James R. Venable; Former Imperial Wizard of KKK Branch
- Share via
James R. Venable, 91, the former imperial wizard of the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Venable was imperial wizard of the National Knights, one of many Klan groups, from 1963 to 1987. An attorney, Venable was mayor of Stone Mountain, Ga., from 1946 to 1949. In Stone Mountain on Monday of the complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
More From the Los Angeles Times
Podcasts
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recently approved California’s request to extend housing assistance to survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires. But more than 18 months after those January 2025 fires, survivors are still waiting on an additional $16 billion in federal disaster relief from the federal government, which was revised down earlier this year from nearly $34 billion.
The Hillside Strangler murders terrorized Los Angeles in the late 1970s. The killers were a pair of sadistic cousins. One confessed. The other was set to stand trial—until L.A. prosecutors flinched.
Modern LA earned its first smoggy nickname 450 years ago, as the “bay of smokes.” At the La Brea tar pits, we take a short walk through a long history with curator Regan Dunn, who explains how and why the first Angelenos would have set fires that filled the broad bowl of LA and foretold the curse of smog.
