By Larry Striegel

Larry Striegel, a former Associated Press Staff Member in the New York area, spent the last six months working as a Glenmary helper in the Sylvania, GA area, and will join the Glenmary Brothers in September. His series of articles on the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia was written for Savannah's diocesan newspaper, The Southern Cross.

The Ku Klux Klan is becoming more active in Georgia, a trend that worries church and law enforcement officials alike. Although Klan membership is relatively small, experts say its potential to spark racial hatred and violence cannot be overlooked.

Klan opponents say the current rise began in the late 1970s and that a rash of activity in the first quarter of 1982 equaled that all through 1981. The activities have involved cross burnings, rallies and recruitment roadblocks. Most have been in the northern half of Georgia.

"The Klan itself is on a very active recruiting drive, trying to swell their numbers," said Tony Gailey, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent.

No one knows exactly how many Klansmen there are. Leaders of four or more factions in Georgia will not say.

The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, a private organization concerned with prejudice, estimates that 800 to 900 Georgia residents are Klan members. Based on observations at rallies, the ADL guesses that membership is up 10 percent since 1981.

However, GBI Director Phil Peters said in an interview that "from what I've seen in the last few months, I would say that projection is probably low." Darryl Adams, another GBI agent concerned with the Klan, has estimated that Klansmen and their sympathizers number in the low thousands, a tiny fraction of Georgia's general population.

The acceptance of Catholics as members is a main difference from the Klan of the 1920s, when European immigrants were targets of the group.

As Bishop Raymond W. Lessard of Savannah pointed out last spring, the Klan's philosophy "remains one of white supremacy and old-time nativism, with its provocative rhetoric and disruptive threats aimed especially at blacks but also a Caribbean and Asian refugees and illegal Mexican aliens. Jews are also targets, especially of Klans with new-Nazi beliefs."

Explanations for recent Klan growth vary.

Dr. Edward Fields, grand dragon of the New Order Knights of the KKK, says whites "are extremely concerned over the strength blacks are gaining in Georgia." He mentions the election of black mayors in Atlanta and Augusta.

His wide opposition says the economic recession is a factor.

"It's the increasing unemployment and competition for jobs," says Betty Cantor of the ADL. "Historically, we have seen groups such as this grow during these times. They look for a scapegoat for the difficulties. Until conditions improve, I think there is a possibility for (Klan) growth."

State Sen. Tyrone Brooks, an Atlanta Democrat and avowed Klan fighter, agrees.

"They (Klansmen) say that equal opportunity programs are the reason for the problems," Brooks says. "I believe sincerely that the majority of white people in this country are against the Klan."

KKK Origins

The Klan was born during Reconstruction when some ex-Confederate soldiers in Tennessee formed a secret organization called Klykos, Greek for "circle." (The pronunciation later evolved to Ku Klux.) Members wore masks and sheets during night rides to try to haunt former slaves. Soon Klansmen took it upon themselves to enforce pre-war racial standards. They whipped, raped, burned and murdered blacks.

Membership was around 550,000 nationally in 1871, but it declined after that until the 1920s. The aftermath of World War I saw intense nationalism, union organizing, black veterans expecting to enjoy freedoms they had fought for overseas, and suspicion of immigrants, many of whom were Catholic.

The Klan organized heavily and described itself as a force of moral stability. Membership was perhaps five million in 1925, mostly in the South.

Hooded Klansmen again were enforcers of their own morality. They abused or lynched black men whose only "crime" was trying to register to vote, or looking at a white woman. Other targets were bootleggers, adulterers, Jews, pacifists, radicals, Catholics, evolutionists.

However, the Klan declined in numbers from then on, although its activities have continued to the present. National membership has been estimated at 15,000 in 1958; at least 35,000 in 1961; a low of 1,500 in 1974, and at 10,000 in 1981. The Anti-Defamation League projects that there are 10 sympathizers for every person who actually dons a Klan robe.

Georgia Factions

Groups of the Klan in Georgia are said to be loosely organized. Factions include the New Order Knights, led by Edward Fields; the Invisible Empire, led by Bill Wilkinson; the National Knights of James Venable, and the Knights of the KKK, led by Don Black.

Fields and Wilkinson appear to have generated most of the public Klan activity so far this year.

Fields' group has 200 to 300 "card carrying members," and rivals Wilkinson's group as one of the largest in Georgia, according to the GBI. Fields, who had a Catholic upbringing in Atlanta and studied chiropractic, runs the New Order out of Marietta. Most of his group's activity has been in North Georgia.

In the past several months, the New Order has rallied or tried to organize in DeKalb, Carroll, Muscogee, Clayton, Walton, Clarke, Paulding and Chattooga counties. Fields said in February he intended to organize students at the University of Georgia. Several hundred students subsequently organized to stop him.

Last February, New Order members and their sympathizers confronted some 400 blacks who marched in Walton County to protest a coroner's jury ruling of suicide in the 1981 death of a young black soldier who was found hanging from a tree. Protestors charged that he was lynched.

Wilkinson, imperial wizard of the Invisible Empire of Denham Strings, LA, exploited two racial controversies in South Georgia in February to gain publicity for his group.

In Feb. 27, about 150 robed Klansmen and sympathizers led by Wilkinson rallied in Darien to support the expulsion of two black students who allegedly had fought with a white teacher.

The same day, Invisible Empire members were barred from marching in Millen. The Klan hoped to show support for a court decision to remove a white child from the custody of his mother after she gave birth to a racially mixed child.

Some 80 members of Wilkinson's group marched in LaGrange on May 16. Afterward about 750 people attended a Klan rally. Before the march, two young blacks were seized for possession of guns. Many blacks followed a minister's advice to ignore the rally and attend a church service instead.

Chance For Violence

According to Peters of the GBI, there is no question that Georgia Klansmen intend to carry on the KKK's legacy of violence.

At almost any Klan rally, weapons are found among both sides.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Wilkinson's group "has grown fastest because it is the most militant and violence-prone of the existing Klans." Wilkinson himself is quoted as saying, "These guns ain't for killing rabbits; they're to waste people. We're got going to start anything, but if anyone does, we're ready to defend ourselves."

To prevent confrontations -- especially anything like the killing of five Communist Worker Party members during a CWP march in North Carolina in 1979 -- the GBI this year has sent anti-terrorist teams to rallies. The agents look for troublemakers and weapons among both whites and blacks.

Fields has said he will have rallies each weekend in 1982. He said in an interview that he wants to build " a strong base" in Northern Georgia because he is closer to that region's cities and towns. He said he hopes to organize in Macon, but not in Savannah. "Savannah is just too far to organize yet," he said.