Southern Bombings Put Focus on Hate Groups

A broad spectrum of civil rights organizations, alarmed by the deadly bombings in the South, has gone on a heightened state of alert amid speculation that hate groups may be responsible for the wave of violence, officials said Tuesday.

Representatives of the groups, including the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith and the Center for Democratic Renewal, joined judges and other court employees in taking extra precautions while opening mail and other packages.

On Saturday, a mail bomb killed U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert S. Vance, who prevented white supremacists from taking over the Alabama Democratic Party. On Monday, another mail bomb killed Savannah, Ga., Alderman Robert Robinson, a lawyer active in a contentious school desegregation case. On the same day, a bomb found in the 11th Circuit Court building in Atlanta was disarmed, as was one found Tuesday at the Jacksonville, Fla., office of the NAACP.

“It’s frightening,” said Sunny Stern, assistant area director of the American Jewish Committee in Atlanta. “Any time this type of hate group spews out against any group of people, we know we can be a target as well.”

The distinct possibility that racist motivation is behind the bombings has renewed attention on white supremacist groups, raising questions about who they are, where they operate and how they have changed over the years.

Civil rights organizations are busy compiling answers, warning that while the number of Ku Klux Klan members has declined during the last decade, newer, more violent groups have sprung up, attracting disciples in droves.

Individuals who monitor white supremacist groups say the recent violence may be a reaction to recent court decisions--including the 1987 award of $7 million to the mother of a teen-ager murdered by the klan in Mobile, Ala.--and a sense that violence is necessary to keep their movement growing.

“They feel that their options are limited,” said Charles F. Wittenstein, counsel for the Anti-Defamation League. “Violence is the only thing left. They may be hitting out at an institution like the Court of Appeals that has traditionally defended the rights of blacks, Jews and other minorities.”

At the Center for Democratic Renewal, also known as the Anti-Klan Network, Leonard Zeskind, research director, said that the klan, perhaps the oldest and best known of hate groups, saw its membership plummet from an estimated 15,000 in 1980 to some 6,000 today.

But in addition to the klan, remembered for kidnapings and killings of blacks, Jews, Catholics and civil rights workers for decades in the Old South, there are now the Skinheads, the Neo-Nazis and Posse Comitatus. There is the California group called the White Aryan Resistance, and Dallas is the home base for a group called the Confederate Hammer Skins.

In all, said Zeskind, his organization has identified some six-dozen hate groups, with 20,000 “hard-core” members nationwide and another 150,000 sympathizers--people who are on mailing lists and may attend meetings occasionally.

“There is a burgeoning of this movement,” Zeskind said. “People think it’s going away when you have it increasing.”

The Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., estimates that 230 such groups are operating, and are responsible for 11 murders, 100 shootings and assaults, and 60 cross-burnings during the last two years.

A report by the project said that the groups’ “cult of violence” has grown more brutal during the last decade. A combination of factors fuels the white supremacist movement, the report says, including the groups’ ability to reach huge audiences of prisoners and disenchanted youth through cable television.

And the youthful Skinheads, the report says, are “the most violent group of white supremacists this country has seen in a quarter-century.”

Morris Dees, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said: “Skinheads were considered the radical upstarts of the 1980s, but they are on their way to becoming the domestic terrorists of the 1990s.”

In Jacksonville on Tuesday, a longtime resident said Skinheads are highly visible there. “My wife and I were by a park . . . not long ago, and there was a group of them standing around there,” he said. “They were obvious by their attire--black clothes, combat boots, shaved heads and swastika tattoos.”

Although no state is without members in these groups, analysts say, the greatest numbers are in the eastern half of the country, in California and in the Northwest. A map by the Southern Poverty Law Center depicting locations of various groups shows heavy concentrations of klan members from Pennsylvania down through eastern Texas and large numbers of Skinheads in California.

“Nobody paid any attention to the groups” before the recent bombings, says Willis Edwards, president-emeritus of the Beverly Hills-Hollywood NAACP. “Now, people are saying, ‘We’d better take another look.’ ”

The fear rising from speculation about the bombings has been profound, affecting the groups in seemingly contradictory ways. On the one hand it has had an energizing effect, as several rights activists cited the bombings as reason to enact legislation that would mandate federal collection of data on racist incidents.

Others said they have been told that potential members are afraid to join the rights groups because of the bombings. Additionally, the Atlanta NAACP office was the target of a smoke bomb earlier this year.

“A lot of people have said they don’t want to be involved (with the NAACP) because it’s too big a risk,” Edwards said. “These hate groups are very serious people. They’re nothing to play with. They’re out to win.”

In some parts of the country, the groups have demonstrated openly. About six months ago, for example, a small klan march took place in Savannah. And similar marches occur periodically in and near Atlanta. Lately, many of those marches have been aimed at immigrants, especially Mexicans and Asians.

Nevertheless, some people connected with racist organizations dispute the theory that racists committed the bombings. A woman answering the telephone of a man who publishes an anti-minority newspaper in Marietta, Ga., Tuesday called speculation about racist bombings “a smear.”

The woman, who refused to give her name, said: “Nobody wants to be connected to such a thing” as the bombings. “I think the FBI is investigating the drug lords. They should be investigating Morris Dees.”

As for stories about racist groups, she said: “The media’s wrong to be jumping to conclusions. They’re climbing up the wrong back.”

Researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.