MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Pay no attention to that man beneath the sheet.

Do not go downtown to listen to his wicked words. Do not heckle or protest his presence. He is not worth it. His time has passed. He has no teeth.

That’s the message of the city of Memphis as it faces a trying day.

On Saturday – Easter eve – the Ku Klux Klan is scheduled to hold a “mass” rally here to protest the city’s recent decision to rename three Confederate-themed parks, including one honoring Nathan Bedford Forrest, the wealthy slave trader and ruthless Rebel cavalry lieutenant general, who became the first national leader of the KKK. But as the general’s modern day Klan kin rant and rave on the steps of the Shelby County Courthouse, local political, religious and business leaders hope everyone else in town – except for a huge contingent of police officers in riot gear – is more than five miles away at a hastily organized counter-event called the Heart of Memphis. It is scheduled to be an all-day affair at the fairgrounds with food, music, an Easter egg hunt and several panels on improving race relations in this Mississippi River city of more than 600,000 residents, 63% of whom are African-American. ( continue to full post… )

White supremacist student Matthew Heimbach, a thorn in the side of Maryland’s Towson University who has led two racist campus organizations, says his White Student Union (WSU) will start patrolling the campus at night next week in order to halt what his group characterizes as a “black crime wave.”

Heimbach, a 21-year-old who has said he had his “racial awakening” while still in high school, has been in the national news since earlier this month, when he and fellow WSU member Scott Terry interrupted panelists at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with a series of racist arguments. Terry advocated “separate but equal” policies, described slavery as providing food and shelter to black people, and allegedly muttered, “Why can’t we just have segregation” in the exchange. The event, caught on videotape and broadcast nationally, was a severe embarrassment to CPAC, which has tried to avoid being tarred as racist. ( continue to full post… )

A convicted felon from Ohio with neo-Nazi sympathies and an illegal arsenal of assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and other weapons was tracking Jewish and African-American community leaders in Detroit before his recent arrest by a federal anti-terrorism task force, according to a report by Michael Isikoff of NBC News.

“The FBI averted a catastrophe in this case, there’s no doubt about it,” Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. Attorney in Cleveland, told NBC News. ( continue to full post… )

It began about two weeks ago, when a local television station in Memphis, Tenn., allowed a man with a hooded face, identifying himself only as “Edward” and speaking on what was apparently his own rear deck, to announce to the world that he would soon be bringing “thousands” of Klansmen to a protest with no date.

From there, the thin little tale morphed into something of a national story about what is being characterized as “one of the biggest KKK rallies of all time.” Articles have run in New York City newspapers and even abroad about the event, now planned for March 30 while officials weigh the Klan’s permit application, and national TV networks are considering covering it. Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong is asking for help from local and federal law enforcement agencies. The NAACP has decried the event, and a local university art professor created a 600-member Facebook page called “Challenging the Klan’s Message.”

But is the rally — which is a protest of an earlier decision to rename three Memphis parks that honored the Confederacy, including one named after the first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan — really going to be that big? Not even remotely likely. It would be a surprise if the event drew 40 Klansmen, and it will likely be considerably fewer than that. ( continue to full post… )

A Latino street gang leader and his son were sentenced in federal court Monday to lengthy prison terms for their role in a years-long campaign of racist terror and ethnic cleansing targeting African Americans in and around Los Angeles.

Since at least the mid-1990s, Latino street gangs across Los Angeles County have been targeting, beating and sometimes killing blacks in an attempt to drive them out of the region.

Just before Christmas 2006, Cheryl Green, 14, playing on her skateboard with a group of friends just south of 206^th Street in Los Angeles, was shot dead in broad daylight by two men who approached the group and opened fire without saying a word. Two members of the 204^th Street gang were later arrested in the killing. ( continue to full post… )

Students at an Alabama high school who openly engaged in “white power” salutes — including a 17-year-old accused last week of planning to bomb the school and carry out a racist massacre —could have been expelled under district rules, a school board member and a former principal told Hatewatch.

But instead of reporting the neo-Nazi salutes and shouts of “white power” carried out at various times over the past four months at Russell County High — sometimes reportedly in front of teachers, staff and school security cameras — the conduct apparently went unreported and nothing was done about it. ( continue to full post… )

Weeks before Derek Mathew Shrout allegedly started building improvised hand grenades in his military family’s home, before the 17-year-old was arrested for plotting to use the devices against black and gay students and a teacher, he was committing racist acts in full view of everyone at an Alabama high school.

Two of his former friends say that Shrout – sometimes wearing his Junior ROTC U.S. Army-issued uniform – repeatedly performed stiff-arm sieg-heil salutes and shouted “white power” at Russell County High School in Seale, Ala., where he apparently intended to carry out the attacks. The community is some 20 miles from the U.S. Army’s sprawling Fort Benning, Ga., compound, where the suspect’s father is stationed. ( continue to full post… )

A sixth man has pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges related to the June 2011 racially motivated killing in Jackson, Miss., of a black man assaulted and run over with a pickup truck by a gang of white youths. That brutal murder was captured on surveillance video and broadcast nationally.

Joseph Paul Dominick, 21, of Brandon, Miss., faces a maximum of five years in prison after pleading guilty yesterday to conspiracy to commit federal hate crimes. He pleaded guilty to a criminal information, waiving grand jury indictment and striking a plea deal with federal prosecutors, just a month after The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson published an editorial blasting the Justice Department for a  “thick cloud of secrecy” surrounding the protracted investigation. ( continue to full post… )

Last year at this time, self-described prophet Warren Jeffs was predicting the end of the world. According to eight revelations he issued from a jail cell at the beginning of December 2011, divine vengeance was slated to fall upon a nation “fully ripening in iniquity.” Earthquakes were to rock Arizona, and “melting fire” was supposed to roll out across Idaho.

This year? Jeffs is predicting the same demise, only this time compliments of the geysers at Yellowstone National Park. Once they blow their tops, it’s the end for all humankind. ( continue to full post… )

A man who was once seen as a genteel Southerner defending the “honor” of the Confederacy but who secretly lived lavishly on other people’s money now faces the next 19 years in a federal prison cell — possibly in solitary confinement.

The first jolt for 65-year-old Ron Wilson — former national leader of the southern heritage group Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) — may have come when he walked into a packed courtroom in Greenville, S.C., yesterday to be sentenced for the $57.4 million silver bullion Ponzi scheme he operated for more than a decade. There were so many victims who wanted to address the court that a lottery had to be held to determine who could speak, according to media accounts. Many of his 800 identified victims expect to get very little restitution, saying their lives are forever ruined by the swindle Wilson carried out. ( continue to full post… )