It's not unusual for corporations to correct dangerous practices because they fear civil damage suits. The risk of multimillion-dollar judgments attracts their attention in ways that even criminal charges against individual officers might not. What is unusual is for such a judgment to be rendered against a corporation called the United Klans of America - and for it to come from an all-white jury in Alabama.
There's much about America's civil rights progress to be pained and impatient about. But the Federal court verdict in Mobile, Ala., is still monumental, ordering the U.K.A. and six past and present Klansmen to pay $7 million in damages for the murder of a young black man in 1981.
Two members, James Knowles and Henry Francis Hays, were convicted of beating and strangling 19-year-old Michael Donald and leaving him to hang from a tree. The jury accepted the theory that the U.K.A. was responsible for inciting its members to kill him. Mr. Knowles, serving a life sentence after pleading guilty, testified that Mr. Donald had been randomly abducted and killed to show Klan strength in Alabama and to intimidate blacks from serving on juries. He said he had been influenced by Klan literature, including a newsletter depicting a lynching.
Klan members like James Knowles have been sent to prison for violent acts against blacks. But this is the first time a Klan organization has been held financially liable because it was so linked to violence committed by its members. The Alabama verdict gives a new meaning to the old slogan: those who sanction brutal crimes must pay.Continue reading the main story