Also Named in Shootings Aimed at Blacks and Whites : 9 in Klan Charged With Cross Burnings

Nine Ku Klux Klan members have been charged in a year-long spree of cross burnings and shooting incidents aimed at both blacks and whites in North Carolina, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Among those named in the 20-count indictment, issued by a federal grand jury in Asheville, N.C., were Jerry D. Suits and his wife, Mary, the titan and queen kleagle of the white supremacist group’s Iredell County, N.C., branch, and Tony D. Earp, leader of the klan in Alexander County, N.C.

The nine were accused of conspiring to violate the housing rights of blacks as well as lying to a grand jury about their parts in concocting a scheme in 1982 and 1983 to intimidate and threaten blacks and whites who lived together or befriended each other. At least three of the nine had been arrested by Wednesday.

10-Year Terms Possible

If convicted on the conspiracy count, the most serious, the klan members could each face a 10-year maximum jail sentence and a $10,000 fine.

The grand jury returned the indictments Monday but they remained sealed until FBI agents began their roundup of those charged.

In one of the incidents, three of the klansmen were charged with burning a cross and firing shots into the home of Carmie Waugh, a white mother of two mixed-race children. Suits and Earp were also accused in another cross-burning incident at the home of a black man in Iredell County who was living with a white woman.

Other klan members were charged with staging a cross burning while carrying guns at the home of a different white woman who was sharing her home with blacks.

‘High Priority’ Cases

Assistant Atty. Gen. William Bradford Reynolds, head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, declined comment on the indictments but said his department gives “high priority” to such cases of alleged racial violence.

He said that at least 84 klan members and about 70 other people have been prosecuted for similar incidents since the Carter Administration set up a special unit in the department in 1979 to deal with racially related violence.

“We will seek indictments in every case where credible evidence is developed and suspects identified,” vowed Reynolds, whose commitment to racial reform has been sharply questioned by a wide array of civil rights and civil liberties groups.

The indictment charges the nine with a conspiracy to “shoot firearms into and in front of residences, and construct, place and ignite . . . crosses in front of residences . . . to interfere with the right of these citizens to hold and occupy a dwelling without injury, intimidation or interference because of their cohabitation and association therein with persons of another race or color.”