United Klans of America
[3] The organization was linked to the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls;[4] the murder of Viola Liuzzo near Selma in 1965,[5] and the lynching of teenager Michael Donald in Mobile in 1981.
[1] However, membership began to slip once the group was linked to criminal activity, and after Shelton served a one-year term in prison for contempt of the United States Congress in 1969.
[4] In the 1990s the UKA experienced a resurgence of activity of members who returned to teachings of William Joseph Simmons, who had founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1922.
[citation needed] The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama had a strong congregation and was a center of activism for many people involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the city, including members of the SCLC who came to help with organizing.
On a Sunday in September 1963, a bomb exploded in the church during services, killing four young girls: 11-year-old Denise McNair, 14-year-old Carole Robertson, 14-year-old Cynthia Wesley, and 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins.
The police arrested Robert Chambliss, a member of the UKA, after he was identified by a witness, and charged him with murder, in addition to "…possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit."
He was tried again when Bill Baxley, the state attorney general of Alabama, realized that much of the evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had against Chambliss was not used in his original trial.
The jury convicted UKA members Robert Chambliss, Thomas E. Blanton Jr., and Bobby Frank Cherry of planting the 19 sticks of dynamite that were used in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
[9] In 1965, 39-year-old Viola Liuzzo, a white woman from the North, decided to help support the movement for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.
During the third march, in which thousands of people came to Selma to participate, she helped drive marchers to catch up with the walkers along the route, as it took a few days.
On March 21, his son Henry Hays, and another younger member of the UKA, James Knowles, decided to take action and drove around to find a victim.
[10] At trial Knowles said that he and Henry Hays killed Donald "in order to show Klan strength in Alabama".
[13][14] Unable to come up with the $7 million in damages awarded by the jury, the UKA was forced to turn over its national headquarters to Donald's mother, who sold the property.
[7] The trial ended with a guilty verdict, and Knowles, charged with violating Donald's civil rights, received a sentence of life in prison.
[5] In the 1990s the UKA experienced a resurgence in the activity of its members who returned to the teachings of the Imperial Wizard, Col. William Joseph Simmons, who founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1939.
He had been harassing Bonnie Jouhari, a white woman who worked at the Reading-Berks Human Relations Council in the state of Pennsylvania.
[18] On June 29, 2013 leaflets bearing the same message were also left overnight in the driveways of several homes in Burien, Washington, 10 miles south of Seattle.
According to a regional Anti-Defamation League official, the incarnation of the UKA responsible for the flyers was unconnected to the older, defunct organization.
