The Best of Enemies: Chapters 6–7

Most of the time the Southern gentry spoke in code about such things.

It was a reminder of a better time, before the disaster of the Civil War and the ignominy of Reconstruction.

Above this tragic tableau were the words "CONQUER and BREED.”

While others spoke of the need for “understanding” and “tolerance” during these troubled times, the proud reactionary blasted the civil rights movement as nothing more than “anarchy” led by “professional agitators, opportunistic charlatans, and political phonies.”

Helms deftly wove “Christian values” with private property rights, linked racial themes with attacks on government “intrusions” into business, and preached the sanctity of the free market system so convincingly and with such scriptural authority that his viewers believed that the Sermon on the Mount had been a defense of laissez-faire capitalism.

Helms deftly wove “Christian values” with private property rights, linked racial themes with attacks on government “intrusions” into business, and preached the sanctity of the free market system so convincingly and with such scriptural authority that his viewers believed that the Sermon on the Mount had been a defense of laissez-faire capitalism.

One of them asked C.P. a series of questions while the others stood around him. Was he native-born? White? Gentile?

God give us men!
Men who serve not for selfish booty.
But real men, courageous, who flinch not at duty;
Men of dependable character; men of sterling worth;
Then wrongs will be redressed, and right will rule the earth;
God give us men!

The invocation, coupled with the slow journey through the dim rooms, aroused in him a sense of foreboding.

The invocation, coupled with the slow journey through the dim rooms, aroused in him a sense of foreboding.

"It is indeed refreshing to meet face to face with a man like you, who, actuated by manly motives, aspires to all things noble for yourself and humanity. The luster of the holy light of chivalry has lost its former glory and is sadly dimmed by the choking dust of selfish, sordid gain. Pass on!”

"It is indeed refreshing to meet face to face with a man like you, who, actuated by manly motives, aspires to all things noble for yourself and humanity. The luster of the holy light of chivalry has lost its former glory and is sadly dimmed by the choking dust of selfish, sordid gain. Pass on!”

"Sir,” the man intoned, "'neath the uplifted Fiery Cross, which by its holy light looks down upon you to bless with its sacred traditions of the past, Claiborne Paul Ellis, I dedicate you in body, in mind, in spirit, and in life to the holy service of our country, our Klan, our homes, each other, and humanity.”

The Ku Klux Klan was born in the summer of 1866, in the sultry postwar tedium of tiny Pulaski, Tennessee—a jolly little club of ex-Confederate soldiers who played pranks and good-natured tricks on one another.

The Ku Klux Klan was born in the summer of 1866, in the sultry postwar tedium of tiny Pulaski, Tennessee—a jolly little club of ex-Confederate soldiers who played pranks and good-natured tricks on one another.

Within weeks, the organization was hijacked by embittered Democrats bent on deposing the white Republicans who had replaced the old planter rule.

Of course, the "openness” Lewis spoke of was nothing more than the candor of a dictator who has eliminated all opposition, for matters were “aboveboard” only because oppression was now enshrined in the law.

In slightly more than a generation, the Klan, an invention of the Southern upper classes, was universally regarded as a purely lower-class phenomenon, indeed a phenomenon so brutal and bigoted that it could have only come from that innately racist and inherently violent lower social stratum.

Besides “suspect” religions, the immigrants brought with them a hunger for improved living standards, an animus against oppressive authority, and a history of collective action, particularly in labor unions.

Internal power struggles also mortally wounded the North Carolina Klan, which shattered into several warring factions.

And every few years, with a regularity and rapture that approached ritual, they traded up for a new car.

In the late 1950s, school desegregation was the most immediate threat to white middle-class Southerners. Horrifying mental images of classrooms in which rapacious black boys sat within arm’s reach of their innocent daughters flickered through their heads.

Jesse Helms constantly whipped up these fears in his television commentaries, devoting several evenings to “exposing” connections between civil rights leaders and Communists and fuming over..."general depravity” within the movement.

Standing behind the Councils in North Carolina, but aloof from them, were the Big Men who controlled the institutions of the state—the bankers, industrialists, insurance company presidents, and real estate magnates whom historian V. O. Key referred to collectively as an "aggressive aristocracy.”

Standing behind the Councils in North Carolina, but aloof from them, were the Big Men who controlled the institutions of the state—the bankers, industrialists, insurance company presidents, and real estate magnates whom historian V. O. Key referred to collectively as an "aggressive aristocracy.”

Far more damage was done to individual blacks and to the civil rights movement as a whole by the machinations of the Citizens’ Councils—and by the even less obvious actions and inactions of the Durham elite—than by Klan violence.

The nonplussed manager sold them tickets.

In 1963, the level of activity and the emotional pitch within the region ratcheted up a notch.

Louis Austin used the occasion to expound on a pet grievance: class divisions within the black community.

Although no friend of the Nation of Islam, Louis Austin objected to the city’s arbitrary action, writing that “Negroes need no protection from Durham’s city officials to safeguard them against one of their own though he comes in the ridiculous form of a Malcolm X, a Malcolm Y or a Malcolm Z.”

The day of the debate, McKissick’s daughter Joycelyn, now a student at NCC, was incensed when she learned that the school had banned Malcolm from the campus.

The state’s chief executive, dressed in black tie and tails, emerged reluctantly from the mansion to quiet the angry black crowd, while the dulcet tones of soprano Eleanor Steber singing "Un Bel Dì" ("One Bright Day") from Puccini’s opera Madam Butterfly drifted out from the huge house.

He was thin to the point of cadaverousness, and spoke in a stilted fashion that struck some as formal and others as pompous—either impression reinforced by Grabarek’s habit of wearing a red carnation in his lapel at all times.

He was thin to the point of cadaverousness, and spoke in a stilted fashion that struck some as formal and others as pompous—either impression reinforced by Grabarek’s habit of wearing a red carnation in his lapel at all times.

The small concession placated the demonstrators outside the courthouse and they agreed to leave, defusing the situation, at least for a while.

In contrast to Wilkins, Farmer backed the students’ efforts 100 percent and enjoined every man, woman, and child in St. Joseph’s to participate in the direct-action campaign in any way possible.

As a large contingent of whites headed toward Hayti, they came face to face with another group of blacks not traditionally aligned with the civil rights movement.

The Exalted Cyclops, a housepainter named Jack Murray, who had immigrated from West Germany, delivered long, wandering diatribes against the Jews, who, he claimed, had destroyed his first country and now were demolishing his second.

Some of its members had hurled bottles and rocks during the recent demonstrations, but when the marches and rallies ended, the Klansmen contented themselves with their weekly doses of ritual and vitriol.

True, a couple of caveats were thrown in, but these were clearly meant to suggest that Durham, for all its achievements, still possessed a sense of humility.