Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. Mississippi Department of Public Safety officials stumbled across a cache of Ku Klux Klan materials while cleaning out a closet to move to the department’s new headquarters. Inside a small blue suitcase, they fou nd a handbook for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent white supremacist group in the 1960s, which carried out at least 10 killings. Officials also found Klan charters, a Klan robe, KKK recruitment materials, propaganda, meeting notes, ledgers and a list of members who paid — or didn’t pay — their dues. “If only that robe could talk,” said George Malvaney, who tells his journey from life as a Klansman to life in prison to life as environmental regulator and a top executive helping clean up the 2010 oil spill on the Coast, in his memoir, “Cups Up.” The department has given the Klan materials to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “Mississippi Highway Patrol Troopers and Agents with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety have worked for decades with our federal law enforcement partners to shed light on the darkness in which groups like the Ku Klux Klan chose to operate,” Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said in a release. “By preserving these artifacts and shedding light on such organizations, we help ensure that future generations are never led astray by such hate.” Archives officials plan to process the material to make it digitally accessible to the public. The archives’ incoming director, Barry White, thanked Tindell “recognizing the historical significance of this material and transferring it to the archives. These records will give researchers broader access to documentation that deepens our understanding of Ku Klux Klan activities in Mississippi during the 1960s. Receiving a set of materials that includes both administrative records and propaganda from a local chapter of a national organization known for its secrecy is particularly significant.” White indicated that processing the material could take months. In the move from Jackson to a new building in Rankin County, the Department of Public Safety also found old Mississippi Highway Patrol folders labeled “Communist Agitators” and “Freedom Riders,” which contain photos and reports on the 1961 riders. Trained in nonviolent techniques in Washington and Nashville, they rode interstate buses into the South to challenge segregation laws. T.B. Birdsong, then-head of the patrol, falsely claimed Communists were behind these rides and Russians had trained two riders in Cuba. The Department of Archives and History already has a Klan robe and arrest photographs of Freedom Riders on display in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Mississippi Department of Public Safety officials found in a small blue suitcase a list of Ku Klux Klan members who paid — or didn’t pay — their dues. Credit: Courtesy of Department of Public Safety The long-hidden material gives a glimpse into the dark past where membership for the White Knights soared in Mississippi in the 1960s, reportedly to nearly 100,000 members, and politicians sought their support. Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers formed the White Knights in the wake of James Meredith’s 1962 admission as the first Black student at the University of Mississippi. Through beatings, bombings, burnings and killings, Bowers’ Klansmen did all they could to halt desegregation and voting rights for Black Americans.  “This is a Christian militant organization,” Bowers told Klansmen in a March 1, 1964, lecture obtained by highway patrol investigators. “We have become His (God’s) finite instruments with which, we earnestly pray, He will choose to save Christian Civilization.” After news came that civil rights activists planned to work in the state during the coming summer, the White Knights characterized the work as an invasion and recruited members from all of Mississippi’s 82 counties.  The White Knights’ charter told Klansmen they had “the Sacred Responsibility for preserving Christian Civilization, and with the task of effectively and intelligently Destroying any and all agents or agencies of Satan, whensoever they may detect any such Demons in Human Flesh at their Evil and Treasonous Work.” The handwritten charter for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi was found in the state Department of Public Safety evidence troves. Credit: Jerry Mitchell/Mississippi Today Bowers and the Grand Giant sealed the charter. The year on the charter is listed as 98 A.K., an apparent reference to how many years had passed at that point since the origin of the Klan in 1865. Bowers readied his troops for war. “When the black waves hit our communities, we must remain calm and think in terms of our individual enemies rather than our mass enemy. We must roll with the mass punch which they will deliver in the streets during the day, and we must counterattack the individual leaders at night,” he told Klansmen in a script obtained by troopers. “Any personal attacks on the enemy should be carefully planned to include only the leaders and prime white collaborators of the enemy forces.” Malvaney told Mississippi Today that Bowers was “highly intelligent and extremely charismatic.” The Klan leader, he said, was also “a bit crazy, and he knew it and even said so on several occasions.” On June 21, 1964, Bowers’ Klansmen killed civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in Neshoba County, and buried their bodies. Klansmen thought the bodies were securely hidden until a Mississippi highway patrolman named Maynard King tipped off the FBI that the bodies were in an earthen dam on the Old Jolly Farm near Philadelphia. That same summer, Gov. Paul Johnson Jr. fired two other troopers the FBI had identified as Klansmen, and the highway patrol began to document Klan activities. Secret rituals, bylaws and operations The handbook that state investigators obtained outlined secret rituals, bylaws and operations of the White Knights. The organization created a Voting Registration Committee to “study and watch the negro voting activity” and an Intelligence Committee to “keep accurate and indexed information on people, places and cars.” A page in a handbook for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, found at the state Department of Public Safety, features a drawing on the proper way to set up White Knights’ meetings. Credit: Courtesy of Department of Public Safety One page features a drawing of the proper way to set up White Knights’ meetings. Former Klansmen have described a sword on top of a Bible turned to the passage, Romans 12:1: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” In the wake of FBI scrutiny, Klansmen shot out agents’ windows and planted nails in their driveways. One agent found a rattlesnake in his car.  Highway patrol investigators obtained a memo in which the White Knights suggested using mad dogs, tear gas and other devices against their enemies: “Careful harassment coupled with good propaganda directed against an enemy agent can expose him in his true colors and identify him to the general public of the community for the real enemy of Christian Civilization that he really is.” In 1967, 18 Klansmen went on trial in federal court. A jury convicted seven of them, including Bowers, who ordered the killings. But the other Klansmen walked free, including Edgar Ray Killen, who went to prison in 2005 after a state jury convicted him of manslaughter for orchestrating the killings. Klan secrets and propaganda The KKK documents reflect blatant racism, as well. A flier from the Original Knights of the KKK — which started in Louisiana before spreading to Mississippi — said others should join their organization because they oppose interracial marriage and “we oppose n—–s teaching White children in public schools …The White race is God’s race.” The materials also show how the KKK used propaganda in hopes of rallying other white Americans to join them. A flier from the Alabama-based United Klans, which began to recruit in Mississippi in 1964, claimed Martin Luther King Jr. was leading Black Americans “down the crimson path to a Soviet America.” In many ways, the Klan’s rhetoric matched that of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who publicly called King “the most notorious liar in the country” and privately accused him of being a Communist dupe. Hoover even had the FBI suggest in an anonymous note to King that the civil rights leader should kill himself. The materials show the emphasis that the Klan placed on secrecy. They assumed their phones were tapped, so they spoke in code. They assumed their letters might be read, so they typed “deceptive language” and did not sign them. They wore gloves so their fingerprints would not be detected. Minutes of an April 30, 1964, Klan meeting were found at the Mississippi Department of Public Safety. They reflect the Klan’s emphasis on secrecy, with members referred to strictly by their numbers. Credit: Courtesy of Department of Public Safety That secrecy is reflected in the minutes of meetings obtained by troopers where Klansmen are referred to strictly by their numbers. For instance, the minute keeper wrote about the meeting on June 25, 1964: “No. 16 made a motion, and it were (sic) seconded by No. 5 that we keep a car on the road every night investigating the condition of everything what activity were (sic) was going on it were (sic) agreed by the Unit.” Despite such work to keep things secret, the ledgers tracking Klan dues, which troopers obtained, show the names and numbers of all the Klansmen. Byron De La “Delay” Beckwith, who assassinated Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers in 1963, belonged to the Original Knights before joining the White Knights, according to his son, “Delay Jr.,” who also belonged to the White Knights. The younger Beckwith, now 79, confirmed to Mississippi Today that the White Knights’ handbook found by the Department of Public Safety was authentic. He said he’s seen the handbook, known as a Kloran, before. The original copy was printed on a long sheet of paper like a scroll, he said. He said he is one of the last original Klansmen in the White Knights still alive. The words he wants on his headstone? “The Last White Knight.” Editor’s note: Barry White, incoming director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, is married to Mary Margaret White, senior director of partnerships and development for Mississippi Today. ...read more read less