Wednesday, March 25, 2026

The Klan Chronicles: A Briefcase Full of Rattlesnakes

The Faulkner adage the past is never dead was proven to be true after it reared its ugly head at the Mississippi Department of Public Safety this week. 

Hood & charter in briefcase found at DPS

DPS will move into a new facility in Rankin County later this year.  There is understandably a great deal of packing as everyone prepares to move.  Since everything that isn't nailed down must be removed from the building, some rather interesting items have been discovered.  One such find was a briefcase filled not with treasure but rattlesnakes from the dark past the Klan ruled in Mississippi. To say there was shock and surprise on the Fifth Floor is an understatement. 

 

A Klan robe, hood, and various Klan documents such as Klorans, meeting minutes, and charters filled the briefcase.  Why did the agency even have this collection? Who knows.  However, it is known the The FBI had an informant inside the Highway Patrol.  It would not be a surprise to learn they were collected by FBI informant Manyard King, the Highway Patrolman referred to as "Mr. X" in Mississippi Burning.  He would have had an interest in digging up as much dirt as he could on the KKK.   



Commissioner Sean Tindall ordered the briefcase and its contents shipped to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.  

JJ managed to snag this bit of history.  The collection has over 100 documents and photos.  As usual, JJ will post the documents.  However, JJ does not want to overwhelm the reader so it is going to post the documents in batches so they are easier to digest as it did with the FBI files in the Owens-Lumumba case.  

This material is a part of the state's dark past when the tyranny of racism reigned supreme.  However, this website has always believed in reporting the past, good and bad, as history is history.  When history is forgotten, the future almost always reminds us of past sins as we commit them again.   This website covered the lynchings, whipping of blacks at the Capitol, and other racial crimes from the past. This post is published in the same vein.  

What is posted below is not published to glorify the Klan but how a terrorist group in Mississippi operated as the briefcase takes off the mask the Klan used so well to terrorize its fellow Mississippians.  The materials are predictable, making the usual remarks about segregation, white pride, and communist plots to overthrow the government through the Civil Rights Movement. 

First up is the picture posted at the beginning of the post.  The suitcase contained a Klan hood and a copy of the Klan's charter.  The charter is posted below as well. 


 

 Most organizations have a mission or creed and the Ku Kux Klan of Mississippi was no exception. 

 

The Klan saw Red everywhere it looked, including the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement.  

 

 

Every organization needs structure.  The Klan even had an organizational chart of sorts. 


The Klan used flyers such as this one to swell its ranks to 100,000 members in the 1960's.  


 More will be posted soon.  Stay tuned. 

 

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

weird so if communists werent funding “civil rights” then why do we have some much evidence of communist infiltration left behind by people like frank marshall davis and lumumba sr?

Anonymous said...

2 pages of names were posted in the dues section…..one of them taught me math in college 25 years later

Anonymous said...

Disgusting how the Klan used to Bible to justify its decidedly unchristian activities.

Anonymous said...

It is important to remember that at one time, far longer than the civil rights act has been in effect, these people dominated the state of Mississippi and was a mainstream organization.

Anonymous said...

When will the racial sensationalism be put to rest? Mistakes were made by our predecessors, the blame is on them, not their offspring. Get over it and be responsible for your own shortcomings. The grace period is over, get off your posteriors and do something for yourselves.

Anonymous said...

The Klan is still alive today! They still have the same goals! The hate they promote continues to persist, and this ongoing cycle affects us all. The majority of the politicians are members of the Klan. All one has to do is look at the laws they approve each and every day. The hate will never stop! It's an ongoing problem that we must continue to confront.

Anonymous said...

Stop noticing!

Anonymous said...

From the Charter:

""hereby charged with the sacred responsibility of preserving Christian civilization, and with the task of effectively and intelligently destroying and all agents or agencies of Satan, whensoever they may detect any such Demons in Human Flesh at their Evil and Treasonous Work."

Why is it the bad guys always seem to think they are actually the good guys?

Anonymous said...

11:22/12:48: So you're saying the Klan was right after all , huh?

Anonymous said...

communist/marxist is always code for jews.

Anonymous said...

I'm 73 years old. I have lived in MS my entire life and never seen a klan robe or a cross burning. I believe the same would be true for most Mississippians alive today. Not saying this didn't occur- it didn't occur around me- and I moved aroung quite a bit.

Anonymous said...

Well due tell.

Anonymous said...

you said that unironically… in Jackson… drinking a tall glass of tap water, right?

Anonymous said...

The Klan left a flyer on my car one Saturday night and there was a Klan meeting in Harperville a community in Scott County and this was 1990 in the spring. Summer of 1990 they marched in my hometown. They would leave flyers with handwritten caricatures of black people in with big lips and snaggled teeth eating catfish and say things like “I ain’t done a days work in seven years and I live on welfare. This was all in black vernacular. This was 1990 folks! I wish I would have saved those flyers. This is rural Mississippi and I know the people ain’t normal. Some of them even stopped when we were hanging out in the parking lot asking us to come to the rally, they were in plain clothes no robes, and we said probably not. They started harassing us telling us we were against the white race. Once again spring of 1990 Newton Countty MS.

Anonymous said...

I am personally just so surprised how non-smoke stained everything is after all of these years. I remember visiting an office downtown in the early 80s with my mom and everyone still smoked at their desks. Crazy how fresh and new this is. Plus DPS was able to keep this all ao pristine aince 1966 but NASA lost the plans to the Saturn V and Lunar Lander and Command Module plus all of the original footage!

Anonymous said...

Yea, kinda like some Democrats are doing these days. You would almost think Democrats were part of the KKK.

Anonymous said...

They were definitely around. I am younger than you, and I saw the Klan in robes in my hometown on several different occasions marching and/or handing out flyers of some sort. I was pretty young, and I remember thinking it was odd that they did not have enough guts to show their faces.

Anonymous said...

My father once told me that the best endorsement of Communism was the activity of the Klan. Back in his day, Black people would be fools not to at least wonder what could be so bad about the Commies if.....

Anonymous said...

2:38, what town? Be specific.

Anonymous said...

"The past is never dead. It's not even past." - Requiem for a Nun by William Faulkner (1951)

Anonymous said...

Seriously. Name names please.

Anonymous said...

1:27, I guess you didn’t make to Pike County in the 60s. Even the (white) publisher of the newspaper, Oliver Emmerich, had crosses burned in his yard and at his business.

https://www.nytimes.com/1978/04/02/archives/mccomb-miss-absorbing-changes-born-of-bombs-and-burning-crosses.html

Did you at least hear/read about all the bombings?


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