200 Klansmen Protest Killing of White Youth Laid to 4 Blacks

About 200 white-robed Ku Klux Klan members and supporters, a far lower turnout than expected, marched peacefully through this Atlanta suburb Saturday, outnumbered by more than 300 law enforcement officers in riot gear.

“Are you proud to be white? Does it feel good to be white?” yelled Ed Stephens of Jonesboro, Georgia grand dragon of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, shouting through a bullhorn as he led the march.

Stephens said the rally was in response to the Dec. 3 killing of a 15-year-old white boy, not to a pair of marches that brought thousands of civil rights demonstrators to all-white Forsyth County last month. Four black teen-agers have been charged in the 15-year-old’s death.

Klan organizers had predicted from 500 to 1,000 klansmen would come from 26 states.

There were few spectators along the half-mile parade route, but police said at least two of them were arrested on disorderly conduct charges after shoving incidents broke out.

Helmeted officers from College Park, Fulton County and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation lined the route and confined spectators and reporters to the sidewalk. Police estimated their ranks at between 300 and 400.

Most civil rights groups and churches had urged members to stay away from the march, but a few counterdemonstrators exchanged insults with the klansmen.

Members of a group calling itself the All People’s Congress displayed signs condemning racism.