RACE RELATIONS : Klan’s Back on Old Turf in Texas : A federal judge’s order to desegregate public housing brings protests by the KKK.

Here’s how bad things used to be in Vidor: There was a persistent rumor 30-odd years ago that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was going to lead a march on the town because it was one of the meanest, toughest, most bigoted places known to man.

Blacks dared not live here.

The Ku Klux Klan embraced this place, which was once known as “Bloody Vidor.”

In these parts, Vidor (founded, incidentally, by the father of famed movie director King Vidor) became the symbol of everything a town shouldn’t be.

So, after U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice issued an order last September calling for the desegregation of public housing complexes in 36 Texas counties, outsiders were not at all surprised to see that klansmen were again holding rallies in Vidor and urging that a housing project there be kept all white.

The same old Vidor, people said. Hasn’t changed a lick.

All of which has the people of Vidor plenty miffed. The klansmen, they insisted, were not local people but outsiders themselves, and they contended that their town had changed for the good.

The housing project here is Vidor Villas, a collection of one-story homes on the southern edge of town. Mayor Ruth Woods said she had agreed all along that the project should be desegregated, even before the judge issued his final order. But given the nature of Vidor’s reputation, she said, she and other civic leaders decided to take a low-key approach.

“I do not have a problem with following through on this mandate from the federal government because it is the morally right thing to do,” she said.

Embarking on a plan to meet the judge’s order, the four housing authorities in the area hired a black man named Albert Harrison to oversee the desegregation of the projects.

Variously described as one who worked hard to improve his lot in life and as a man with a shady past, Harrison chose not to take a low-key approach to desegregation but a very public one. He announced to the Orange County commissioners court that four black families had been chosen to move into Vidor Villas.

The reaction was explosive. Klan leaders from the faraway city of Waco and the nearby town of Cleveland descended upon Vidor, passing out literature that said, “Keep Vidor White.” The television cameras rolled. The cameras clicked. And Vidor was in the soup once again.

Things weren’t helped locally when Phil Donahue’s TV show got wind of the flap and did a program about it, with Harrison as one of the guests.

Not long after his unauthorized bombshell, Harrison was fired. He said he had made the announcement to protect the yet-unnamed incoming families, adding that he might have steered a different course had he known the klan would be so bold.

Harrison is now being blamed by some, including Woods, for exacerbating racial tensions here almost as much as the klan.

On the other hand, Mike Lowe, the Waco-based state grand dragon of the klan, is clearly ecstatic about all the publicity surrounding the housing project.

“Vidor has always been known as klan country,” he said. “We’ve had members there, but we never had occasion to work the area. We waited until a good issue came up.”

Still, it’s hard to find anyone in Vidor these days to sing the praises of the klan.

Soon after the klan rallies took place, a prayer service in opposition was sponsored by 17 area churches. Held in the parking lot of the local Wal-Mart, it drew an estimated 1,500 people, far more than showed up at any of the three klan gatherings.

Bill Hale, executive director of the Texas Department of Human Rights, thinks Vidor’s name has been unfairly abused.

“Vidor is coming into the 20th Century with respect to their perception of civil rights issues,” Hale said.

One small irony in all the furor is that Hale’s organization has subpoenaed the klan membership records, but the American Civil Liberties Union has indicated that it will defend the klan’s right of privacy.

Larry Hunter, a Vidor lawyer, said people are extremely angry about the events of the last few months. “I don’t owe anyone an apology because I live in Vidor,” he said. “I’m not a bigot because I live here.”

For her part, the mayor believes all the uproar has set the desegregation of the housing project back by at least months while the town waits for the waters to quiet.

“Now we have the problem of turning theory into reality and having a black family being willing to move out here without fear of someone causing them harm,” she said.