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… )

The Associated Press today has an in-depth story about the revival of the Inland Northwest as a haven for anti-government extremists and white supremacists. The small town of Kalispell, Montana, has recently seen some new and infamous arrivals, including white supremacist stage mother April Gaede, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, and Randy Weaver of Ruby Ridge standoff fame.

A Newark man was indicted today on charges of intimidating and murdering Victoria Carmen White after learning that White was a transgender woman. The slaying marks yet another example of the vulnerability of gays and transgender people. The SPLC reported recently that LGBT people are by far the group most targeted by violent hate crime.

Testimony in the trial of accused cop-killer and white nationalist Richard Poplawski has revealed that SWAT responders feared that Poplawski’s surrender was an ambush. Evidence presented today detailed the near-depletion of the SWAT team’s ammunition in the gun battle, Poplawski’s repeated use of racial slurs during the standoff, and his admission of murdering three Pittsburgh officers. ( continue to full post… )

It’s a new and twisted world when the Ku Klux Klan takes on the Westboro Baptist Church, the famously rabid anti-gay group founded by Fred Phelps in Topeka, Kan. Needless to say, most Klan groups despise gays and lesbians only slightly less than black and Jewish people.

But over Memorial Day weekend, about 10 members of a tiny Powhatan Va.-based Klan group called the Knights of the Southern Cross Soldiers of the Ku Klux Klan joined a counterprotest against Phelps’ church held by about 70 people waving pro-U.S. signs. Like the other counter-protesters who came to denounce the Westboro hate group, the Klan tried to screen funeral services being held at Arlington National Cemetery from the “God Hates Fags” signs that have come to define the Phelps family and its church. Phelps claims that U.S. soldiers are being killed by a God angered at America’s “fag-enabling” ways. ( continue to full post… )

A federal judge this morning sentenced Ronald Wayne Edwards (seen at right during a deposition in 2007), former imperial wizard of the Kentucky-based Imperial Klans of America (IKA), to 48 months in prison, The Associated Press reported.

Edwards, who was charged with federal gun and drug violations, pleaded guilty in March. Along with his longtime girlfriend, Christina Gillette, who pleaded guilty on drug charges, he was accused trafficking methamphetamines and painkillers. Gillette will serve 12 months and one day in prison, the AP said. ( continue to full post… )

Jarred Hensley is a white supremacist who likes to hurt people. He did prison time for it. And now he’s figured out a way to hurt people and even break a country’s laws without having to do jail time. Along the way, he’s also caused something of an international uproar on the Internet.

Hensley is a Cincinnati-based activist in the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), one who already brought serious trouble to the organization. In 2006, he and fellow IKA member Andrew R. Watkins brutally assaulted a 16-year-old in rural Kentucky because they thought he was Latino. The pair spent three years in prison for the attack, and the SPLC brought a lawsuit against the IKA that resulted in a $2.5 million judgment against the hate group.

Now, Hensley — out of prison and evidently with a lot of time on his hands — has joined the ranks of Internet “trolls” who haunt the Web and harass people for various reasons, including leaving ugly messages for bereaved family members and friends of the deceased. (A recent New York Times Magazine piece explored their weird world in depth.) ( continue to full post… )

Although it’s a small town of about 7,800, Pulaski, Tenn. may well be the white supremacist epicenter of the nation — at least if the number of rallies held there by bigoted groups is any indication.

The mayor and other residents aren’t pleased. “There’s never been a local person involved in these marches or rallies,” Mayor Daniel Speer told Hatewatch this week. But they’re resigned to being a favorite locale for the haters on the American radical right. Speer’s town is more than one-quarter black, but it has for decades been a favorite place for white supremacist groups to rally because of one unfortunate historical fact: This was where the Ku Klux Klan was born.

The next such event on tap in Pulaski: the annual European Heritage Festival, scheduled for Oct. 23. The event, despite its name, has the heavy footprint of the Klan all over it. Sponsors include the Christian Revival Center led by long-time Arkansas Klan leader Thom Robb; the Knights Party USA (better known by its original name of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan), which is Robb’s “political” organization; Voice of Reason radio, which features interviews with white nationalist luminaries such as Jamie Kelso and Tomislav Sunic; and Abundant Life Fellowship of Morgantown, Ind. ( continue to full post… )

White racial extremists are certain that “their” culture is under attack and has to be defended with guns. “If there is going to be any salvation of our culture, white European culture, violence is guaranteed because they’re not listening,” says long-time neo-Nazi and White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger. I am not quite sure what Metzger is talking about — salvation for European culture in the United States? What exactly is “white culture”? But as Mariah Wilson’s new documentary “Revealing Hate” shows, racial extremists are typically better at advocating and committing violence than coherently explaining their irrational views.

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