Envision this: Dress up in a Ku Klux Klan robe for Halloween. Pound on your neighbors’ doors, yelling racial slurs, demanding candy. Carry a spray bottle of bleach to “make everyone white.”

What will that get you? A 42-year-old woman in Spokane, Wash., just found out: Four felony charges of malicious harassment and the possibility of a prison term if convicted. ( continue to full post… )

After a four-year legal battle, a black Baptist church in South Carolina now is the legal owner of a building housing the infamous Redneck Shop, which operates a Ku Klux Klan museum and sells KKK and other racist clothing.

The Rev. David Kennedy, a long-time civil rights activist and pastor of New Beginnings Baptist Church in Laurens, S.C., told Hatewatch today he can’t wait to turn the racist landmark “into a place of diversity.”

“I don’t want that business there,” Kennedy said. “When our church takes over in full, that’s when that business will end. Basically, we just think it’s a matter of time – but soon.” ( continue to full post… )

An African pastor in Concord, N.H., said a hate-filled message was written on his home in black marker. Two other homes in the neighborhood, also occupied by African immigrants, were targeted. Each message referred to the families as “subhuman” and said the victims were getting a free ride. Concord is a major hub for the International Resettlement Program, which places refugees seeking political asylum in American communities.

Residents of a Sand Springs, Okla., neighborhood say they were shocked when they woke up Sunday morning to fliers in their yards from the United White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The literature said the group does not burn crosses or lynch people and urged flier recipients to “Support your local Klan.”

The Harris County, Texas, District Attorney plans to prosecute the case of a self-proclaimed white supremacist accused of beating a black man at a downtown Houston bus stop last month as a hate crime. According to a local activist, this is the first time charges have been upgraded to a hate crime in Harris County.
Brooklyn, N.Y., police are investigating an alleged hate crime after discovering two swastikas in the lobby of a Williamsburg neighborhood apartment building earlier this week.

Billy Roper, one of the country’s leading professional racists, says he’s closing the doors of his 9-year-old White Revolution organization, which he concedes has been a failure, and will join forces with long time Klan leader Thom Robb.

“As the leader of the organization, I am solely responsible and accept full responsibility for White Revolution’s lack of success as a membership organization,” Roper writes in “an open letter to the white nationalist movement.”

Effective immediately, Roper says, “White Revolution will cease to accept new membership applications and will suspend all recruitment activities as a membership organization while we undergo a period of reorganization and dismantlement …”

His organization may be disbanding, but he’s still a racist, Roper says. “This is not really an occasion for sadness, because I am not retiring from the movement. I am just putting aside my pride and my ego and doing what is best for my family, my race and our cause.” ( continue to full post… )

Residents in New Castle County, Del., have reported that the Ku Klux Klan is actively recruiting new members by targeting predominantly white neighborhoods in Newport, an area southwest of Wilmington. According to reports, a Klan group is leaving calling cards in sandwich bags filled with rocks that they throw out of car windows onto lawns and driveways.

A Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue employee alleges he is the victim of a hate crime. Upon arriving for work Aug. 28, 2011, Miguel Rodriguez alleges he found an unsigned note on his locker.  The note contained anti-black and anti-Latino racial slurs and a threat if Rodriguez were to return to his shift. Rodriguez reported several other incidents of harassment last year. County authorities are investigating the alleged incident.

Jury deliberations resumed Monday in the trial of a California teen accused of murdering a gay classmate three years ago. Seventeen-year-old Brandon McInerney is charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of 15-year-old Larry King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard. McInerney has pleaded not guilty to one count each of murder and a hate crime.

A Stockton woman was arrested for allegedly assaulting her child’s principal over a dress code violation by punching her in the face. Police say Pami Gibbs also is accused of making references to ethnicity during the attack on Evangelina Ramos. Gibbs was booked on two felony charges of battery, criminal threats, and three misdemeanors, including hate crime.

Police in Staunton, Va., are investigating an incident where an expletive and “KKK” were burned into a person’s yard last week.  Police do not consider the incident a hate crime because the home is occupied by a white family. No arrests have been made.

Police are continuing to investigate an attack against a 21-year-old transgender woman who was beaten with a baseball bat in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle, Wash. According to police, who have stopped short of labeling the assault as a bias crime, the victim reported that she was attacked when a woman with a baseball bat, and a man, started following her and hit her. If an arrest is made, prosecutors will decide whether to pursue bias-crime charges against the attacker.

The FBI has joined the investigation into the racially motivated murder of an African-American man in Jackson, Miss. At the request of the Hinds County district attorney, the FBI is looking into whether federal hate crime charges can be applied to two teens accused of beating and then running over James Anderson, allegedly because he was black.

A California man accused of burning a cross next to a black family’s yard is claiming he did so to honor the memory of his father. Jason Kahn, 36, has been charged with a hate crime for setting a 12-foot cross, stolen from a church, on fire next to a black teen’s home. Kahn alleges the spot was near where his father was shot and killed by police, and the cross was to commemorate the death.

Police in Michigan City, Ind., are investigating the vandalizing of a local mosque. Officials of the Islamic Center of Michigan City say they found several windows broken with rocks and a cinderblock.

An Indiana branch of the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is suing officials in Rush County after it was issued a citation for littering while distributing leaflets. The group, represented by the ACLU, is claiming that the citation violates its rights to free speech.

James Ford Seale, a long-time member of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who very nearly got away with murder, has died. After serving less than four years of three life sentences for the 1964 murders of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, both 19, Seale, 76, died in prison this Tuesday.

The Dee/Moore double murder was a classic horror story of the unreconstructed South battling against efforts to end segregation and racial terrorism. Even though Seale’s fellow murderer, Charles Marcus Edwards, gave the FBI a signed confession at the time and both men were arrested, a Mississippi justice of the peace promptly dismissed the case against the Klansmen with no explanation at all. Earlier, a local sheriff told Moore’s mother, who had reported her son missing, that Charles Moore was staying with relatives of the Moores in Louisiana — a lie.

The killings came during what civil rights workers called “Freedom Summer,” a period that may have seen the worst racial terrorism of the civil rights movement. When activists vowed to come to Mississippi that summer to undo segregation, White Knights chief Samuel Bowers ordered his members to carry out a series of “counterattacks” against “selected targets.” Six weeks later, White Knights abducted and murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in a case that was later recounted in the movie “Mississippi Burning.” It was while dredging the Mississippi River near Tallulah for those three civil rights workers that the disfigured bodies of Dee and Moore were found — two more Southern black men in a group of murdered racial martyrs whose entire roster will never be known. ( continue to full post… )

One of the prime suspects in the murder of civil rights activists in the 1960s died on Wednesday. Richard Willis, a former Philadelphia, Miss., police officer, was long seen as part of the group of Klansmen involved in the killing of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner in 1964. The incident spawned a massive FBI investigation and the indictment of nearly 18 men on federal conspiracy charges.

Four Texas men connected to a white supremacist prison gang have been arrested for a brutal home invasion. Jason Skolaski, 34, Shannon Michael Kasper, 20, Ned Alan Smith, 42, and his 15-year old son broke into the house of a San Jacinto County couple, stole $300, and then cut off the finger of one of the residents with a pair of bolt cutters before fleeing. The three adult suspects are believed to be part of the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood of Texas.

A New Jersey woman was arrested for illegally occupying a foreclosed house and committing forgery. Jolanda S. Bordley-Jackson EL, 41, is accused of moving into a foreclosed home in Mullica Township, filing a fraudulent deed claiming ownership of the house, and putting the utilities in her name while changing the locks of the house. Police say the woman is a member of the Moorish Science Temple of America, some of whose members hold the beliefs of the sovereign citizen movement.

DNA evidence has been presented in the trial of two Illinois men alleged to have beaten and robbed a woman because of her sexual orientation. The defense is seeking a possible plea deal over the evidence, which may provide a definitive link to the crime in which the two assailants made anti-gay slurs at the woman before they punched, kicked and robbed her.

The FBI has begun an investigation into a possible hate crime in Nevada. As previously reported, a Native American family claims to have been targeted and assaulted by a group of three skinheads, which led to the arrest of one of the victims, Johnny Bonta, but not the attackers. The Lyon County Sheriff’s Office is disputing the claims, but concerns have arisen over one of the attackers being the son of a former deputy. ( continue to full post… )