WEBVTT - CZM Rewind: Barry Black Pt. 1 & 2 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:13.120 Cool Zone Media. Hey everybody, Molly Conger here. You've probably 0:00:13.160 --> 0:00:16.439 noticed that this is a rerun. No, your podcast app 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:20.279 isn't glitching. There's no new guy this week. The show 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:22.560 hasn't been around long enough to have a huge back 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.000 catalog to reach into on days like this, I can't 0:00:26.040 --> 0:00:28.280 dig through the archives and pick an episode from a 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:30.800 year ago that maybe you missed the first time around, 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:33.400 or listened to so long ago that you already forgot 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.960 how it ended. But today is the last Thursday in 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.200 the month of November, and in the United States, that's 0:00:40.240 --> 0:00:43.960 a holiday. If it's a holiday you celebrate in whatever way, 0:00:44.479 --> 0:00:47.720 I hope you're enjoying it. I'm not sure how listening 0:00:47.800 --> 0:00:51.040 to weird little guys factors into your holiday enjoyment. That's 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:53.960 kind of weird. But I'm not here to tell you 0:00:53.960 --> 0:00:57.520 what to do. Running this old episode means I got 0:00:57.520 --> 0:00:59.160 to take a few days off this week to spend 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:01.800 with my family, which I'm grateful for. I know not 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:06.120 everybody has that luxury. Whatever you're doing today, I hope 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:09.800 you've got the day off. Rory, the brilliant mind behind 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:12.000 the perfect placement of all the music in the show, 0:01:12.319 --> 0:01:15.280 and the guy with the unenviable job of editing out 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:18.760 all the times I burp into my microphone does not 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:22.600 have work today, and we should all celebrate that he 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:28.120 deserves a break from toiling away at the burp removal machine. Sorry, Rory. 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.520 So here's a weird little guy I already told you about, 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:44.760 and I'll be back next week with new weird guys. 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.400 In nineteen forty eight, there is a rash of cross 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:53.040 burnings in Suffolk. Virginia. Newspapers throughout the late forties and 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.240 all through the fifties assure the reader that there is 0:01:56.280 --> 0:02:00.840 no Ku Klux Klan activity in Virginia. Ooklan groups had 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:03.120 more or less died out in the mid forties, and 0:02:03.200 --> 0:02:06.480 Virginia wouldn't really see a rise in widespread organized clan 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:09.760 activity until the threat of integrated schools whipped aggrieved white 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:13.239 men back into a frenzy in the fifties. But the 0:02:13.320 --> 0:02:16.240 lack of a clear leadership structure or the formal blessing 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:19.000 of some grand dragon or imperial wizard in some other 0:02:19.080 --> 0:02:22.360 state didn't seem to deter the one hundred men in 0:02:22.520 --> 0:02:25.880 robes who set fire to a twelve foot cross in 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:29.920 a peanut field in Nurneyville, and whether or not the 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:34.079 local prosecutor believed that the clan still existed. Everyone in 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.960 the South knows what a burning cross means, and it 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.840 was the third one in that neighborhood in recent months. 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:46.280 The local prosecutor had simply shrugged, it's not illegal to 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:50.200 burn a cross. Two thousand members of a local peanut 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.360 workers union approved a resolution demanding a response from the 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:57.359 governor and Attorney General, writing, we reject the hair splitting 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:01.240 thinking of some commonwealth authorities regarding what constitutes violation of 0:03:01.240 --> 0:03:04.680 the law. The fact remains that one hundred white robed 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:08.760 persons burned across in the field of NH. Bradshaw. Whether 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.600 this group was the KKK or a similar organization is 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:19.440 not important. The tactics of intimidation and terrorism are. That 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:24.320 same year, nineteen forty eight, twin boys, Barry and Bruce 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:29.160 Black were born in Pennsylvania. Berry didn't burn that cross 0:03:29.160 --> 0:03:31.520 in the peanut field. He was just a baby then 0:03:32.840 --> 0:03:35.600 given some time to grow. Though his name would one 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:40.600 day become synonymous with crossburning in Virginia, he was barely 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.400 out of diapers when Virginia did finally outlaw cross burning 0:03:43.440 --> 0:03:47.120 in nineteen fifty two, and he was decades into his 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:49.280 career as a clan leader when he lit the cross 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.440 that would take him all the way to the Supreme Court. 0:03:54.800 --> 0:04:15.760 I'm Molly Conger, and this is weird. Little guys. There 0:04:15.800 --> 0:04:19.760 is a story that I've been writing and rewriting for years, 0:04:20.520 --> 0:04:22.680 digging deeper into the past while I wait for the 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:26.320 future to deliver some kind of ending. I have notebooks 0:04:26.360 --> 0:04:29.760 full of scribbled transcriptions of courtroom testimony, and a hard 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:34.479 drive full of grainy footage, and folders upon folders labeled 0:04:34.480 --> 0:04:38.440 with men's names, each one containing varying degrees of a 0:04:38.480 --> 0:04:41.159 half baked biographical sketch of a man who lit a 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:46.120 torch one summer night in twenty seventeen. Lately, I'm combing 0:04:46.160 --> 0:04:48.520 back through my notes about the events of August eleventh, 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:51.960 twenty seventeen, because unless something changes in the next week 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.680 or so, I'll be spending a few days in October 0:04:54.680 --> 0:04:57.920 sitting in my favorite seat at the county courthouse. It's 0:04:58.080 --> 0:05:00.000 the aisle seat in the second row, on the day 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.880 defendant's side of the bench. I don't know why that 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:05.640 one's my favorite, but if I can't sit there, this 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.240 is not right to date, Twelve men who march with 0:05:09.279 --> 0:05:11.800 a torch here in Charlottesville seven years ago have been 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:14.200 charged under a Virginia law that makes it a felony 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.840 to burn an object with the intent to intimidate. And 0:05:18.520 --> 0:05:20.560 I'm going to tell you about some of those men. 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:25.120 I am there is some real weird little guy behavior 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:29.680 going on in a lot of their backstories, but not today. 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:35.359 As always, we have to start before the beginning. In 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.880 the year and a half since those charges were first filed, 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:42.359 I've written the case citation Commonwealth v. Black in my 0:05:42.560 --> 0:05:47.039 little notebook probably one hundred times. Commonwealth v. Black was 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.719 the Supreme Court case that held that the original version 0:05:49.760 --> 0:05:54.440 of Virginia's crossburning law was unconstitutional. The law was rewritten 0:05:54.480 --> 0:05:56.839 in response to this challenge, and the current version of 0:05:56.839 --> 0:06:00.200 the statute is what's being used to prosecute the torch marchers. 0:06:00.720 --> 0:06:05.320 So commonwealthy Black, that's all I really needed to know. 0:06:06.360 --> 0:06:09.800 Some clansmen burned across and he challenged the law, and 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:14.320 he won, and we changed the law. That's good enough 0:06:14.360 --> 0:06:17.839 to get by, But how many times can you write 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:21.720 a man's name without bothering to find out who he was? 0:06:23.120 --> 0:06:25.040 So I set out to get a little more context 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:28.039 on the man who brought the case. But what I 0:06:28.080 --> 0:06:32.359 found wasn't just some boring bit of backstory about constitutional 0:06:32.440 --> 0:06:35.760 law and legislative history. I mean, we're definitely going to 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:39.120 do some of that, but what I found was a 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:42.600 complicated story of small town bigotry and the people who 0:06:42.640 --> 0:06:45.760 stand up to it. Barry Black was the leader of 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.760 a clan group in Pennsylvania whose hatred touched the lives 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:53.120 of people whose stories are worth knowing. This episode is 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:55.440 just the first half of very black story, and we 0:06:55.480 --> 0:06:58.240 won't even get to his precedent setting appeal until next week. 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.440 This week gets just a strange little stroll through some 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:04.400 of the side characters in the life of a man 0:07:04.440 --> 0:07:07.360 who donned a pointy hood to infringe on the civil 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:10.800 rights of everyone around him, but just kept going to 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:14.240 court to fight for his own. So before we can 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:16.800 talk about a lit tiki torch on a college campus, 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:21.080 we have to talk about a fiery cross on a hillside. 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:24.480 We have to talk about Barry Black, the clansman who 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:26.720 fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court 0:07:27.640 --> 0:07:33.800 and won. Barry Elton Black and his twin brother, Bruce, 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:38.640 were born two months before their mother's seventeenth birthday. Their 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:43.960 twenty three year old father, also named Bruce, didn't stick around. 0:07:44.080 --> 0:07:46.600 When the boys were two, the nineteen fifty census shows 0:07:46.640 --> 0:07:48.640 they were living with their mother at her parents' home, 0:07:49.160 --> 0:07:50.920 and their father was living a few miles down the 0:07:50.960 --> 0:07:54.040 road as a lodger in an elderly divorcees boarding house. 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:58.560 Barry's obituary says he was a Vietnam veteran, that he 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:02.560 was in the Navy. That's the only place I found 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.720 that information. Decades of newspaper articles about his clan hijinks 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:10.840 never mention it. I will absolutely concede that it is 0:08:11.000 --> 0:08:13.160 entirely possible that he joined the Navy right out of 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.800 high school and maybe was on one of the earliest 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:19.360 deployments of the war. He was eighteen in nineteen sixty six, 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:24.040 so it's possible, But by nineteen sixty eight he was 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:28.840 too busy going to jail to go to war. In 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:31.280 the summer of nineteen sixty eight, Barry and his brother 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:34.560 were caught stripping parts of a car in a salvage yard. 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:38.600 Two years later, Barry was back in jail again. Reports 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:42.400 Arry and lack specificity as to exactly why he was 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:45.880 in jail in nineteen seventy. One report at the time 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:49.439 says it was a morals charge. Another says it was 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.840 a paternity case. A list of his arrests that appeared 0:08:52.880 --> 0:08:55.280 in an article decades later says he was awaiting trial 0:08:55.320 --> 0:09:01.839 in nineteen seventy on charges of bastardery and fornication. Sounds 0:09:01.880 --> 0:09:03.320 like he might have just been guilty of having a 0:09:03.320 --> 0:09:07.240 good time, but he got himself into some extra trouble 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:11.679 by escaping from the jail. Barry and two other inmates 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.120 climbed a pipe, crawled through an air vent, got into 0:09:15.160 --> 0:09:18.920 the adjoining courthouse, and escaped by jumping out an open 0:09:19.000 --> 0:09:23.280 window in the judge's chambers, and no one even noticed 0:09:23.320 --> 0:09:26.320 the men were missing until Barry's brother called the sheriff 0:09:26.880 --> 0:09:29.080 to say he'd gotten a call from Barry earlier that 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:31.920 afternoon and he wanted to know if his brother had 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:37.120 posted bond The sheriff assured Bruce that no, Barry hasn't 0:09:37.160 --> 0:09:40.880 bonded out and he's still in a cell. But he 0:09:41.000 --> 0:09:45.800 was not. Barry was only free for about six hours 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:49.520 after this daring jail break. The other two men hid 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.240 out in barns for over a week. Before being recaptured, 0:09:52.240 --> 0:09:55.719 but a deputy found Barry limping around town later that 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.800 same evening. He'd broken bones in both of his feet 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:02.640 jumping out of the judge's window. A judge ordered him 0:10:02.640 --> 0:10:05.440 to pay one hundred dollars fine and the medical costs 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:08.360 in his paternity case, and he got another year for 0:10:08.440 --> 0:10:12.840 the escape. It's not clear what the paternity case entailed, 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.120 and if there is a secret child out there of 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:19.200 Berry Black, I couldn't find any record of it. In 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.599 nineteen seventy one, he went back to jail for a 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:25.360 burglary of an auto parts store, and between stints and jail, 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:28.240 he married his wife, Judy in nineteen seventy four, and 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.160 they had their first of six children in nineteen seventy five. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.520 And then he went back to jail in nineteen seventy 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:39.000 six for stealing a gun from his brother. He escaped again, 0:10:39.679 --> 0:10:42.600 this time just walking right out the front door of 0:10:42.600 --> 0:10:45.479 the psychiatric hospital the jail had sent him to for observation. 0:10:46.679 --> 0:10:48.760 But he was out again by nineteen seventy seven, when 0:10:48.800 --> 0:10:50.560 he was arrested for trying to buy a car with 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.839 a check from a closed bank account. This time he 0:10:53.960 --> 0:10:57.319 just caught probation, and he was given probation again when 0:10:57.360 --> 0:11:00.120 he was convicted in nineteen eighty six for illegally possessing 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:04.080 a revolver. And that's all there really was to know 0:11:04.120 --> 0:11:07.160 about Barry Black until the late eighties. He had a 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:09.880 couple of kids, his wife worked as a clerk, he 0:11:09.960 --> 0:11:12.920 drove a truck, and after going to jail half a 0:11:12.960 --> 0:11:15.720 dozen times in his twenties, he mostly stayed out of 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.120 trouble except for that gun charge in nineteen eighty six, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.720 But by nineteen eighty nine he's a legal in his 0:11:22.920 --> 0:11:28.160 local clan. Now, I don't want to sound like I'm 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.560 being dismissive of the Ku Klux Klan as a bunch 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.440 of silly guys in costumes who do live action role 0:11:34.440 --> 0:11:36.959 playing and who would have been better off doing something 0:11:37.000 --> 0:11:40.520 like joining the Society for Creative Anachronism or getting into 0:11:40.559 --> 0:11:43.880 dungeons and Dragons. I don't know. I'm in no way 0:11:43.920 --> 0:11:48.760 trying to minimize the decades and decades of vicious racial terror, 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:52.000 the violence, the lynchings, the campaigns of terror waged in 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:56.080 towns across the country for over a century. The clan 0:11:56.200 --> 0:12:02.240 was very real, it was very dangerous. People died, but 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:05.040 oh my god, do they make it hard to take 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:11.480 them seriously with their special clan vocabulary a klegal that's 0:12:11.679 --> 0:12:16.760 spelled like beagle, but with a KL upfront. It's an 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:21.240 official clan office that's basically just the local recruiter. So 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.199 in nineteen eighty nine, Barry was responsible for recruiting new 0:12:24.240 --> 0:12:27.559 members to his local clan chapter. And at this point 0:12:27.600 --> 0:12:29.880 he's still a member of the Invisible Empire of the 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:34.600 Ku Klux Klan. So the Invisible Empire is the overarching 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:39.600 national organization with an Imperial Wizard overseeing it. The Empire 0:12:39.679 --> 0:12:43.040 is subdivided into realms by state, and each realm has 0:12:43.080 --> 0:12:46.960 a Grand Dragon, and within each realm there are provinces. 0:12:47.480 --> 0:12:50.000 Each one is made up of, however many counties the 0:12:50.040 --> 0:12:53.480 Grand Dragon sees fit to assign the Grand Titan who 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:58.400 oversees them. The clan had two main eras, so first 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.080 in the reconstruction era right after the Civil War, and 0:13:01.120 --> 0:13:03.400 then it sort of died out, and then it had 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:06.040 a second era when it was revived in nineteen fifteen. 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:08.719 And the second era of the clan kept a lot 0:13:08.760 --> 0:13:12.280 of the goofy nineteenth century made up words, but it 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.800 seems like they lost some of the finer subdivisions. It 0:13:15.920 --> 0:13:17.920 used to be that the Grand Titan could appoint a 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:21.479 Grand Giant, who could in turn appoint henchmen called goblins. 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.280 I don't think they kept the goblins the second time around, 0:13:25.360 --> 0:13:31.000 which just seems like a huge loss, you know. But anyway, 0:13:31.840 --> 0:13:35.280 so by nineteen ninety Barry is the Grand Titan of 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:39.840 Western Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania has a Grand Dragon, and the 0:13:39.880 --> 0:13:43.880 Grand Dragon appoints the Grand Titans and Burries the Grand Titan. 0:13:45.040 --> 0:13:47.240 A nineteen ninety one report on clan activity in the 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.680 United States estimates nationwide membership at about four to five 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:56.200 thousand clansmen, with an estimated three hundred members in Pennsylvania, 0:13:56.480 --> 0:13:59.040 and with most of that activity being in the western 0:13:59.080 --> 0:14:04.439 half of the state in Barry's province. Under Barry's leadership, 0:14:04.559 --> 0:14:08.000 the clan was growing again in western Pennsylvania, and he 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:12.880 was very active, holding multiple marches in little towns all 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:17.920 over the state every year, and nobody wanted it. Nobody's 0:14:17.960 --> 0:14:22.840 excited to see the clan. In January of nineteen ninety one, 0:14:23.000 --> 0:14:26.320 they marched in Westchester, Pennsylvania to protest Martin Luther King 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:30.640 Junior Day in September of nineteen ninety one, Barry held 0:14:30.640 --> 0:14:35.000 a march in his own hometown of Carmichaels, Pennsylvania. The 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:37.560 town fought tooth and nailed to prevent it, but he 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:39.760 was determined to put on a show and even tried 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.080 to rope the ACLU into forcing the town to give 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:46.520 him a permit. Ultimately, the tiny town resigned themselves to 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:49.400 this clan invasion, and they didn't make Berry take them 0:14:49.400 --> 0:14:53.200 to court. The town closed down every shop and restaurant 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:55.880 that day out of protest, and residents lined the streets 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:58.240 to watch a few dozen men walk about half a 0:14:58.280 --> 0:15:01.640 mile with Barry leading them a chance of what do 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:10.200 we want white power? When do we want it now? Scoofy. 0:15:10.480 --> 0:15:12.560 The Sener Daily Times ran a story the next day 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:17.080 with the headline forty Clan members stage march in depressed town. 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:22.760 Even after reading the article, it's not actually clear whether 0:15:22.760 --> 0:15:27.720 the paper meant the town was depressed like economically. It 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.000 kind of just sounds like the town was just depressed 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:34.720 at having to look at the clan. Every resident quoted 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.080 in the paper sounded very unimpressed. When man told the paper, 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:43.520 I think they are a joke, and added Hitler tried 0:15:43.560 --> 0:15:47.800 this once and it didn't work, did it. Barry told 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.880 the paper that his marches weren't a racial thing, but 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:54.560 that it was about bringing white people together to fight 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.360 for their civil rights and against what he called the 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.960 deterioration of our race. He just wanted to raise awareness 0:16:01.960 --> 0:16:05.080 about important issues, like how the banking system is controlled 0:16:05.080 --> 0:16:08.040 by a Jewish conspiracy, and how the government is giving 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:11.920 away white men's rights to black people and Asians. I 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:15.880 don't know what that means, giving them away, like there's 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:19.560 only a set number of them. Two months later, in 0:16:19.600 --> 0:16:23.360 November of nineteen ninety one, Very Black was elected to 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:29.000 the office of constable in Johnstown, Pennsylvania's twenty first ward. 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.160 The office of constable is kind of a holdover from 0:16:32.160 --> 0:16:36.360 the olden days. It's kind of a cop, but not really. 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:40.840 Their function varies from state to state, with powers ranging 0:16:40.880 --> 0:16:46.120 from largely ceremonial to full policing authority. In Rhode Island, 0:16:46.160 --> 0:16:50.160 constables aren't allowed to carry guns. In Vermont, one of 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:53.880 the main roles of the constable is the destruction of 0:16:54.040 --> 0:16:58.760 dangerous dogs. So yes, there are guys in Vermont running 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:03.000 for the office of dog murderer and in Pennsylvania. The 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.679 office has undergone some reform in the last few decades, 0:17:05.720 --> 0:17:09.120 but in the nineties the constable's duties were mainly prisoner 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:14.080 transportation and process service. But it's an elected office, and 0:17:14.119 --> 0:17:16.359 the office he won was for constable in a single 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:18.639 ward of a borough of a county, and he was 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:22.119 able to secure a victory without even really running. He 0:17:22.160 --> 0:17:24.840 won with just a few dozen write in votes because 0:17:25.680 --> 0:17:29.800 no one was running. I looked up some recent voter 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:34.119 turnout stats for Cambria County, Pennsylvania, and Johnstown's twenty first 0:17:34.160 --> 0:17:37.359 ward had four hundred and four registered voters in twenty 0:17:37.400 --> 0:17:40.000 twenty three, and only one hundred and seven of them 0:17:40.080 --> 0:17:43.280 voted in the November twenty twenty three election. So it's 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:45.960 not hard to imagine someone mounting a successful write in 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:50.639 campaign by buying a few rounds at the bar. But 0:17:50.680 --> 0:17:53.600 it wasn't meant to be. There's nothing I can find 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:56.680 in any local news from that time that indicates there 0:17:56.720 --> 0:18:01.040 was any kind of specific issue. Constable of the twenty 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:03.400 first ward of the Borough of a County probably doesn't 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:07.000 have enough to do to really do much damage, But 0:18:07.080 --> 0:18:09.640 a few months in to Barry's six year term as Constable. 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:15.040 Cambria County District Attorney Timothy Creeney noticed that they had 0:18:15.040 --> 0:18:19.240 a clansman serving papers for the court. How much he 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:21.960 could really do about that, though it's not against the 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:25.600 rules to be in the clan, but Barry did have 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:29.119 a pretty long rap sheet. He'd been arrested for burglary, 0:18:29.240 --> 0:18:32.560 he'd escaped from jail twice, and he had a conviction 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:37.080 for illegal possession of a firearm. So Creaney filed a 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.719 petition to have Barry removed from office on the grounds 0:18:39.760 --> 0:18:42.840 that Pennsylvania doesn't allow people convicted of what are called 0:18:43.359 --> 0:18:48.919 infamous crimes to hold positions of public trust. The judge agreed, 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:51.439 and Barry was ordered by the court to cease and 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.119 desist his duties of constable in April of nineteen ninety two, 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:59.439 just a few months after taking office. When he filed 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.120 his appeal a month later, he walked the papers into 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:05.960 the courthouse himself, dressed in a white robe, a pointy 0:19:05.960 --> 0:19:10.200 white cap, a green cape, and the kind of sunglasses 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.720 my grandmother wore when I was a kid. A dozen 0:19:13.800 --> 0:19:16.600 robed klansmen waited for him outside the courthouse, and he 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:19.080 entered the court room with his personal bodyguard, a man 0:19:19.119 --> 0:19:22.919 in fatigues, and a black beret. He was no longer 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:26.440 just a legal or a Grand Titan. Barry was calling 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:31.800 himself the Grand Dragon. Now. Over the next few months, 0:19:31.880 --> 0:19:35.400 Barry staged several protests of what he called this violation 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.000 of his civil rights, and he appealed it all the 0:19:38.000 --> 0:19:42.120 way to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. In October of nineteen 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:45.280 ninety four. That court upheld the decision. They agreed that 0:19:45.359 --> 0:19:48.600 his criminal history made him ineligible for the office of constable. 0:19:49.840 --> 0:19:52.560 That same month, several local papers quoted Barry on his 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:55.040 plans to hold a clan rally in opposition to a 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:59.119 Halloween parade. He didn't give the quotes to the paper himself, 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:04.120 but they were his words and in his voice. See, 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:08.160 in the pre internet days, you couldn't have a website, right, 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:10.919 so groups like the Klan would distribute flyers with a 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:14.480 phone number on them, and nobody answers that phone when 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:17.280 you call, but you get a pre recorded message with 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:22.000 information about becoming a member, upcoming events, announcements, or just 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:25.840 racist propaganda. And the Dial of Clan hotline that month 0:20:25.880 --> 0:20:28.760 offered a recorded statement from Barry Black stating that for 0:20:28.800 --> 0:20:31.880 security reasons. The time and exact location will be announced 0:20:31.920 --> 0:20:36.520 with twelve hours notice, saying we have gone to modern technology, 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:40.520 we use fax machines, etc. But that there would be 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.680 an event that month in protest of a York Pennsylvania 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:48.360 area Halloween celebration because as a Christian organization, the Klan 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:53.959 felt that Halloween was Satanic. Just imagine for a second 0:20:54.160 --> 0:20:57.440 it's nineteen ninety four and you get a fax from 0:20:57.480 --> 0:21:00.439 your local clig Rap that the Nighthawks or needed at 0:21:00.480 --> 0:21:04.640 the satanic Halloween parade to enforce white Christian morals. I mean, 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:10.639 it's baffling, baffling. Klig Grap is the title for the 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:15.520 clan secretary, and the Nighthawks are the security cards. So 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.080 I guess the klik Grap is going to fax the Nighthawks. 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:23.199 A few days later, after the local paper ran a 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:26.879 story about a planned counter demonstration, Barry told the paper 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:30.240 that he had no such plans and he never said 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:33.119 anything like that. He was not planning to protest the 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:36.480 Halloween parade. He said that was just a rumor started 0:21:36.480 --> 0:21:39.959 by fellow clansman Roy Frankhauser, the leader of a splinter 0:21:40.040 --> 0:21:43.560 group called the White Unity Party. Barry explained to the 0:21:43.600 --> 0:21:46.800 reporter that if Frankhauser wanted the White Unity Party to 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.920 be allowed to join Barry's new clan organization, the Keystone 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.760 Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, then Frankhauser would need 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:55.480 to accept that he didn't have Barry's permission to be 0:21:55.560 --> 0:21:59.160 doing things like holding a press conference about Halloween parades 0:22:00.480 --> 0:22:04.479 and Roy Frankhauser is, I think, another candidate for his 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:09.080 own episode. He'd been acquitted earlier that year for stabbing 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:11.200 a man with a pocket knife at a clan conference, 0:22:11.280 --> 0:22:14.280 and at one point claimed to be a government informant, 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:17.679 although agents from the FBI and the ATF denied that 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:21.320 on various occasions, sometimes under oath, but I'm not sold. 0:22:22.200 --> 0:22:24.919 He was convicted of obstruction of justice while working for 0:22:25.040 --> 0:22:28.640 Lyndon LaRouche in the nineteen eighties, got convicted of obstruction 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.120 again in a case involving desecration of synagogues in Massachusetts 0:22:32.160 --> 0:22:35.800 in the nineties, and in twenty twenty one, someone made 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:38.800 an uncited edit to his Wikipedia page claiming that his 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:44.680 hometown of Reading, Pennsylvania, celebrated his death by holding a parade. 0:22:44.920 --> 0:22:48.199 I'll have to dig around on that. I hope it's true, 0:22:48.320 --> 0:22:51.200 but I have a feeling it's not. But in the 0:22:51.280 --> 0:22:55.240 nineties Roy Frank Kauser was beefing with Barry And it's 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:57.879 hard to say with any kind of certainty, but I 0:22:57.920 --> 0:22:59.760 wonder if it was frank Kauser who met with the 0:22:59.880 --> 0:23:03.960 f in nineteen ninety four. Barry's FBI file has a 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:07.880 few heavily redacted pages about an aspiring clan informant who 0:23:07.920 --> 0:23:10.160 reported that he was present at a clan meeting when 0:23:10.200 --> 0:23:12.960 Barry Black. Since the Klan had a plan to deal 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:18.000 harshly with traitors, the informant told the FBI that Barry 0:23:18.000 --> 0:23:22.399 Black had automatic weapons in hand. Grades and to their credit, 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:25.160 the FBI seems to have taken the tip pretty seriously, 0:23:25.680 --> 0:23:27.639 and in the summer of nineteen ninety four, they opened 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:32.320 a domestic terrorism investigation into Barry Black. After only a week, 0:23:32.359 --> 0:23:36.200 though the Pittsburgh Field Office downgraded and then ultimately closed 0:23:36.200 --> 0:23:41.760 the investigation, citing the tipster's quote inability to factually corroborate 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:59.240 any of his allegations to make them believable. So Barry 0:23:59.320 --> 0:24:01.720 is keeping pretty busy through the nineties with his new 0:24:01.760 --> 0:24:05.520 clan group. He's got barades to lead and picnics to 0:24:05.560 --> 0:24:08.840 attend and he's holding regular cross burnings, and by the 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:11.840 late nineties, these cross burnings are happening across the street 0:24:12.200 --> 0:24:16.639 from the Casanova Lounge, which was Somerset County, Pennsylvania's only 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:21.399 gay bar. In its brief four years in operation, the 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:25.040 bar was the site of relentless protests from neighbors, a 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:29.720 self proclaimed Anabaptist bishop and the clan, as well as 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:35.439 a target for shotgun blasts and Molotov cocktails. Patricia and 0:24:35.480 --> 0:24:38.760 Merrick Kramer, a straight couple in their fifties with grown children, 0:24:39.240 --> 0:24:41.960 bought an old tavern on Route nine eighty five in 0:24:42.040 --> 0:24:45.439 nineteen ninety five. They ran at as a restaurant for 0:24:45.480 --> 0:24:48.280 two years before deciding in January of nineteen ninety seven 0:24:48.840 --> 0:24:52.480 to start catering to gay clientele. It was the only 0:24:52.480 --> 0:24:59.720 such establishment for Miles and Miles. Patricia Pat to her friends, 0:25:00.119 --> 0:25:03.280 and I'd like to be Pat's friend said. They had 0:25:03.280 --> 0:25:05.680 customers drive in from as far as Maryland and West 0:25:05.760 --> 0:25:08.960 Virginia for their tea dances, a kind of gay singles 0:25:08.960 --> 0:25:11.280 event whose name is a legacy of an era when 0:25:11.280 --> 0:25:15.920