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The old Echo Theater on the courthouse square in Laurens, S.C., is now dubbed the World Famous Redneck Shoppe. It's crammed with racist memorabilia, from cheap Confederate flag flip-flops and bikinis, to T-shirts that announce, "Ain't Racist, Just Never Met a Nigger I Liked." The shop's operator, John Howard, boasts that he's been a "member of the Ku Klux Klan for 40-some years."
On Sept. 16, the Redneck Shoppe was packed with avowed racists from across the nation and even Europe -- a "unity" gathering sponsored by Aryan Nations.
As the boisterous convention drew to a close, a black child, maybe 8 years old, rode past the Echo.
Howard, pointing a stubby finger at the kid, loudly sneered: "There's a nigger there I'd like to hang."
Snorts and hoots and hollerin' greeted Howard's invitation to a child lynching. One fellow in tattered overalls slapped his thigh and began an exaggerated pantomime of pulling a rope.
Oddly enough, the 24-hour orgy of racism billed as Aryan Nations' 25th World Congress began the night before with a love story.
On Friday evening, "Senior Pastor" Jonathan Williams, the leader of Aryan Nations, married an Alabama couple. The bride, Carrie, wore appropriately Aryan tattoos and a beige gown. The groom, Joseph Frieda, sported the powder-blue uniform shirt of Aryan Nations. The ceremony was the conventional "I do" ritual -- conventional if you ignored Williams' bodyguard standing stage right dressed in ebony Klan robes and a towering black hood.
Beaming after the nuptials, Williams ended the ceremony with an enthusiastic swinging-arm Nazi salute. "Heil Hitler!" "Heil Hitler!" exclamations softly rippled through the 20 well-wishers.
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