Authors: Lamar Waldron
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
498
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
500
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