None Hurt, Few Arrested at Klan March

Carrying Confederate battle flags and chanting “KKK,” about 150 white supremacists marched through downtown Greensboro on Sunday in the first Ku Klux Klan appearance here since a bloody shoot-out left five anti-klan activists dead in 1979.

The klan parade, one of a series of recent recruitment marches by the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina, was unmarked by any serious incident.

A spectator was arrested for firing what appeared to be a starter pistol or cap gun as the klan parade passed the municipal complex about 15 minutes before disbanding, police said. Three others were taken into custody for attempting to break into the march line. A fifth was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon.

Eyewitnesses said the gunman, who was white, fired a revolver at a black man who was in the crowd of spectators with his white wife and their two children. No injuries were reported.

Cordon of Police

Security was tight during the hourlong parade, which included a 10-minute rally at Greensboro’s downtown Governmental Plaza. The klan marchers, many in white robes and hoods, marched within a cordon of black-uniformed Greensboro police officers.

Several hundred spectators, the overwhelming majority of them curiosity seekers and not klan supporters, lined the parade route. “If ignorance is bliss, there are some happy klansmen,” read a sign held by a white couple among the onlookers.

At the rally, KKK Imperial Wizard Virgil Griffin made an impassioned speech through a bullhorn against school busing, legalized abortion and drug abuse. “How far will America go down before the white people rise up?” he asked rhetorically.

The biracial Greensboro Coalition for Unity and Justice, which held an anti-klan march Saturday along the same route, sponsored a “peace festival and love rally” in a park about two miles from downtown Sunday at the same time the klan marched.