Association of Georgia Klans
After Green's death, however, the organization foundered as it split into different factions, was hit with a tax lien and was beset by adverse publicity.
[5] In October 1945 the group conducted the first cross burning since the end of World War II atop Stone Mountain.
At the time Green told the press that cross burning had been suspended during wartime because "all factions had to unite to win the war".
[11] Green countered that his association was not organically linked to the Knights, though there was a five-man board of directors who were tasked with "keeping the charter alive" and could "reactivate" the national klan at the appropriate time.
The governor instructed Attorney General Eugene Cook to institute quo warranto proceedings against the group to revoke its charter.
[14] The quo warranto petition was presented to Judge Frank A. Hooper of Fulton County Superior Court on June 20.
The petition further stated that the Association used the same Kloran, titles, passwords, grips and signs of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. and the seven klaverns in the Atlanta area were charted by the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc.[15] While the process to revoke the charter was going on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced that they had found evidence of specific violent acts, either claimed or contemplated by AGK members.
A GBI infiltrater (Stetson Kennedy) announced that he had overheard members of the Klavalier Klub, a Klan wrecking crew[clarification needed], taking credit for the death of a black taxi driver the previous August and the flogging of another African American.
The authorities linked this to the death of taxi driver Porter Flornoy Turner in August 1945, and the kidnapping and beating of black Navy veteran Hugh Johnson, who had been given 52 lashes on Feb. 13, 1946.
In Wrightsville 300 robed klansmen paraded in the street before the Democratic primary and burned a 15 ft cross on the county courthouse lawn.
Grand Dragon Green condemned President Harry S. Truman's civil rights policies and told the crowd "whenever the Negro takes a place at the side of a white man through the force of federal bayonets, blood will flow in the streets".
[29] In Swainsboro, Mount Vernon and Jeffersonville cross burnings, threatening letters and the distribution of coffins marked "KKK" convinced black voters to stay at home.
[32][33] When a Columbian attempted to assassinate journalist Stetson Kennedy in an Atlanta courtroom in 1947, it was a fellow Klansmen, Ira Jett, who knocked the would be attacker out of the way.
