Despite the group's brief lifespan, it left its mark with a violent record, including an assault on Nat King Cole, participation in a riot in Clinton, Tennessee, and one of the few documented cases of castration by the Klan.
The new organization was based in Birmingham, while the mainstream group was headquartered in Montgomery and led by State Senator Sam Englehart.
The split apparently centered around the Birmingham group's embrace of antisemitism and exclusion of Jews from membership, while the Montgomery faction professed no other aim than the defense of segregation.
[4] On April 10, 1956 seven members of the group assaulted Nat King Cole while he was singing to a white audience at the Municipal Auditorium in Birmingham.
While a judge mulled whether or not to grant Kasper bail, Asa Carter arrived on the scene and the crowds he gathered grew to a reported 1,500.
[13][14] Nevertheless, later that month Kasper addressed a gathering of the North Alabama Citizens Council, welcoming robed Klansmen and stating "We need all the rabble-rousers we can get, We want trouble, and we want it everywhere we can get it."
Thirty-five Klansmen were initiated in a ceremony in Birmingham on Nov. 15 before a bonfire of skulls where they pledged to "fight the enemies of Jesus Christ to the bitter end and after".
[18] On 27 December 1956, during the Montgomery bus boycott, Carter announced plans to send in troops of "Minutemen" to patrol city buses to enforce segregation.
[23] Klabee Jesse Mabry, who had participated in the assault on Nat King Cole; Bart Floyd, who was the one who actually performed the castration in order to become a captain within the group; and Grover McCullough drew identical sentences.
William Miller, another recently appointed captain, and John Griffin, who stood guard outside the shack and did not know the details of what happened until after the fact, turned state's evidence and got terms of probation.