Legacy of Secrecy (100 page)

areas, and because of blockbusting in their neighborhoods, they now felt

uprooted again. Unlike the other two auto plants—one on the North-

side, which was largely immune from blockbusting; and the Ford plant,

far south and next to an interstate highway—the Lakewood workers

had to relocate far from their plant. Many had to exchange a pleasant

commute of a few minutes through tree-lined neighborhood streets to

a grueling daily drive from the far suburbs—a transition that created

more anger and resentment for Milteer and his associates to channel

toward their cause.

Milteer’s activities at Lakewood by 1967 were building on a tradition

established in the early 1950s, when a Lakewood employee revitalized

the Klan, and continued in 1964, when Lester Maddox had chosen the

Lakewood neighborhood for the first “all-star” racist rally that launched

his political success. Maddox welcomed George Wallace, Mississippi

Governor Ross Barnett, and Klan Imperial Wizard Calvin Craig to

address a crowd of more than ten thousand. The speakers so incited the

crowd that two black men were beaten by the assemblage, to chants of

“Kill ’em!”23 (Again, it’s important to stress that most Lakewood workers

didn’t participate in or support such actions, but some did.)

At lunchtime each Friday, thousands of Lakewood auto workers

made a mad dash to cash their large paychecks. Upon their return, and

when they got off work, Spake would be ready to collect money from

the various contributors. Usually, Milteer’s other partners—the attorney

or the dentist (or both)—were also on hand, and once or twice a month,

Milteer himself would be present as well. Milteer used his contacts and

credibility with a wide range of racist groups to his clique’s advantage.

If a worker wanted to support the Klan without being an actual member,

Milteer presented contributing to his clique as a way to do exactly that.

If a worker wanted to support the more mainstream Citizens’ Council,

the presence of the attorney and the dentist helped in that regard. As

a decorated veteran, Spake could frame the worker’s contributions in

patriotic terms, evoking General Joseph Walker and George Wallace’s

soon-to-be running mate, General Curtis LeMay.

The money Milteer’s clique collected was all cash, so the exact amount

they collected each week can’t be determined, but it was substantial and

had been accumulating since at least 1965. Milteer and his partners may

have had someone like Hugh R. Spake at one or both of the other Atlanta

auto plants, generating a similar take. However, the only one we can cite

with absolute certainly is the Lakewood plant.24

Various literature was also available from Milteer and his associates:

relatively crude newsletters and flyers that Milteer produced himself,

polished publications obtained from the John Birch Society, material

from the Klan, and J. B. Stoner’s locally published
Thunderbolt
news-

paper. Essentially, the workers who contributed were in three groups.

The first and largest group was interested in trying to learn about—and

counter—what they perceived as forces turning their tranquil world

upside down with the integration of schools, housing, and government.

A smaller number were interested in the more aggressive action repre-

sented by the Klan and Stoner’s group. Out of that group, only the most

trusted regular and substantial contributors would be told—after many

months, and then only in the strictest confidence—that all the money

wasn’t just going to generally fight civil rights and Martin Luther King.

Instead, they were told, it was really funding a plan to kill Martin Luther

King.

Milteer and his partners had found a way to raise substantial amounts

of money while avoiding the FBI and other law enforcement organiza-

tions’ surveillance of groups like the Klan. The money was probably

never reported for income tax purposes, and much of it was spent buy-

ing up undeveloped mountain land in North Carolina. Milteer’s contrib-

utors were not part of a traditionally organized group, so authorities had

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

no membership lists, offices to bug, or office phones to tap. There were

no regular meetings or rallies that law enforcement could infiltrate. The

union jobs were highly prized, especially the high-seniority day shift—

where the men had often worked together for ten or twenty years—so

planting an undercover informant in the workforce would have been

difficult for the FBI, even if it had tried. Finally, if Dr. King were ever

murdered, Milteer’s most faithful contributors could be trusted to never

boast to outsiders about their own role in funding it.

We spoke to a source who knew Spake well for more than a decade

and witnessed, on many occasions, Spake with Milteer and his two

Citizens’ Council partners. This confidential source had wide-ranging

contacts around the Lakewood plant, and learned that Spake and Milteer

confided to their most trusted contributors that the funds were being

used to finance Dr. King’s assassination. Our source assumed it was the

same type of racist boast and demagoguery he had heard for years—

until the day after Dr. King’s murder. That’s when he learned firsthand

that James Earl Ray called Hugh Spake that morning—and within hours,

Joseph Milteer was with Ray in Atlanta.25

Chapter Forty

Joseph Milteer and his Atlanta accomplices initially tried to search

beyond their immediate area and colleagues to find someone to kill

Martin Luther King. FBI files show that in the year prior to Dr. King’s

murder, contracts to kill King were offered on at least three occasions—

and each time, the contract was tied to either Atlanta or associates of

Milteer and his partners.

Because the Klan groups had been shrinking, even as the FBI increased

their infiltration efforts, using Atlanta or Georgia Klansmen for the hit

could have been too easily traced back to Milteer’s group. Another factor

was the money being offered. Some Klansmen had committed murder—

but not for money, according to William Bradford Huie, whose most

recent books as of 1967 were
Three Lives for Mississippi
and
The Klansman
,

both about real-life racial killings. Huie, who had interviewed several

admitted Klan murderers, wrote that “Klansmen don’t kill for pay. Nor

do they pay killers. Klansmen kill from religious conviction. The average

Klan killer attends church and has no previous criminal record.” Huie

also pointed out that while “Klansmen hated Dr. King . . . they didn’t

hate him so intensely in 1968 as they did in 1963 or 1964 or 1965,” before

other black leaders emerged to share the spotlight with King.1

Even in 1965, a $100,000 bounty on King, which FBI files say was

floated at a May 1965 Klan meeting in North Carolina, was unsuccessful.

Authors Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler write that “the Klan screened

candidates and had possibly picked an individual who would make

an attack on King during a visit to North Carolina,” but nothing came

of it. The offer had originated with a southeastern Klan group, but the

actual source of the funds could not be determined. This could have

been an early effort from Milteer’s Atlanta clique, taking advantage

of the area where they were buying North Carolina land. If Milteer’s

group wasn’t behind the offer, his extensive Klan connections and visits

to North Carolina made it likely that he was at least aware of the 1965

offer—and its lack of success.2

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

By 1967, as the pressure increased on Joseph Milteer’s group to take

action against Dr. King, Milteer had other reasons to find a killer outside

of Atlanta. Through his travels and network of contacts, Milteer would

have been aware of the February 1967 articles about him in Miami,

even though they omitted his name. Milteer probably assumed—and

correctly—that the FBI or Secret Service would start looking at him as

a result of the articles. Because of that, Milteer would have known it

would be far better for him and his partners to locate an assassin by

using their contacts in other cities, even outside the South.

Milteer was one of the relatively few racist leaders of the time with

good contacts on most socioeconomic levels of the anti–civil rights move-

ment. He had connections to the lowest level, the Klan; a step higher,

to J. B. Stoner’s National States Rights Party (NSRP); and higher still,

by being a member of the Atlanta White Citizens’ Council. The Atlanta

chapter was part of a loose network of similar groups across the South,

whose membership included professionals, leading businessmen, and

officials who would never attend a Klan rally.3

The wealthier and more prominent members of the White Citizens’

Councils were sometimes part of the highest economic level of groups

opposing civil rights: Business organizations whose members were

powerful executives at several top Southern companies. They reaped

most of the financial benefits from the activities of the lower-level racist

groups.

By the 1940s and ’50s, it was no longer acceptable for Southern gov-

ernors, the National Guard, sheriffs, or company security forces to shoot

striking workers and their families, as had been done in the 1930s. How-

ever, as the
Mississippi Historical Review
noted, by the 1940s the Klan

was helping to defeat union drives in the South. It’s often overlooked

that in addition to opposing civil rights, the Klan, Stoner’s NSRP, the

White Citizens’ Councils, national groups like the John Birch Society,

and certain business associations also preached a strong anti-union mes-

sage. While the higher-level groups didn’t take physical action against

unions, they deflected workers’ frustrations away from employers, rac-

ist politicians, and blockbusting real estate firms by instead directing

their anxiety and anger toward blacks and their leaders.4

Congressional investigators spotlighted one of these high-level South-

ern business groups, whose president said in a speech after Dr. King’s

murder “that Martin Luther King brought his crime upon himself.”

The members of this group included an “assistant Vice President [of]

Southern Bell . . . Atlanta,” a “Vice President [of] Mississippi Power &

Light,” and one of the highest executives at “Carolina Power & Light.”

In contrast to the inflammatory rhetoric found in publications from the

Klan and in Stoner’s
Thunderbolt
newspaper, this Southern business

group’s literature featured smoothly written, PR-savvy denunciations of

the media’s coverage of racism in the South and “communist infiltration

of the Negro movement.” They also favored ending union rights and

sanctions against white-run Rhodesia. Although that business group

was not part of Dr. King’s murder, its agenda shows the scope of interests

aligned against civil rights in 1967—and the House Select Committee on

Assassinations (HSCA) discovered that one of its members had offered

a contract on Dr. King’s life.5

John Sutherland was a member of that business group and Congres-

sional investigators found that he was also a member and “early orga-

nizer” of the White Citizens’ Council in St. Louis. A St. Louis patent

attorney, Sutherland had also looked into joining Stoner’s NSRP and

could have come into contact with Joseph Milteer either through the Cit-

izens’ Councils or via the NSRP, for which Milteer was a well-traveled

organizer. Sutherland’s wife was from Atlanta, and one of his colleagues

in the St. Louis White Citizens’ Council attended meetings of the NSRP

and may also have had Klan contacts. Like Milteer, Sutherland was a

true believer: One of his friends testified to the HSCA that “Sutherland

was a ‘diehard Southerner’ who would ‘never let the Civil War die.’”6

The HSCA found that in “late 1966 or early 1967 [a] relatively sophis-

ticated and experienced criminal” in St. Louis named Russell Byers was

approached by a Sutherland associate named John Kauffmann. A crimi-

nal himself, Kauffmann “asked [Byers] if he would like to earn $50,000”

($300,000 in today’s dollars). That night, the two met with Sutherland

at his home, a memorable setting whose den “had a rug replica of a

Confederate flag. . . . Sutherland [wore] a Confederate colonel’s hat.”

Sutherland was in his early sixties at the time, as was Kauffmann, and

in spite of the silly hat, Sutherland was deadly serious.7

Byers testified that “Sutherland offered [him] $50,000 to kill Mar-

tin Luther King.” When Byers asked who was putting up the money,

“Sutherland said he belonged to a secret southern organization, and

they had a lot of money.” The HSCA investigated both the St. Louis

White Citizens’ Council and the business group mentioned earlier, and

determined that they were not behind the offer. Sutherland himself

would leave an estate of $300,000 when he died three years later, but