While Jeff Sessions may be a mini-George Wallace and a segregationist at heart, it's a mistake to try and associate him with the Ku Klux Klan. Since the early 1960's, no respectable citizen would be part of this notorious hate group. After the Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal was unconstitutional in 1954, a new group emerged on the scene. They were just as secretive, drew upon Klan membership, and were prepared to use any means necessary to protect the white race. The question Democrats should be asking Senator Sessions is this; please describe your associations and connections with the John Birch Society.
Some background. The John Birch Society’s role in the Civil Rights Movement was violent opposition, offering no compromise, as it joined forces with the most vile racist groups in the South. "The Birchers seek to exploit racial tensions, unrest and disorders for their own purposes." They are "indistinguishable from the outpourings of openly racist organizations in the Deep South," and wage "an all-out war against remedies seeking justice and equality for Negroes." 100 (7) The Klan and the JBS were tag-team partners, their leadership intertwined, waging "guerilla race warfare" throughout the South. 14(7)
The JBS was "strongest in Alabama" with 95 chapters with 19 full-time paid coordinators in the land of Dixie. 80(7) The JBS promoted violence from the beginning. "Don't hesitate to break the heads of any saboteurs," wrote the leader of the JBS, Robert Welch. 28(2) Welch tried to dehumanize Civil Rights leaders, calling them part of a "conspiracy of evil," "termites," and "half-crazed ministers." 1(7) The JBS pushed for violent resistance, “I say "grab that gun!" Welch wrote. 49(3) By the early 1960's everyone knew where the JBS stood on Civil Rights, opposing it was of paramount importance to Welch and he waged an "all-out drive against the civil rights movement." 7(7).
The JBS tried to cover their racist underpinnings, wrapping themselves in the flag and taking up the patriotic banner of Americanism. They blamed the Civil Rights Movement on the communists, a sinister plot against America. This deception gave racists a new line of attack. They didn't hate African-Americans, they hated communists. Robert Welch wrote that the Civil Rights Movement "has been deliberately and almost wholly created by the Communists." 21(2) "The movement known as 'civil rights' is Communist-plotted, Communist-controlled." 8(7) He proclaimed to his followers, "Our trumpet call, fully expose the "civil rights" fraud and you will break the back of the Communist conspiracy." 21(2) He believed that African-Americans should be opposed as forcefully as the communist enemy abroad.
Racists like Bull Connor happily accepted the JBS linkage of the Civil Rights movement with communism. "There's not enough room in town for Bull and the Commies," he said. Connor became the face of the violent segregationist movement in Birmingham enforcing Jim Crow with a vengeance, pursuing poll tax and anti-sedition laws, and setting loose rabid dogs and firehoses against nonviolent protesters. While lynching was the tool of the Klan, bombings became the hallmark of this new group of rightwing activists. Birmingham became known as Bombingham, African-American churches and homes became targets. The "JBS could boast more than one hundred chapters in Birmingham, Alabama." 101(34)
The JBS prides itself on being an educational organization, educating the public to their point of view and publishing books like "NRM-- the Negro Revolutionary Movement." 7(7) Bircher Alan Stang wrote, "It's Very Simple- The True Story of Civil Rights," frightening Americans with outlandish conspiracies and declaring that the Civil Rights Act 1964, "a major step toward a Washington dictatorship" 101(34). Robert Welch spread the slander that the leaders of the Civil Rights movement were duplicitous and not to be trusted. He accused Martin Luther King, Jr. of being a Communist and "against the Negroes." He accused JFK and LBJ "of having betrayed their oath of offices." Inevitably, he blamed the Jews behind the movement, 8 (7) linking it up with a world-wide conspiracy calling for the "exposure of the so-called 'Communist-Negro revolutionary movement.'" p.8 (5)
"Robert Welch had already painted a nightmare scenario of Communist-inspired race riots, insurrection, and, ultimately, civil war," stopping the Civil Rights movement was his main priority. He poured his resources into the cause, producing TACT: Truth About Civil Turmoil. He devotes his 1965 lectures to opposing Civil Rights, taking out, full page newspaper ads, having his members swamp the letters to the editors page. 10(7) He printed 500,000 copies of the JBS pamphlet, "Two Revolutions at Once," providing each JBS cell with 100 copies each, calling it the "single most important undertaking of the JBS in its entire seven-year history." "The conflation of communism and civil rights provided fuel for segregationists and helped swell the membership rolls of the Birch Society. By 1965, there were more than two hundred Birch staffers, with a budget of $6 million, a network of 340 bookstores, and an estimated membership of eighty thousand to one hundred thousand in four thousand chapters across the country."
"In Dixie, the growth of the Society closely paralleled the growth of the New Republican Party, which sprang full-blown on the Southern scene in the 1964 election on the crest of the Goldwater tide." 80(7) "Elements of the new Republican Party in the South and the Birch Society have emerged as a major anti-civil rights and pro-segregationist force on the Southern scene, replacing the declining White Citizen's Councils as the spearhead of the opposition to civil rights." The Southern Strategy the Republican Party embraced created a situation where "leadership of the Republican Party and that of the JBS are almost identical." 80(7)
In March 1965, Civil Rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettis Bridge encountering Alabama state troopers on the other side. They were marching to the state capital in Montgomery in honor of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a nonviolent Civil Rights worker gunned down by a state trooper. "Sheriff Jim Clark had issued an order for all white males in Dallas County over the age of twenty-one to report to the courthouse that morning to be deputized." The leader of the JBS was quite familiar with Clark. "Beginning in 1965, Robert Welch had used Selma's sheriff, Jim Clark, as a go-between to pass along the names of key Birchers across the nation anxious to help George Wallace." 154(34)
"Citizen's Councils and JBS leaders formed the nucleus for Alabama Governor George Wallace's 1968 presidential campaign." 13(21) Wallace railed against the Supreme Court and called for a return to "State's Rights" and a repeal of the Voting Rights Act. The JBS promoted him as an "unabashed segregationist." 114(21) With the help of Birchers in California and elsewhere, Wallace's pro-segregation campaign took off nationally. "In state after state outside the South, dedicated Birchers stepped into the organizational void in the 1968 campaign; they dominated the Wallace movement in nearly a dozen states from Maine to California." 154(34) The Wallace campaign needed these "hard-edged men," they used them "at night," the more respectable faces used in the daytime. 342(56) Birchers came out in droves. "Wallace was, drawing crowds at least as big as Nixon's and Humphrey's and "twice as enthusiastic." 343(56)
I hope this helps inform the Republicans and Democrats holding Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearings. It’s kind of a rush job and I apologize for that, but trust me, follow the JBS trail and you’ll have a complete understanding of Senator Sessions, a man who can truthfully disavow the KKK, claim not to have a racist bone in his body, and be a true American patriot, all the while pursuing policies completely in-line with the most reactionary and ugly forces underpinning the John Birch Society.
Any Senator or Congressman interested in further information can contact me at BaracksBackers@gmail.com