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That Christmas that the KKK burned a cross at Chimborazo Park
History Replays Today‘s #OTDinRVA for yesterday was kind of shocking:
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I went looking onto the online newspaper archives to see if I could find out more, but could’t find anything about it. I did stumble across another cross burning story equally as surprising to me:
On Christmas night, 1966, members of the KKK burned crosses in (old) Fulton and in Chimborazo Park. Carlisle Massey Slater, John Wiley Kennedy, Harvie Lee Hicks, Claude Lee Johnson, Charles R. Schuyler were arrested in April 1967 and charged with the crimes.
Slater seems to have been the main instigator. The arrests followed a raid on his garage where police found “shotguns, pistols, back powder, dynamite fuse wire, four crosses, lumber, and burlap.” He was also charged with damaging the building of the Richmond Afro American newspaper.
The all-white jury at Slater’s first trial deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared after 3 1/2 hours. His second jury also featured an all-white jury after the 6 potential black jurors (of 20) were stricken from the pool. I can’t find anywhere the outcome of his 2nd trial… Anyone out there have a better resource?
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Holy sh*t! Can you imagine??
Sadly, I can imagine.
So glad it’s 2016 and we don’t see this going on in Churchill.
It is hard to believe that racism still exists in the 21st century. Segregation was still practiced in the 1960s and the “white flight” from Church Hill was still fresh by the time of this incident.
BTW… @3 Michael Brap… our area is named Church Hill (two words) like a Church on a Hill (St. John’s) and not like Winston Churchill. 🙂
Great article. Im African American, and I hope that we’re not naive to think that the KKK doesn’t exist still in central VA. I currently live in churchhill, but I was raised in the Highland Springs area, which sits on the border of Richmond. Highland Springs is in eastern henrico, where white Oak mall resides, and where Joe Morrissey practices law.The small town of Highland springs was founded by Confederate soldiers after the end of the civil war;after the war, soldiers took their families there to reside. Well, growing up there in the 80’s and early 90’s, it was normal to see families with confederate flags posted in their driveways, and mailboxes. Well, the point I’m trying to make is a few years ago, I met a white guy who worked with me-he’s a nice guy. He told me that he was raised in Highland Springs, just like me, and we used to talk about how Highland Springs changed and that it’s not the racist town that it once was. But he also told me that Klan meetings are still being held in this town-in secret of course. Im not going to mention his name, but he told me that he has family members and friends who’re in the KKK in Richmond VA. This is a true story. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s 2016,and KKK members can’t hang people and burn crosses in neighborhoods like they used to, but I know for a fact that they still operate and that their very active in central VA. Maybe not in churchill, but in small towns similar to Highland Springs that sit on the outskirts of RVA.
Scraps of newspaper attest to strange things that went on in years past. These things should be remembered for what they were, but they should not frighten people in the present day.
The Klan today is six guys in a garage in Alabama. Two of them are FBI agents.
In all seriousness though, somebody mentioned the Klan was “very active in Central VA?” Is there a source for this? What is “very active?” Nobody has been lynched, no crosses have been burned along Route 1, and nobody’s house has been torched. Maybe there are some fools parading around in the woods with Nazi paraphernalia, but they don’t seem to be making their presence known. Likewise there are Communist and anarchist “movements” around VCU, but they are also small and only seem to attract the feeble-minded.
If you ask a leftwing person they seem to think that the Klan is behind everything. If you ask a rightwing person, it’s the Black Panthers. Both small organizations serve as big bogeymen for a “them and us” narrative.
#6 No I don’t have a source in regards to articles, or internet post, so,no, I can’t prove it through forensics.These people don’t leave traces of evidence that link them to this group; they operate in secret.I’m going from word of mouth,and from talking to someone who grew up in the same area that I grew up in recently.Read my post in #5. These aren’t VCU students, these are grown men who hold on to southern traditions.As I stated, I grew up in an area where this was the norm. If you know anyone who used to live in Highland Springs in the 70’s,80’s, or early 90’s, please ask them. And if their honest about it, they’ll verify my comments. Highland Springs is a black neighborhood now, and most of those families left, and went to move to different parts of central VA, and that’s how I met the man who grew up with me in this neighborhood.Before I moved back in to Richmond, I lived in Bluefleild W. VA for a almost a year. If you haven’t been to the Western part of VA, please go, because you’ll see a different breed of “southerners.Vist towns such as Bland,and Wythveille VA. This comment isn’t meant to scare anyone, is meant to talk about a side of reality that actually exists in central VA and western VA.
This NBC12 clip and article may help some:
http://www.nbc12.com/story/31846257/kkk-leader-disavows-violent-past-declares-trump-best-for-president
On a similar note, I know that neighboring Colonial Heights is still very prejudice and at one time was called “Colonial Whites”. For a fact, in the 1960s into the 1970s, if blacks did not leave town before sundown, they were arrested.
Also, I once lived in the small community outside of Mobile, Alabama called Chickasaw, which is (or was) 100% white. You could walk the borders of this 4.5 square mile town in 10 minutes while passing 13 different churches. The way the city ordinances are written, dictates that only founders and their descendants can live there, and enforce it… selectively. It is a KKK town and the only reason I was able to live there as a gay person is because I was working on a history project for the community. This was around 1978-1979. The town also had a shipyard that built WWII Liberty ships, and was importing slaves to work it from the islands so, even slavery still existed in the 1940s. An odd fact is that this clannish town borders with Prichard, which was 80% black at that time.
@Ano Ali & Arthur McBride
The KKK placed flyers in area neighborhoods just two years ago.
http://www.richmond.com/local/chesterfield/article_ed60e60e-78ec-55f4-a6ef-0d579292069f.html
and in Colonial Heights
http://www.nbc12.com/story/16308329/kkk
And Mechanicsville in 2015
http://wtvr.com/2015/01/18/kkk-fliers-litter-mechanicsville-neighborhood/
@6- Not sure about KKK in Central Virginia, but that sort of thing was definitely a problem in SW Virginia- might want to check out “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” by Loewen. It’s an interesting read.