WEBVTT - The Klansman's Twin: Dennis Mahon, Pt. 3 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:11.920 Cool Zone Media, Hello, and happy New Year, everybody. I 0:00:11.920 --> 0:00:14.240 think twenty twenty five is going to be a banner 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:17.119 year for weird little guys, and I don't mean the 0:00:17.160 --> 0:00:22.360 show Unfortunately. They're just making newer, weirder guys all the 0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:26.040 time lately, and I can hardly keep up. And as 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:30.080 time marches on, I'm stuck in the past, connecting the 0:00:30.120 --> 0:00:33.120 dots on decades old stories of the weird little guys 0:00:33.120 --> 0:00:37.440 who came before the right wing terrorists of today. I 0:00:37.440 --> 0:00:41.520 hope you're having a peaceful and cheerful holiday season, whatever 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:45.159 that looks like for you. I had every intention of 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.239 using that week of relative downtime to get caught up, 0:00:48.560 --> 0:00:52.800 maybe even get ahead. It probably won't surprise you to 0:00:52.840 --> 0:00:57.560 hear that absolutely did not happen. Something about the twinkle 0:00:57.600 --> 0:01:01.760 of Christmas lights pulled me away from my maniacal sprawling 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:05.600 notes about Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories. I can't explain it, 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.319 And as I was chipping away at the next chapter 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.720 of Dennis Mayhon's life, I realized there was a strange 0:01:12.720 --> 0:01:15.080 little side story that I was going to have to cut. 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:19.440 It just didn't fit in the narrative flow, and it 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:22.200 wasn't one hundred percent relevant to the story arc I 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:26.320 was plotting out, so I was prepared to scrap it. 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:28.520 It certainly wouldn't be the first time, and I know 0:01:28.640 --> 0:01:32.160 it won't be the last. I love a little side story, 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:34.440 but I'm starting to get the feel for the kinds 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.319 of side stories that will take us off course for 0:01:37.400 --> 0:01:40.360 an interesting few minutes and the ones that are going 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:43.440 to derail the whole episode. And this was the latter. 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.760 But then I remembered this is my show. I'm the 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:53.040 captain of this ship, and for me, getting to the 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.680 point has never been the point. We're on a journey here, 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:00.520 and I never really know where I'm taking making us 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:04.200 until I get there. We'll get back to Dennis Mahon 0:02:04.240 --> 0:02:06.520 in Eloheim City and the bomb he mailed to a 0:02:06.560 --> 0:02:10.480 public library in Arizona for the next episode, I promise. 0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:14.720 But this week we're going on a side quest because 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:17.480 I just couldn't bear to cut the story of one 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:20.360 of my favorite kinds of things to find in a 0:02:20.360 --> 0:02:26.040 weird little guy's past, a lawsuit about anti white discrimination. 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.480 So if you'll indulge me, here's the story of our 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:35.239 convicted bomber's twin brother getting fired because he wouldn't stop 0:02:35.240 --> 0:02:37.880 wearing the Nazi T shirt he bought it a gun show. 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:49.160 I'm Molly Conker and this is weird, Little guys. The 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:05.960 last few episodes have been about Dennis May. We've talked 0:03:05.960 --> 0:03:08.760 about the first few decades of his life. He was 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.920 born in a small community in northern Illinois nineteen fifty. 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:14.640 He served in the army after high school and trained 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:18.280 as an aircraft mechanic. In the late seventies, he joined 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:20.640 the Ku Klux Klan and then the neo Nazi group 0:03:20.720 --> 0:03:24.880 National Alliance. In interviews with journalists over the years, he's 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.239 often claimed his belief in the importance of racial separatism 0:03:28.680 --> 0:03:31.600 arose from his experience in the Florida National Guard, when 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.840 his unit was deployed in May of nineteen eighty to 0:03:33.880 --> 0:03:37.600 assist in transporting Cuban refugees during the Mariial boat lift crisis. 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.920 I don't doubt that he was there, or that having 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:44.760 to interact with asylum seekers deepened his hatred of people 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.960 who aren't white, but the record does seem to indicate 0:03:48.000 --> 0:03:52.320 that he'd already joined the clan before the first boat 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:57.520 arrived in Miami that month. From there, Dennis disappeared for 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:03.360 a few years. It claims to have been underground carrying 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:08.200 out clan bombings in Florida, Michigan, and Oklahoma, targeting synagogues, 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.480 government office buildings, and abortion clinics. He re emerged in 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:14.880 Kansas City in nineteen eighty seven and as a regional 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:19.279 organizer for the clan. I won't retread the entirety of 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.240 those last two episodes, but we've been following Dennis all 0:04:23.279 --> 0:04:27.800 over the country the world, even from Kansas City to Canada, 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:31.920 from Tulsa to Berlin. He won a lawsuit over his 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.760 right to broadcast to race his public access TV show. 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.719 He lost a lawsuit to Fred Rogers, he got banned 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.080 from Canada. He tried to revive the clan in Germany, 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:48.320 and he absolutely loved talking to reporters. As far as 0:04:48.720 --> 0:04:52.400 mid level hate group organizers go, he's a little unusual 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:57.159 in that respect. So there's ample record of where he was, 0:04:57.440 --> 0:05:00.720 what he was up to, who his friends were, and 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.239 the narrative about himself that he wanted you to believe. 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:10.120 But all this time we've been talking about Dennis Mayhan, 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.680 and there's been someone else in the story that we 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:18.560 haven't talked much about. He's been there. He's always there, 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:24.240 but he's much quieter. He keeps his name out of things. 0:05:25.760 --> 0:05:31.080 But Dennis Mayhan's identical twin brother, Daniel Mayhan, was there 0:05:31.120 --> 0:05:36.360 all along. As I mentioned in the last episode, Daniel 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:40.560 Mayhon has never been convicted of a crime. He was 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.800 indicted alongside his brother in two thousand and nine saga 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.279 will cover next week, but unlike his brother, who is 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:51.440 serving a forty year sentence in terre hate, Daniel wasn't convicted. 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.039 And if you ask Daniel, he'd tell you that he 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:57.440 was never a member of any of those groups his 0:05:57.520 --> 0:06:01.240 brother was mixed up in. I mean I didn't ask him. 0:06:01.360 --> 0:06:03.560 I guess I could have tried to reach him for comment, 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:06.200 but I think he'd tell me the same thing. He 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.400 told an attorney for American Airlines during a deposition in 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.400 two thousand and three that he was never what he 0:06:12.480 --> 0:06:15.839 called a card carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:20.839 or White Arian Resistance or National Alliance. So, just for 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.280 the record here at the top, I'll make no allegations 0:06:24.520 --> 0:06:27.159 that haven't been made in sworn statements by agents of 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:31.960 the FBI or the ATF. Daniel Mahon isn't guilty of 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.120 any crimes. A matching set of genes doesn't necessarily mean 0:06:36.160 --> 0:06:39.680 you carry a matching set of beliefs. But I read 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.200 a few hundred pages of his own sworn testimony that 0:06:43.360 --> 0:06:47.080 left me with the impression that these identical twins share 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:51.279 a little bit more than their DNA. With Denis occupying 0:06:51.279 --> 0:06:55.440 the spotlight, the record on Daniel is actually pretty sparse. 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:58.760 A lot of what I can say about him with 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.760 any degree of certainty came out of his own mouth 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.040 in this deposition he sat for on October twenty ninth, 0:07:05.120 --> 0:07:08.560 two thousand and three. He was three years into a 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.560 lawsuit against his former employer, American Airlines over his termination 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:17.080 in May of nineteen ninety nine. For nine hours, he 0:07:17.160 --> 0:07:21.320 answered questions about his involvement in the company's Caucasian employee 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:25.760 resource group. But even a side story has to start 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:29.600 before the beginning. So before we get to the strange 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.840 revelations in that conference room in Tulsa, I want to 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.720 set the scene a little bit with some history about 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:40.400 the concept of employee resource groups. If you've ever worked 0:07:40.400 --> 0:07:44.640 for almost any big corporation these days, you've probably seen 0:07:44.640 --> 0:07:46.920 a flyer in the break room for something like this, 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:54.440 they might be called employee resource groups ergs, employee affinity groups, 0:07:54.720 --> 0:07:59.560 business network groups, or some other mishmash of corporate buzzwords 0:07:59.600 --> 0:08:05.920 about mentorship and networking. Ergs are, according to a continuing 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:10.760 education module for corporate lawyers that I found, quote, organize 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:15.720 based on social identity, shared characteristics, or life experience. Affinity 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.120 groups are generally initiated by employees and often involve or 0:08:19.160 --> 0:08:23.960 implicate protected classes such as sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:29.560 national origin, disability, and veteran status. Today's employee resource groups 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:34.040 have expanded to include other kinds of shared interests, but 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.800 at their core, they allow employees who belong to a 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.920 particular group to network, support and mentor one another, and 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.560 advocate for themselves within the company. The gules at McKinsey 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:48.439 say that they can be a valuable tool to recruit 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:52.359 and retain a diverse workforce by fostering a sense of inclusion, 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:56.080 and they can provide a ready pool of diverse spaces 0:08:56.320 --> 0:09:00.600 to send to panels and recruitment events. I found one 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:04.040 press release praising the efforts of the Hispanic Employee Resource 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:08.160 Group at JP morgan Chase. The group's mentorship program led 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.559 to a measurable increase in Hispanic women in management positions. 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:16.120 And for the most part, these groups sound like something 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:18.800 cooked up by an HR department to put in a 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:25.000 shareholder meeting slide show. But there's a history here. The 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:28.760 idea of people who share a particular life experience getting 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:32.600 together to talk about it is obviously not new. That's 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.560 not something anyone came up with. You don't have to 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.080 invent that. But the employee resource group as it exists 0:09:40.080 --> 0:09:44.719 in corporate America today originated with the National Black Employee 0:09:44.720 --> 0:09:50.440 Caucus at Xerox in nineteen seventy. All of the human 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:54.640 resources blurbs and business press puff pieces about employee resource 0:09:54.679 --> 0:09:58.600 groups kind of just leave the story there they started 0:09:58.600 --> 0:10:03.200 at Xerox nineteen teen seventy. But there's always more to 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:07.320 a story than that, And apparently Xerox was up to 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:12.480 some pretty radical diversity, equity and inclusion corporate practice decades 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:17.040 before anyone ever said that phrase out loud. In nineteen 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:21.080 sixty six, the first student at Xerox's International Fellowship program 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.560 was a Fulbright scholar from Ethiopia who happened to be 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.400 the younger brother of a member of highly Selassie's Cabinet. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.640 In nineteen sixty eight, the company spent a million dollars 0:10:31.800 --> 0:10:36.680 to sponsor a television series called of Black America. The 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.200 seven part documentary on black history from slavery through the 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.520 still ongoing riots that followed the assassination of doctor Martin 0:10:43.600 --> 0:10:47.880 Luther King Junior, aired in prime time, and it earned 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.920 Xerox threatening letters from the ku Klux Klan and hysterical 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.680 letters to the editor in papers across the country from 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.160 small business owners swearing they're going to throw out their 0:10:57.160 --> 0:11:01.360 copy machines. An op ed in The London Evening Standard 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:06.360 described the program as quote unmistakably hostile to the establishment. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:11.600 That same year, nineteen sixty eight, Xerox partnered with a 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:17.520 Rochester based civil rights group called FIGHT, which stands for Freedom, Integration, God, 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:22.960 Honor Today. The New York Times called Fight quote a 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:28.160 militant Negro organization and made a pointed note that professional 0:11:28.280 --> 0:11:31.720 radical Saul Alinsky had had a hand in it, and 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:34.480 that the press conference announcing this new venture was held 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.280 in a room decorated with posters of h Rap Brown, 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:43.199 Stokely Carmichael, and Shay Guevara. But Xerox's partnership with Fight 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:48.600 created the first black run community development corporation in the 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:54.160 United States. Xerox spent millions on manufacturing equipment and job 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:58.680 training in the creation of these black owned manufacturing companies 0:11:59.320 --> 0:12:03.960 that employed hundreds of black employees in Rochester. A manager 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:07.080 at Xerox who'd worked on the plan said, my only 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:11.800 question is why didn't we do it sooner? The first 0:12:11.840 --> 0:12:16.160 manufacturing plant funded by Xerox through the Fight Partnership opened 0:12:16.160 --> 0:12:19.040 at what used to be a boarded up factory, just 0:12:19.080 --> 0:12:21.560 a few blocks away from the center of the violence 0:12:21.960 --> 0:12:26.079 that had inspired Xerox president Joseph Wilson to pour millions 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:31.320 of dollars into diversifying his workforce the nineteen sixty four 0:12:31.480 --> 0:12:36.560 Rochester riots. I know we're a little far afield here. 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.200 Daniel Mahon was fourteen years old and living in Davis Junction, Illinois, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:45.200 in the summer of nineteen sixty four. But sometimes the 0:12:45.200 --> 0:12:50.920 way history repeats and rhymes and echoes is just irresistible 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.160 to me. Because there is another race riot later in 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.480 this story, and it seems irresponsible not to draw the 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:02.920 lines that connect these things. On Friday, July twenty fourth, 0:13:03.080 --> 0:13:07.440 nineteen sixty four, in Rochester, New York, the Northeast Mothers 0:13:07.440 --> 0:13:10.120 Association had a permit to hold a block party in 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:13.679 Rochester Seventh Ward. They were raising money to build a 0:13:13.679 --> 0:13:18.480 playground in the neighborhood. Around two hundred people attended the 0:13:18.520 --> 0:13:21.720 event in the early evening, but as the night wore 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.200 on and the children went to bed, the streets were 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:26.599 still full of people having a good time. On a 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:31.720 hot summer night, around eleven p m. Two Rochester police 0:13:31.720 --> 0:13:35.199 officers confronted a man they said was behaving in an 0:13:35.280 --> 0:13:39.920 unruly manner. They moved to arrest twenty year old Randy Manigal. 0:13:41.200 --> 0:13:44.240 Bystanders saw the officers using excessive force on a young 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:48.079 black man, and some of them tried to intervene. Within 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.200 half an hour, the Rochester Police Department had set dogs 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.760 on the neighbors, something they'd promised they wouldn't do again 0:13:54.880 --> 0:14:00.520 after prior incidents involving police dogs mauling black residents. By 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:04.160 one a m. The fire hoses were out, the crowd 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:07.120 had swelled to hundreds, and officers were firing tear gas 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:12.960 canisters indiscriminately. When the sun Rose State Police arrived to 0:14:13.000 --> 0:14:17.600 a crowd that had grown to the thousands. The violence 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.360 continued for a full forty eight hours, but by the 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.760 time one thousand National guardsmen arrived on Sunday, it was over. 0:14:27.160 --> 0:14:30.120 The county Civil Defense director Robert Abbot was surveying the 0:14:30.120 --> 0:14:33.760 scene from a helicopter hours after the riot ended, when 0:14:33.760 --> 0:14:36.440 the pilot lost control of the aircraft and crashed into 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:39.960 a house on Clarissa Street. Two occupants of the home 0:14:40.000 --> 0:14:43.360 were burned to death. Both the pilot and Robert Abbot 0:14:43.360 --> 0:14:47.080 died of their injuries. A later report on the crash 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.800 says that alcohol played a role, and no reporting I 0:14:50.800 --> 0:14:54.160 could find from the time period named the two black 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:59.320 men who burned to death inside their own home. By 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:03.360 the time the dust settled, five people were dead, hundreds 0:15:03.360 --> 0:15:07.960 had been injured, and nearly one thousand people had been arrested. 0:15:09.640 --> 0:15:14.080 Initial reporting, as ever, blamed the unrest on outside agitators. 0:15:15.280 --> 0:15:19.160 Later analysis of those arrests, however, would show that only 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:23.960 fourteen of the people arrested lived outside of Monroe County. 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.840 In the aftermath of the riot, Joseph Wilson asked a 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:33.520 manager at Xerox how many black employees he had. The 0:15:33.560 --> 0:15:38.880 answer was six. Determined to change that, he approached local 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.320 civil rights leader Reverend Franklin Florence to work out a plan. 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.200 One of the barriers the company had to hiring more 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:50.480 black employees was a systemic one. An unemployed black man 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:53.400 in nineteen sixty five was less likely than his white 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.800 counterpart to have a high school diploma. The program they 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:02.200 developed was called Operation Step Up. Black men in ages 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:05.560 eighteen to twenty five without high school diplomas would work 0:16:05.600 --> 0:16:08.000 half a day on the factory floor and spend half 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.880 a day in a classroom with teachers hired by Xerox 0:16:11.440 --> 0:16:14.800 to prepare them for a high school equivalency test. By 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:18.000 nineteen sixty six, Xerox was bringing classes of twenty five 0:16:18.000 --> 0:16:21.480 men at a time through the program. After finishing their 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:25.760 high school courses, the men became full time union factory employees. 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:30.720 Wilson worked closely with Reverend Florence to bridge cultural gaps. 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:36.400 Assembly line foremen received additional training on race relations, clergy 0:16:36.440 --> 0:16:40.760 were hired to assist in classroom management and guidance, and 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.760 hundreds of young men got high school diplomas and good 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:49.680 union jobs. When I first read that Wilson started the 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:53.600 Black Employee Resource Group in nineteen seventy in response to 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:57.600 those riots in nineteen sixty four. I didn't understand why 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:01.240 there were six years in between the inciting incident and 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:05.960 the actual formation of the group, But this is why 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:10.879 there weren't any black employees in nineteen sixty four. He 0:17:11.000 --> 0:17:14.399 spent that time investing in the community and building a 0:17:14.440 --> 0:17:19.640 more diverse workforce. Today's HR guidance talks about how ergs 0:17:19.720 --> 0:17:24.240 can attract a diverse workforce, but the very first one 0:17:24.400 --> 0:17:28.080 only existed at all because work was done to address 0:17:28.119 --> 0:17:33.560 the systemic problems facing those employees. The formation of the 0:17:33.640 --> 0:17:37.480 National Black Employee Caucus in nineteen seventy is the only 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.640 part of this work that seems to get remembered in 0:17:40.760 --> 0:17:46.120 human resources industry newsletters about workplace diversity. I'm not sure 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.200 why Corporate America isn't interested in celebrating his financial support 0:17:50.200 --> 0:17:53.600 of black radicals. But that's the story of how we 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:58.439 got employee resource groups, which brings us back to Daniel 0:17:58.440 --> 0:18:04.800 Mayhuntsman's brother making flyers for a Caucasian Employee Resource Group 0:18:05.400 --> 0:18:11.479 at the American Airlines Diversity Fair nineteen ninety nine. Daniel 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.560 Mahon did not start the Caucasian Employee Resource Group, but 0:18:15.680 --> 0:18:19.399 the American Airlines Maintenance and Engineering facility in Tulsa, Oklahoma. 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:23.399 By his account, he wasn't even interested in being a 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:25.679 member and didn't attend a meeting of the group at 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:29.320 all in its first few months, and the fact of 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:34.040 the group's existence wasn't even the issue here. Nowhere in 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.920 the procedural history of the lawsuit that follows does anyone 0:18:38.160 --> 0:18:41.440 even say that there should not have been an affinity 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:46.679 group for white people. In fact, the Diversity Advisory Council 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:50.080 said that they were quote saddened by the need to 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.879 suspend the group for six months over Daniel's actions, and 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:57.080 they called the group a valuable member of the Diversity 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:03.720 Advisory Council family. There was inexplicably no problem at all 0:19:03.760 --> 0:19:08.800 with the Caucasian Employee Resource Group until Daniel Mayhon showed 0:19:08.880 --> 0:19:11.840 up in a Turner Diaries T shirt at a meeting 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:15.400 to discuss the racist pamphlets he made for the diversity fair. 0:19:16.840 --> 0:19:20.840 Everyone agrees that Daniel Mayhon wasn't fired just because he 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:24.600 was a member of the white employee group, but Daniel 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:28.320 went to court claiming that he was fired just for 0:19:28.520 --> 0:19:47.560 being white. On March eleventh, nineteen ninety nine, there was 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:51.080 a diversity fair at the American Airlines maintenance and engineering 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:55.280 base in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The company had, as a part 0:19:55.280 --> 0:19:58.840 of their corporate diversity program, encouraged the formation of a 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:03.000 variety of employee recas groups. There was an African American ERG, 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:07.200 an Asian Culture Association, one for women in aviation, a 0:20:07.280 --> 0:20:11.479 Jewish ERG and Employees with Disabilities ERG, a Gay, Lesbian, 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:17.200 Bisexual and Transgender ERG, Christian, Muslim, Latin, Indian, Native American 0:20:17.720 --> 0:20:20.720 one for employees over forty one for people interested in 0:20:20.760 --> 0:20:25.159 improving their work life balance, and of course there was 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:30.080 the Caucasian Employee Resource Group. There may have been others 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:32.560 later on, but these are the ones that were listed 0:20:32.640 --> 0:20:35.679 in a company pamphlet about the program that was written 0:20:35.680 --> 0:20:40.240 in nineteen ninety nine, and just as an aside, I 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:42.600 was kind of struck by the inclusion of the T 0:20:43.320 --> 0:20:48.240 in the LGBT group in nineteen ninety nine. You forget 0:20:48.280 --> 0:20:51.520 sometimes that it wasn't always the lightning rod that it 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:55.080 is today. I guess for a long time, everybody just 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.240 hated all queer people the same. It's hard to feel 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:02.080 like it's progress to get assimilation for some at the 0:21:02.119 --> 0:21:07.800 cost of heightened demonization of part of our community. But nevertheless, 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:11.480 shout out to the trans Aircraft Mechanics in Oklahoma in 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:14.840 nineteen ninety nine. I know you were going through it. 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:20.080 The Diversity Fair was an opportunity for every Employee Resource 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:22.439 group to set up a booth and talk to their 0:21:22.480 --> 0:21:26.320 fellow employees about the group and hand out flyers and network. 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:29.479 It's a nice idea. You don't have to be a 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:31.760 member of a particular group to show an interest in 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:35.120 the work being done by their ERG, and this kind 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:37.880 of thing might provide an employee with a chance to 0:21:37.920 --> 0:21:42.400 find out about something like the Disability erg's advocacy around 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:47.480 company policies that impact disabled customers. To be honest, I 0:21:47.480 --> 0:21:49.640 imagine you probably didn't have to clock out to take 0:21:49.680 --> 0:21:52.840 an hour to walk around the Diversity Fair. So even 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:55.160 if you got nothing out of it, maybe you wasted 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:59.600 a little time at work. You know, everybody wins, but 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.400 it's always ruined the fun. Dando Mahon wasn't there that day, 0:22:04.840 --> 0:22:08.679 but the pamphlets he made were Other members of the 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:14.080 Caucasian Employee Resource Group handed out a flyer celebrating aviation pioneers. 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:19.040 It's pretty amateur stuff. This was before people really had 0:22:19.080 --> 0:22:23.879 access to computers. Computers existed. Obviously, the nineties weren't the 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.760 stone ages. I personally was spending hours coloring in shapes 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:31.119 on kid picks. But we were pretty lucky to have 0:22:31.160 --> 0:22:36.600 a computer at home in the nineties, So this wasn't photoshop, right. 0:22:36.720 --> 0:22:40.880 He cut out pictures of famous aviators and glued them 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:43.520 to a piece of paper, and then he ran that 0:22:43.640 --> 0:22:48.000 sheet through a manual typewriter to type the captions onto it, 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:52.159 and then he took the resulting Frankenflyer to a Kinko's 0:22:52.520 --> 0:22:56.120 and ran copies. So it's not a high quality product 0:22:56.240 --> 0:23:00.239 even before we get to the racism, and it's got 0:23:00.280 --> 0:23:03.960 some of the historical aviators you're probably imagining. A picture 0:23:03.960 --> 0:23:09.399 of Amelia Earhart is captioned pioneer woman aviator Wilbur Wright 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:13.600 gets first powered flight. Chuck Yeger is captioned first to 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:18.639 break the sound barrier. Nothing weird here. Charles Lindbergh was 0:23:18.720 --> 0:23:22.760 a Nazi sympathizer and a virulent anti Semite, and Verner 0:23:22.840 --> 0:23:27.520 von Braun was literally a Nazi. But yeah, I guess 0:23:28.040 --> 0:23:33.159 technically personal lives aside to the extent that being a 0:23:33.160 --> 0:23:36.719 member of the SS is your personal life. They do 0:23:36.800 --> 0:23:41.680 fit the bill here as pioneers in aviation. The problem 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:45.040 with the flyers becomes apparent when you get to the back, 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:50.280 because underneath a cut and pasted picture of a cartoon airplane, 0:23:50.320 --> 0:23:55.200 it says, these famous men and women who made aviation 0:23:55.359 --> 0:23:58.119 history all have one thing in common. They are members 0:23:58.160 --> 0:24:03.200 of the white race, race of explorers, discoverers, scientists, and philosophers. 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:06.280 We are proud of the accomplishments of our noble race 0:24:06.320 --> 0:24:12.960 in the past, present, and future. Several of these heroes 0:24:13.000 --> 0:24:16.800 of aviation have their names misspelled. He's missing the H 0:24:16.920 --> 0:24:20.720 and Varner von Braun, and I swear it looks like 0:24:20.760 --> 0:24:23.680 he spelled Braun with a W instead of a U. 0:24:23.960 --> 0:24:26.840 But to be fair, that could be a photocopyr artifact. 0:24:28.080 --> 0:24:31.280 World War One fighter pilot Edward Rickenbacker is missing the 0:24:31.359 --> 0:24:35.280 last two letters of his last name. Italian aviator Francesco 0:24:35.359 --> 0:24:40.560 brack Papa is captioned as Francisco, and Francisco isn't even 0:24:40.600 --> 0:24:44.240 spelled right. And in the little racist blurb on the back, 0:24:44.880 --> 0:24:49.680 the word philosopher doesn't have an L in it. I'm 0:24:49.680 --> 0:24:52.520 not just pointing this out to clown on a working 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:56.200 class man who can't spell it's okay if you can't spell, 0:24:56.280 --> 0:24:59.040 that doesn't make you a bad person, because in the 0:24:59.040 --> 0:25:01.439 interest of fairness, I do want to say that the 0:25:01.440 --> 0:25:06.800 flyer is full of typographical errors, because he would later 0:25:06.840 --> 0:25:12.080 claim to have made another typo. He capitalized the first 0:25:12.200 --> 0:25:16.720 letters in the words white race, where they appear in 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:21.560 the middle of a sentence with otherwise standard capitalization, and 0:25:21.640 --> 0:25:26.840 this is a standard practice in white supremacist literature. During 0:25:26.840 --> 0:25:30.919 the investigation, he maintained that it had no particular meaning. 0:25:31.200 --> 0:25:36.000 He was just a bad typist. So, yes, he did 0:25:36.040 --> 0:25:38.959 spell a lot of these words wrong, but that's a 0:25:38.960 --> 0:25:43.400 combination of this admittedly poor typing and probably just plain 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:48.200 not knowing. But there aren't any other errors in capitalization, 0:25:49.600 --> 0:25:53.359 so all things considered, this looks like a style choice, 0:25:53.520 --> 0:25:58.200 not a mistake. Within hours of the pamphlets being distributed 0:25:58.240 --> 0:26:03.000 at the Diversity fair, there were complaints. Two weeks later, 0:26:03.160 --> 0:26:06.920 the Diversity Advisory Council that oversaw the resource groups made 0:26:06.960 --> 0:26:10.320 the decision to suspend the Caucasian Employee Resource Group for 0:26:10.359 --> 0:26:13.800 a period of six months. No one was really in trouble. 0:26:14.640 --> 0:26:17.280 None of the employees involved with the group were being disciplined. 0:26:18.280 --> 0:26:21.480 The group wasn't even being banned. They just needed to 0:26:21.480 --> 0:26:24.119 take a few months off to reassess their alignment with 0:26:24.200 --> 0:26:28.840 the company's policies governing such groups, including requirements that all 0:26:28.880 --> 0:26:32.560 employee resource groups support the company's policy on non discrimination 0:26:32.760 --> 0:26:36.639 and a harassment free workplace, promoting tolerance and respect for 0:26:36.680 --> 0:26:41.600 other employees, and not having any financial or organizational ties 0:26:41.640 --> 0:26:46.040 to outside groups. And Daniel's flyer seems to violate all 0:26:46.080 --> 0:26:50.679 of these rules. In the earliest meetings that management had 0:26:50.720 --> 0:26:54.920 about these flyers, it was clear that everyone knew who 0:26:55.040 --> 0:26:59.879 Daniel's brother was. To place us back in Dennis's timeline, 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:04.800 it's nineteen ninety nine. Dennis Mayon was a well known 0:27:04.880 --> 0:27:09.960 white supremacist, neo Nazi, and Ku klux Klan organizer. You 0:27:10.000 --> 0:27:13.160 didn't have to be in the know about clandestine organizations 0:27:13.200 --> 0:27:16.199 to know that it wasn't a secret. He ran for 0:27:16.359 --> 0:27:18.960 mayor of Tulsa in nineteen ninety two and again in 0:27:19.040 --> 0:27:22.520 nineteen ninety eight. In the mid nineties, he paid to 0:27:22.560 --> 0:27:25.840 have a billboard put up in Tulsa honoring Robert Matthews, 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:28.639 the leader of the Nazi bank robbery gang that murdered 0:27:28.640 --> 0:27:32.639 Alan Berg. The Nazi skinhead gang that he cultivated for 0:27:32.680 --> 0:27:35.919 white Arian resistance shot a little girl in the face 0:27:36.119 --> 0:27:39.680 in Tulsa. In the late eighties, he was banned from 0:27:39.800 --> 0:27:44.280 entering Canada, the UK, and Germany, And by this point 0:27:44.280 --> 0:27:46.920