Contemporary Hate Activity
By Staff
Vol. 11, No. 4, 1989, pp. 16-18
EDITOR’S NOTE: As Stetson Kennedy points out[see “One Less Voice for Discrimination, Vol. 11 No. 4], the problems of bigotry, violence and discrimination remain very much a part of the U.S. landscape. The following incidents were compiled for Southern Changes by Leonard Zeskind, research director of the Center for Democratic Renewal.
* Violence
Asian beaten to death
Two white men are charged in the Raleigh, N.C., beating death of an Asian man. According to eyewitness accounts and statements to police, Ming Hai Loo and four Asian friends were in the Cue-‘N-Spirits poolroom and bar on July 28 when Robert Piche and Lloyd Piche started calling them “gooks, slanteyes and chinks.” The Piches also declared that they had lost a brother in Vietnam. The
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Asians reportedly left the bar but were followed into the parking lot where one of the Piche brothers confronted Ming with a shotgun and a pistol. Ming was struck on the head and died three days later.
Police handled the incident as an unprovoked, racially motivated attack but the DA charged only one of the Piches, and him only with second-degree murder. A spokesperson for North Carolinians Against Racial and Religious Violence said this was the first recorded incident of anti-Asian violence id North Carolina in this decade. A 1986 U.S. Civil Rights Commission report concluded that anti-Asian violence was a national problem and found that anti-Asian incidents rose 62 percent in 1985 over the previous year (no later statistics are available).
Racist assault in New York
One black youth was killed and three others were attacked Aug. 23 in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn, according to press reports. The attackers were a group of 10 to 30 white teenagers who were armed with a least one gun and seven baseball bats. The dead youth, Yusef Hawkins, 16, was shot to death. Police are treating the incident as racially motivated.
Letter Bomb Injures 15 at NAACP
Persons in Southeastern Regional Office of the NAACP in Atlanta and an adjoining medical office were injured Aug. 21 by a tear-gas bomb received through the mail by the NAACP. Some 15 persons were injured, including a four-month-old baby. The FBI is investigating.
Skinhead Sentenced in Alabama
A 19-year-old skinhead was sentenced to three years in prison for defacing a Mobile, Ala., synagogue and a Jewish community center. Two 17-year-olds were given probation.
Flag Burning Provokes Racial Confrontation
Arkansas neo-Nazi Ralph Forbes was among some 400 whites who surrounded, taunted and jostled a small group of blacks who attempted to burn a U.S. flag on the steps of the Arkansas state capitol in Little Rock on July 4. The object of the attempted flag-burning was reportedly a protest against drugs and homelessness.
Third Kluxer Sentenced in Donald Death
Former United Klans of America member Frank Cox Jr. was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the 1981 murder in Mobile, Ala., of a black teenager, Michael Donald, who was kidnapped at random and killed by a local Klan group in retaliation for the failure of a local jury to convict a black man accused of murdering a white police officer. Two other Klansmen have previously been convicted in the case; one faces the Alabama electric chair and is currently represented in the appeals process by an attorney procured by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Black Family Attacked in Queens
A black family watching a July 4 fireworks display in Queens, N.Y., was attacked by more than 30 white youths, some wielding baseball bats. One youth was arrested; police were looking for others. Several family members were hospitalized.
White Youths Sentenced
Three white youths have been sentenced–to write an essay, 15 days in juvenile detention, and 32 hours of community service, respectively–in a May 8 baseball bat attack on black students in Auburn, Wash.
WAR Member Arrested in Florida Threat
Walter Komorowski, who says he is a member of White Aryan Resistance and the John Birch Society, was arrested Aug. 15 on charges of making written threats against government officials in Port Lucie, Fla. Police confiscated handguns, knives, 1,200 rounds of ammunition, and 15 rifles, including an AK-47. Komorowski allegedly stated that he bought the AK-47 after viewing television news about the Stockton, Calif., shooting of school children by a gunman using an AK-47.
Mexicans Harassed in Georgia
Officials of the Mexican government have expressed concern after Mexican citizens working in the Gainesville, Gal, area received leaflets distributed by the Invisible Empire Knights.
Racist Graffiti in Georgia
“Nigger Go Home” was spraypainted Aug. 1 on the car of a black person living in Stone Mountain, Ga. A car belonging to a black teenager in Carrollton, Gal, was vandalized outside a pizza restaurant on July 21. A KKK “calling card” was left on the teenager’s car.
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Also in Georgia, a sign marking the construction site of Temple Beth David, the first synagogue in rapidly growing Gwinnett County, has twice been defaced by swastikas. On the morning of a community meeting to condemn the antisemitism, area mailboxes were stuffed with hate literature.
Confrontation in Oregon
A group of blacks chased by a group of skinheads in Portland, Ore., on July 22, turned on the skinheads and began beating them. One skinhead, Walter Evans, was knocked unconscious, but on reviving began screaming, “White Power!”
* Politics
LaRouche to Campaign from Jail
Lyndon LaRouche reportedly will run a campaign from his jail cell for Virginia’s 10th District Congressional seat. Also running in Virginia on the LaRouche ticket are Nancy Spannaus for a state senate seat and Harry Broskie, Clyde T. Mayberry and Nereida Thompson for delegate seats.
LaRouche Front Meets with Congressional Aide
A LaRouche-organized “Food for Peace” delegation met with Fred Clark, associate counsel for the House Committee on Agriculture. Included in the delegation were former National Farmers Union Virginia state director Jack Hall and former Philadelphia NAACP president O.G. Christian.
Opinions Differ on Minority Set-Asides
A recent poll by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 29 percent of Southern whites believe a fixed percentage of city government contracts should be awarded to minority firms; 59 percent of blacks supported the set-asides. In Louisiana, minority set-asides were one of the key issues in the successful state legislature campaign of former KKK leader David Duke.
Contra Supporters Convene
Tom Posey, leader of the Civilian Materiel Assistance, recently held a four-day conference in Madison, Ala., and told the press he is ready to resume shipment of weapons to the Nicaraguan contras. Posey was recently acquitted on charges of violating U.S. neutrality laws by a federal judge who reasoned that the U.S. was not in a neutral military position against Nicaragua.
Studies Show Widening Gaps
The Population Research Center in Chicago reports that housing segregation has increased in the past decade but that the ten worst segregated cities were in the Northeast and Midwest, not the South.
The National Academy of Sciences found that income for black families, as a percentage of income for white families, declined from 1974-1984. The Academy also reports that black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die in infancy, that black students drop out of school at twice the rate of whites and are less than half as likely to finish college.
Duke Bill Fails
A bill by Louisiana State Rep. David Duke, former KKK leader, forbidding the use of state funds for affirmative action programs was tabled on a 48-37 vote near the close of the 1989 legislative session.
NAAWP Candidate in Memphis
Scott Shepherd, a white supremacy activist in Memphis, has announced that he will seek a local House seat in 1990. Shepherd has been a spokesman for David Duke’s National Association for the Advancement of White People and has sponsored a white supremacist television show, “Race and Reason,” on community access cable television for the past three years.
* Fashion
Two workers were fired in June for wearing KKK hoods while walking through the Southington, Conn., Pratt Whitney plant. In Philadelphia, Pa., five civilian employees of the Graterford Prison were suspended following an incident in which two of them donned Klan costumes and harassed black and Puerto Rican inmates. None of the five, are known Klan members.
* Rallies and Meetings
Klansmen and skinheads held a meeting and Crossburning July 1-2 near Kansas City, Mo. Mississippi white supremacist Richard Barrett held a small rally in Dawsonville, Gal, on July 4. A chapter of the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied in Hancock, Md., on July 29. The Populist Party, which has a number of white supremacists in its current and recent leadership, held or planned to hold state-level meetings in Florida,Aug.18-20; Maryland, Sept. 9; Georgia, Sept. 16; Texas, Sept. 23; New York, Oct. 7; Alabama, Oct. 21; Louisiana, Nov. 4; Arkansas, Nov. 11; Tennessee, Dec. 2. Southern White Knights leader Dave Holland was an organizer for this year’s annual Labor Day Klan march and unify rally at Stone Mountain, Ga. The scheduled speakers included J.B Stoner and Ed Fields of Georgia, Thom Robb of Arkansas, and Richard Butler of Idaho. Some 50 neo-Nazi skinheads and members of the True Knights Klan faction rallied in Villa Rica, Ga., on Aug. 5 . A man calling himself Bobby Norton has applied in Pulaski, Tenn., birthplace of the original KKK, for an Oct. 7 march permit on behalf of the Aryan Nations.