The Gadfly: Then They Came For Me...

From The Tulsa World ~ A former Ku Klux Klan leader who has since renounced the organization says the hate group is "making a comeback in Oklahoma," pointing to the recruitment — and eventual killing — of a Tulsa woman by a Louisiana segment of the group. Louisiana authorities have said Cynthia Charlotte Lynch, 43, was recruited to join the group but was killed when she decided to leave an initiation ritual that took place last Sunday. Johnny Lee Clary, 49, used to be active in the KKK — rising to the rank of imperial wizard — but he quit in 1989 and now preaches against such hate groups. He said he's seen signs of the group's comeback in Oklahoma "for some time now, and my message to my fellow Oklahomans is: Don't buy their messages of hate. There are a number of things they will try to use to their advantage to spread their hate propaganda — the poor economy, illegal immigration, the election of a black president. Just remember, this is the kind of violence they are capable of. I know."

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On the night of May 17,1927, as guests gathered for a wedding reception at 801 Spruce Street in Atlantic, Iowa, they found a cross burning on the lawn. Locals of the Ku Klux Klan had let it be known they disapproved of the marriage of John Holsworth and Minnie Jobes Simmons' daughter, 19-year-old Lolita, like her parents a Presbyterian, to a Roman Catholic. Catholics, like blacks and Jews, were Klan targets. There were threats, as well, but (it is speculated) the prominence of the Simmons family in the community gave it some degree of protection.

John Holsworth and Minnie Jobes Simmons were my grandparents, their daughter Lolita and her new husband Millard McCarville my parents.

I relate this bit of family history after reading several stories about the renewed activities of the KKK and other haters of Jews, Catholics and blacks in light of the election of Barack Obama as president and I am reminded of these words from the German Rev. Martin Niemuller: "In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me–and by that time no one was left to speak up."

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