being placed on the law of a
Speaker 1: state delegate by mistake. The boys said they were pranking
Speaker 1: their high school teachers, and I did find at least
Speaker 1: three stories of high school teachers and Newport News who
Speaker 1: had crosses burned on their lawn. The boys' names were
Speaker 1: never published, so I don't know what they got up
Speaker 1: to later in life, and I have to wonder exactly
Speaker 1: what kind of pranks these were. It's the fifties. Had
Speaker 1: those teachers expressed support for integration, Did they go on
Speaker 1: dates with black women or rent property to black tenants?
Speaker 1: It wasn't unheard of for behavior like that to earn
Speaker 1: a white man a visit from those seeking to enforce
Speaker 1: the established social order. But it's impossible to say seventy
Speaker 1: years later what prompted those nighttime visits from their students.
Speaker 1: And I tell you about these ones that maybe were pranks,
Speaker 1: because I don't think any of them being pranks really
Speaker 1: helps explain it at all. If anything, it underscores how
Speaker 1: widespread and commonly understood this was as a symbol. You
Speaker 1: didn't have to be a klansman to know what it meant.
Speaker 1: You didn't have to mean it yourself to know how
Speaker 1: it would be read. In nineteen sixty five, George Lincoln Rockwell,
Speaker 1: the founder of the American Nazi Party, ran for governor
Speaker 1: here in Virginia. He didn't win, obviously, he got nearly
Speaker 1: six thousand votes, though one percent of the total cast.
Speaker 1: The new governor was Mills Godwin, once a staunch segregationist
Speaker 1: who had distanced himself from the political machine of Harry Bird.
Speaker 1: Whether he had a change of heart or just saw
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall after the failure of Virginia's
Speaker 1: massive resistance to school desegregation is impossible to say. But
Speaker 1: in December of nineteen sixty six, Governor Mills Godwin announced
Speaker 1: a one thousand dollars reward for information leading to the
Speaker 1: arrest and conviction of crossburners. In response, the klan burned
Speaker 1: across outside the Governor's mansion.
Speaker 4: The clan did rear its head in certain areas of
Speaker 4: Virginia in that period, even to the extent that they
Speaker 4: burned a cross on the sidewalk right behind the Governor's mansion.
Speaker 4: And we made some arrest and there were some sentences
Speaker 4: meeted out to those that were convicted, and it had
Speaker 4: a real deterring effect.
Speaker 1: A rash of cross burnings followed. Crosses burned all over
Speaker 1: the state of Virginia in protest of Governor Godwin's declaration
Speaker 1: of war against the Clan. On New Year's Day nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven, Wilson Ralph Price and his wife, Nanny Jane
Speaker 1: Price were arrested for burning across on a sidewalk in Richmond,
Speaker 1: all three of their young children were waiting for them
Speaker 1: in their parked car, where police found several loaded guns,
Speaker 1: a second cross they intended to burn elsewhere later that day,
Speaker 1: and a stack of clan literature. Barry Black wasn't the
Speaker 1: first clansman to fight this law and win. Price had
Speaker 1: his conviction overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court a year later,
Speaker 1: with the court ruling that technically the law didn't apply here.
Speaker 1: The Prices had burned that cross on public property, on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk, not on the property of another, as stated
Speaker 1: in the statute. The Virginia General Assembly amended the law
Speaker 1: that year to include a bannon crossburning on public property
Speaker 1: as well. In nineteen sixty eight, the state Supreme Court
Speaker 1: seemed to believe that the purpose of banning crossburning was
Speaker 1: to protect private property. The law didn't protect people, it
Speaker 1: protected their laws, and with this amendment, the legislature clarified
Speaker 1: their intention. The law isn't about property or trustpass or
Speaker 1: the possibility of danger from the flames themselves. It is
Speaker 1: intended to prevent a particular act of intimidation. But in
Speaker 1: their efforts to close off this avenue of attack, they
Speaker 1: accidentally created another This amendment to the statute also added
Speaker 1: language that quote, the unlawful burning of a cross shall
Speaker 1: be prima facia evidence of the intention to intimidate a
Speaker 1: person or group of persons. This language was likely intended
Speaker 1: to get around the defense of whill it was just
Speaker 1: a prank. Burning across is such a heinous act with
Speaker 1: no other purpose than to intimidate that if you can
Speaker 1: prove it was done at all, then the starting assumption
Speaker 1: is that it was done to intimidate. So this amendment
Speaker 1: to the law shifts the burden of proof to the
Speaker 1: party trying to prove otherwise. So when Barry lit that
Speaker 1: cross in Carroll County on August twenty second, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the law on the books read, it shall be unlawful
Speaker 1: for any person or persons, with the intent of intimidating
Speaker 1: any person or group of persons, to burn, or cause
Speaker 1: to be burned across on the property of another, a
Speaker 1: highway or other public space. Any person who shall violate
Speaker 1: this section shall be guilty of a classic felony. Any
Speaker 1: such burning of a cross shall be primophacia evidence of
Speaker 1: an intent to intimidate a person or group of persons,
Speaker 1: and Barry had done that. When the sheriff's lieutenant arrived,
Speaker 1: he asked who lit this cross, and Barry stepped forward
Speaker 1: and claimed responsibility. He was charged in Carroll County and
Speaker 1: released on bond, but he was having a hell of
Speaker 1: a time finding a lawyer. Most lawyers in the area
Speaker 1: wouldn't even return his calls. But then, as in so
Speaker 1: many cases of extremists trying to force their way into
Speaker 1: the conversation about civil rights, the ACLU stepped up without
Speaker 1: even having to be asked.
Speaker 3: Well, I walked into the courthouse. I just looked at him.
Speaker 3: He says, is there something wrong here? And I says
Speaker 3: you're David Ball He said yeah. I says you're black.
Speaker 3: He says yeah. I said, are you going to fight
Speaker 3: for me? Are you going to give me one hundred
Speaker 3: and fifty one percent? He says, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: change your views, He says, in my views about you
Speaker 3: aren't the greatest in the world either. He says, but
Speaker 3: I will give you one hundred and fifty one percent.
Speaker 3: You have my word on that, sir. He says, I'll
Speaker 3: defend you to the end, and life is good enough.
Speaker 1: The Virginia ACLU was no stranger to this strange Bedfellow's
Speaker 1: type of attorney client relationship. Just a few years earlier,
Speaker 1: they'd taken on the case of Buddy Hernandez, a clansman
Speaker 1: who was arrested in nineteen eighty nine for handing out
Speaker 1: clan literature while wearing full clan regalia, including a hood
Speaker 1: that covered his face. Like the cross burning law, Virginia's
Speaker 1: anti masking statute was adopted in nineteen fifty two with
Speaker 1: the explicit intention of curtailing clan activity. The anti masking
Speaker 1: statute was upheld by the Virginia Supreme Court, and the
Speaker 1: actual Supreme Court declined to hear Hernandez's case. In nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, ACLU attorney David Baugh went to Batford Barry,
Speaker 1: and he spent years on the case. When the pair
Speaker 1: first appeared in court together, the Richmond Times Dispatch ran
Speaker 1: the headline crowd likely as black defends clansmen. The news
Speaker 1: stories can be a little tough to parse sometimes because
Speaker 1: our klansman's name is black, and the African American attorney
Speaker 1: representing him is being referred to often in these newspapers
Speaker 1: as a black and the case was getting a lot
Speaker 1: of publicity. This tiny town of just twenty seven hundred
Speaker 1: was suddenly swarming with reporters and lawyers. The state Attorney
Speaker 1: General's office sent a team to assist the local prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Carroll County District Court clerk Christine Beck told the paper,
Speaker 1: it's going to be a circus, and added, I guess
Speaker 1: some things are just fascinating, like the sex lies of
Speaker 1: the president. This would have been right around the time
Speaker 1: the Star report was released to the public, and everyone
Speaker 1: was just in a frenzy about the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Speaker 1: The last few months of nineteen ninety eight were hectic
Speaker 1: for Barry. Now he was fighting his own case down
Speaker 1: in Virginia, but the four klansmen arrested at the White
Speaker 1: Bride picnic were still fighting their cases at home in Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after this cross burning, Barry was kicked
Speaker 1: out of the courtroom during a hearing in Don Penrod's
Speaker 1: case for pointing his rifle at that state trooper, and
Speaker 1: Barry had to appear in court repeatedly in his fight
Speaker 1: to keep his job as Constable. He's under more scrutiny
Speaker 1: than ever. His local prosecutor, state troopers, and the courts
Speaker 1: in Virginia were just waiting for Barry to make a mistake.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen ninety nine, a judge in Virginia
Speaker 1: ruled against emotion to dismiss Barry's criminal case, rejecting the
Speaker 1: argument that crossburning was protected First Amendment conduct. A few
Speaker 1: days later, Barry was back in court in Pennsylvania, railing
Speaker 1: against the corrupt judicial system trying to take away his
Speaker 1: job as constable. He told reporters in the hallway after
Speaker 1: the hearing that if they would just let him keep
Speaker 1: the job, he would be too busy working to keep
Speaker 1: up his clan activities. That's not really a great argument
Speaker 1: if you ask me, you know, just let me be
Speaker 1: a cop and I'll be too busy to do crime.
Speaker 1: I don't know that that's very convincing. And while we're
Speaker 1: on the subject of guys who probably should not be cops,
Speaker 1: I want to pick up a thread from the story
Speaker 1: last week. Barry's involvement in the war on the Casanova
Speaker 1: Lounge doesn't really factor into this week's story. He's too
Speaker 1: busy with his own problems at this point to be
Speaker 1: bothering with that gay bar But the situation was ongoing,
Speaker 1: and it was around this time in the spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine that something the bar's patrons had long
Speaker 1: suspected was proved to be true. The bigots had an
Speaker 1: inside man. Ron Immler, the police chief and neighboring Connamau Township,
Speaker 1: had been running license plates for the protesters and supplying
Speaker 1: them with the names and home addresses of the people
Speaker 1: who visited the gay bar. Imler denied these accusations, but
Speaker 1: he suddenly retired. The Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Technology
Speaker 1: Service informed the town's supervisors in a letter that Ron
Speaker 1: Immler had violated state and federal law by providing confidential
Speaker 1: information obtained through state computer databases to an unauthorized person.
Speaker 1: It's not clear to me if Immler was ever charged
Speaker 1: or prosecuted for this. There's no record in the online
Speaker 1: information system for Pennsylvania's courts. It could be that this
Speaker 1: is very old. I did find other records from that year.
Speaker 1: It could be that he had it sealed or expunged.
Speaker 1: But it's possible that he was just never charged. So
Speaker 1: we do have on record that the state police informed
Speaker 1: the township that their police chief had broken the law,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear that the local prosecutor ever brought
Speaker 1: those charges, so it's not always as literal as that
Speaker 1: dead clansman in South Carolina who was wearing his police
Speaker 1: uniform under his robes, and Barry wasn't the only law
Speaker 1: enforcement official in the area whose vision of law and
Speaker 1: order did at harassing that bar out of existence. But
Speaker 1: back to Barry, things didn't improve much for Barry as
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine, wore On Don Penrod and two other
Speaker 1: clansmen were convicted for threatening those state troopers at the
Speaker 1: White Pride picnic, and Barry was once again removed from
Speaker 1: the office of Constable by the courts. He tried to
Speaker 1: appeal the decision as he had the first time around,
Speaker 1: but it didn't work out. He filed a federal lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the state police, but his case got tossed before
Speaker 1: it even got off the ground. He had to bail
Speaker 1: his son, Barry Junior, out of the local jail three
Speaker 1: times that year, including one night after the younger Barry
Speaker 1: was arrested for threatening someone with a gun, and in
Speaker 1: June of nineteen ninety nine, an old white jury in
Speaker 1: Carroll County deliberated for just twenty five minutes before finding
Speaker 1: Barry Black guilty of cross burning under that Virginia statute.
Speaker 1: They had the option of giving him up to five
Speaker 1: years behind bars for this CLASSICX felony, but the jury
Speaker 1: decided on just a twenty five hundred dollars fine.
Speaker 3: I can't just say, hey, no, here's twenty five hundred dollars,
Speaker 3: forget it. If I did that, I'm letting my race down.
Speaker 3: I have to make people know that America is still
Speaker 3: a land of opportunity, that America is still a land
Speaker 3: of democracy, and that the Constitution United States of America
Speaker 3: still means something.
Speaker 1: His attorney, David Ball, vowed to appeal the conviction, saying
Speaker 1: the cross was burned as part of their ceremony, not
Speaker 1: because they wanted to intimidate anyone, and the first appeal
Speaker 1: didn't go their way. In December of two thousand, the
Speaker 1: Virginia Court of Appeals upheld Barry's conviction, but they kept fighting.
Speaker 1: A year later, the Virginia Supreme Court agreed with Barry
Speaker 1: Virginia's crossburning law was unconstitutional. The opinion noted that similar
Speaker 1: statutes in Maryland and South Carolina had been ruled unconstitutional
Speaker 1: in recent years, and the law on the books was indistinct,
Speaker 1: inquishable from the Minnesota law struck down in the nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two Supreme Court case rav versus City of Saint Paul.
Speaker 1: The issue here arises in that nineteen sixty eight amendment
Speaker 1: to the law about the act itself being sufficient evidence
Speaker 1: of intent, and just a quick side note here. I
Speaker 1: don't want a Monday morning quarterback the State Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: but they are mistaken about something here. The opinion incorrectly
Speaker 1: states that the prima fascia evidence of intent language was
Speaker 1: added in nineteen seventy five, but it was nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: And I can promise you that I pulled copies of
Speaker 1: the Acts of the General Assembly for every legislative session
Speaker 1: that this code section was touched. The prima facial requirement
Speaker 1: was inserted when the law was amended in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: after the State Supreme Court overturned Wilson Price's conviction. I
Speaker 1: think the origin of this error is that the code
Speaker 1: section does show a revision was made in nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: but if you pull the full text of the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five session, it's because everything in Title eighteen was
Speaker 1: technically amended in nineteen seventy five. Because they rearranged and
Speaker 1: recodified the entire criminal Code, so the language of the
Speaker 1: statute stayed the same between nineteen sixty eight nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 1: They just changed the numbers. That doesn't matter at all.
Speaker 1: I didn't need to tell you that. I'm just flexing
Speaker 1: on some court clerk from twenty four years ago. I
Speaker 1: guess sorry. But anyway, this decision rested on that language.
Speaker 1: The law couldn't be content neutral if this baked in
Speaker 1: assumption of intent rested on the historical context of crossburning.
Speaker 1: So basically, the court is saying, you can't have it
Speaker 1: both ways. Either the law is constitutional because it is
Speaker 1: content neutral it applies to everyone regardless of their motivation,
Speaker 1: or you can justify the inference of intimidation by relying
Speaker 1: on the history of the clan. But both of those
Speaker 1: things can't be true at the same time. And because
Speaker 1: Barry wasn't the only person arrested for burning across in
Speaker 1: Virginia in nineteen ninety eight, this appeal to the State
Speaker 1: Supreme Court was actually three cases rolled up into one.
Speaker 1: So the court wasn't just reversing Barry's conviction in this opinion,
Speaker 1: they were also throwing out convictions against Richard Elliott and
Speaker 1: Jonathan O'Mara, two men had been convicted for burning across
Speaker 1: on a black family's lawn. Now Barry has an argument here.
Speaker 1: I don't like it. I don't have to like it,
Speaker 1: but it's true. There wasn't really a victim in this case.
Speaker 1: He was on private property at the invitation of the owner,
Speaker 1: and they didn't really intend for anybody to see what
Speaker 1: they were doing. The landowner's niece by marriage, who was
Speaker 1: living elsewhere on the property, did testify in the original
Speaker 1: case that she saw the cross burning and had been frightened,
Speaker 1: but she was arguably not any kind of intended audience.
Speaker 1: It's not even clear if they knew she was there.
Speaker 1: For Elliot and O'Mara, though their cases did not rely
Speaker 1: on prima facia evidence of intent, there was actual proof
Speaker 1: of intent. There was a victim here. They absolutely intended
Speaker 1: to intimidate that family and should rightfully be punished under
Speaker 1: this law. So the State of Virginia appealed the state
Speaker 1: Supreme Court ruling to the Supreme Court, and all three
Speaker 1: of these cases rolled right on up together. And I'll
Speaker 1: admit that before I started picking this story apart, my
Speaker 1: sort of general understanding of Commonwealth feed Black was that
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court ruled Virginia's cross burning law was unconstitutional,
Speaker 1: and that is what happened. But it's not entirely straightforward.
Speaker 1: Even the men's own lawyer, Rodney Smola, wasn't sure what
Speaker 1: to make of the decision the day he read it.
Speaker 3: I'm reading, and I read the first sentence, and I think, well,
Speaker 3: no I want, says no.
Speaker 1: I lost.
Speaker 3: And then I get through the first set of opinions
Speaker 3: by Justice O'Connor, and I wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: The decision announced by Justice Sandrada O'Connor was kind of
Speaker 1: a mixed bag. The court ruled it. Yes, the Virginia
Speaker 1: Supreme Court was right about the prima facia element of
Speaker 1: the law, making it unconstitutional.
Speaker 5: The act of burning across may mean that the person
Speaker 5: is engaging in constitutionally proscribable intimidation, or it may mean
Speaker 5: only that the person is engaged in core political speech.
Speaker 5: The prima facie provision blurs the line between these meanings.
Speaker 5: The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut. Thus
Speaker 5: Black's conviction cannot stand and the judgment as to him
Speaker 5: is affirmed.
Speaker 1: But they were also clear in their opinion that Virginia
Speaker 1: can enforce a law banning cross burning so long as
Speaker 1: that law requires an intent to intimidate. If it can
Speaker 1: be proven that the act was carried out with such
Speaker 1: an intent, it's not free speech anymore. It's a true threat,
Speaker 1: and threats are not protected by the First Amendment.
Speaker 5: We hold that a state consistent with the First Amendment
Speaker 5: may ban crossburning carried out with the intent to intimidate.
Speaker 5: While a burning cross does not always convey a message
Speaker 5: of intimidation, often the crossburner intends that the recipients of
Speaker 5: the message fear for their lives, and when a cross
Speaker 5: burning is used to intimidate, few, if any, messages are
Speaker 5: more powerful.
Speaker 1: Very one. His conviction was overturned. The highest court in
Speaker 1: the land agreed it was his constitutional right to light
Speaker 1: that cross. The Supreme Court did reverse the Virginia Supreme
Speaker 1: Court rulings that had overturned Richard Elliott and Jonathan O'Mara's convictions.
Speaker 1: Their cases were kicked back down to the lower courts,
Speaker 1: and ultimately they were convicted and did serve time. And
Speaker 1: after a lifetime of fighting losing battles, you might think
Speaker 1: Barry came away from this emboldened, empowered, ready to ride
Speaker 1: this victory into more marches, more recruiting, more cross burnings,
Speaker 1: more anything. But he didn't really. He was fifty five
Speaker 1: the year the Supreme Court gave him their blessing to
Speaker 1: burn crosses. He probably did burn a few more, but
Speaker 1: none of them made the news. He'd planted some seeds
Speaker 1: as an Imperial Wizard, but none of them really thrived.
Speaker 1: Corporate entities with names that seemed to tie them to
Speaker 1: Barry's Keystone Nights existed in several states, but most of
Speaker 1: them withered and died. The International Keystone Knights of the
Speaker 1: Realm of Ohio registered with the State of Ohio in
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, but they stopped filing annual paperwork
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen. The Invisible Empire International Keystone Knights of
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan, Incorporated was registered in Indiana by
Speaker 1: Barry himself in nineteen ninety seven. The South Carolina based
Speaker 1: nonprofit Barry Incorporated in nineteen ninety nine technically still exists
Speaker 1: on paper, despite the deaths of both Barry and the
Speaker 1: local clansmen he ran it with a Virginia chapter of
Speaker 1: the Keystone Knights Incorporated. A few months after the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court victory in two thousand and three, but there's no
Speaker 1: record I can find of the chapter getting up to anything,
Speaker 1: and all record of the entity disappears entirely after two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. Stephen Dnkle, the one time leader of
Speaker 1: a Keystone Nights chapter in Alabama, was convicted of a
Speaker 1: federal hate crime in twenty fourteen for a cross burning.
Speaker 1: After his release, he was convicted again for a federal
Speaker 1: firearms related offense, and in twenty seventeen, he was sentenced
Speaker 1: to ten years for sexually assaulting an incapacitated woman. A
Speaker 1: man named Willis Fraser still files annual paperwork with the
Speaker 1: IRS for the Indiana based entity using the Keystone Knights name.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, Fraser tried to sue the
Speaker 1: state of Arkansas after he was fired from his job
Speaker 1: as a prison guard for being a member of the
Speaker 1: Keystone Knights, but his suit was dismissed. The only place
Speaker 1: the Keystone Knights have popped up in recent years was
Speaker 1: their legal battle with the state of Georgia over the
Speaker 1: denial of their application to the state's adopt a Highway program.
Speaker 1: The ACLU stepped in to help secure the clan's right
Speaker 1: to put their name on a sign on the side
Speaker 1: of a Georgia highway. That Keystone Knights chapter in Georgia
Speaker 1: seems to be the only one that really still exists,
Speaker 1: with Willis Fraser's name on some of that paperwork, tying
Speaker 1: it all the way back to Barry. The Keystone Knights
Speaker 1: are more or less dead, and Barry Black is entirely dead.
Speaker 1: He passed away in twenty eighteen. He lived a life
Speaker 1: of hatred. He spent most of his life feeling persecuted
Speaker 1: and aggrieved, fighting what he saw as a righteous battle
Speaker 1: for his civil rights. His right to disrupt life in
Speaker 1: a small town with his clan rallies, his right to
Speaker 1: serve as constable, his right to lead armed mobs that
Speaker 1: threatened to shoot cops, his right to burn crosses, his
Speaker 1: right to make his bigotry your problem. The part of
Speaker 1: Barry's legacy I'm most interested in, though, is the law
Speaker 1: written to stop the next Berry Black. While Barry Black's
Speaker 1: cross burning appeals were working their way through the appeals process,
Speaker 1: the Virginia General Assembly had already corrected the problem. They
Speaker 1: knew the law they used to prosecute Barry wasn't going
Speaker 1: to hold up, and instead of amending the existing statute,
Speaker 1: they passed a new law in two thousand and two.
Speaker 1: The language about prima fascia evidence of intent was gone,
Speaker 1: of course, but there was another huge change. The cross
Speaker 1: itself was missing. This new law outlawed burning anything if
Speaker 1: it was done with the intent to intimidate. It's still
Speaker 1: understood to be a cross burning law, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: actually say that. It doesn't say that at all. Cross
Speaker 1: burnings never stopped. Of course, they still happen here from
Speaker 1: time to time. In twenty twenty, a man named James
Speaker 1: Brown burned a cross outside the home of a black
Speaker 1: teenager who'd been involved in organizing Black Lives Matter protests
Speaker 1: in Marion, Virginia. He served eighteen months for criminal interference
Speaker 1: with federally protected rights. Darryl Orange was convicted in twenty
Speaker 1: ten under the original cross burning law, which was left
Speaker 1: on the books for some reason, after he burned a
Speaker 1: cross on his neighbor's lawn in Bedford, Virginia. Many crossburnings
Speaker 1: go unsolved or unprosecuted, and some of them are still
Speaker 1: dismissed as pranks. This new law has never really been
Speaker 1: tested until last year. I can only find a single
Speaker 1: case where it's ever even been used to charge someone.
Speaker 1: On the fourth of July and twenty nineteen, a man
Speaker 1: in Williamsburg pulled up in front of a wal Mart,
Speaker 1: got out of his car, put an American flag on
Speaker 1: the ground, and set it on fire. He didn't threaten anyone,
Speaker 1: He just lit it up, shouted a bit about how
Speaker 1: he hated America, and drove off. Wasn't shouting in anyone
Speaker 1: in particular, He wasn't particularly close to anyone or anything,
Speaker 1: and no one was injured and nothing was really damaged.
Speaker 1: The charge almost certainly would not have held up to
Speaker 1: any kind of scrutiny in this particular case. The local
Speaker 1: cops outright said that they probably wouldn't even have arrested
Speaker 1: him at all if he'd burned a towel instead of
Speaker 1: a flag. It was the flag that had people worked up,
Speaker 1: but the First Amendment right to burn a flag is
Speaker 1: well trod legal territory. He ultimately pled down to a
Speaker 1: misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge, So the court hasn't really ever
Speaker 1: had to deal with this burning object law until now.
Speaker 1: You see, seven years ago, hundreds of torch bearing white
Speaker 1: supremacists marched through the grounds of the University of Virginia.
Speaker 1: They'd come to Charlesville from across the country, taking Friday
Speaker 1: morning flights or taking turns at the wheel for cross
Speaker 1: country drives, and rented vans with guys they met on
Speaker 1: message board. Arriving early before the big event the next day,
Speaker 1: they gathered in a field near the tennis courts and
Speaker 1: lined up two by two, torches in hand. Men with
Speaker 1: walkie talkies clipped to their belts, some with wired earpieces
Speaker 1: barked orders. Elliott Kleine, an ambitious young white nationalist organizer
Speaker 1: calling himself Eli Moseley after twentieth century British fascist Oswald Moseley,
Speaker 1: shouted at the crowd as they formed into a line.
Speaker 1: So we're going around right through, and anyone who we
Speaker 1: packed for the journey, let us know if we can
Speaker 1: do it all right, We're picking big guys, no female.
Speaker 1: Klein was selecting the biggest marchers to lay down their torches,
Speaker 1: they might need their hands free. The march wound its
Speaker 1: way through the university grounds, up the lawn, and then
Speaker 1: up the steps of the University of Virginia's iconic rotunda
Speaker 1: on the other side of the rotunda, gathered near a
Speaker 1: statue Thomas Jefferson, a small group of anti racist activists waited.
Speaker 1: In her testimony during a later civil trial, one of
Speaker 1: the women who was terrorized that night said, when we
Speaker 1: heard the roaring of the approaching crowd, we just linked
Speaker 1: arms and held hands and started to sing. She said
Speaker 1: at first it sounded like thunder, like the earth was growling.
Speaker 1: As the sound grew closer, but before she could see
Speaker 1: the light of the torches, she began to make out
Speaker 1: the chance hundreds of voices raised in unison, shouting blood
Speaker 1: and soil. Testifying about that night years later, she said
Speaker 1: she still hears it in her nightmare sometimes, and by
Speaker 1: the time that small group of mostly students realized the
Speaker 1: magnitude and ferocity of the approaching mob, it was too late.
Speaker 1: They were surrounded at the base of the statue by
Speaker 1: hundreds of torch wielding white supremacists for just a few minutes,
Speaker 1: minutes that those trapped at the base of the statue
Speaker 1: said they believed might be their last, as they were
Speaker 1: doused in lighter fluid, maced, kicked, and punched. There was
Speaker 1: a melee after the crowd dispersed that night and after
Speaker 1: the deadly rally the next morning, those men went home.
Speaker 1: Some started businesses, some joined the military, others got kicked
Speaker 1: out of the military, and some did both. Some died
Speaker 1: of heart attacks and drug overdoses and self inflicted gunshot wounds.
Speaker 1: They beat their wives and choked their girlfriends, went to
Speaker 1: grad school, went to prison, trafficked drugs, started families, got divorced,
Speaker 1: ran for office, tried to overturn a presidential election, left
Speaker 1: the movement, tried to lead the movement, or just tried
Speaker 1: to disappear. There are as many stories as there were
Speaker 1: flames in the night when their voices joined us, one
Speaker 1: shouting Jews will not replace us, and then dousing the flames,
Speaker 1: going their separate ways back to the communities they came from.
Speaker 1: Last year, the Algumorole County Prosecutor's office decided to put
Speaker 1: this law to the test. This mom had burned objects,
Speaker 1: they had intimidated people with them. If this law was
Speaker 1: meant to punish anyone for anything, it was meant for
Speaker 1: men like this with their flaming torches. And if you're
Speaker 1: listening to this the day it came out, the odds
Speaker 1: are pretty good that I'm sitting in a little county
Speaker 1: courtroom with one of them right now. Weird Little Guys
Speaker 1: is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's researched,
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me Long Kunger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 1: read it, but I almost certainly will not answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. I don't answer any of my emails.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guy's subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys.