Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
DOI 10.1007/s11133-009-9137-1
Ambivalence and Control: State Action Against the Civil
Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan
David Cunningham
Published online: 4 August 2009
# Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009
Abstract Models that purport to explain the interplay between dissidents and the state
generally assert, either explicitly or implicitly, that the path from state interests to action to
outcomes is a linear one. Using the case of the United Klans of America (UKA) in North
Carolina, I argue that state efforts to exert social control upon a perceived threat are shaped
by a range of internal and external contingencies. In particular, I undertake a comparative
analysis of two state agencies to demonstrate how a particular mechanism—ambivalence,
here conceptualized as the relational consequence of a mismatch between organizational
culture and organizational goals—leads to distinct, and sometimes heterogeneous, actions
and outcomes not directly traceable to organizational mandates. Findings lend insight into
how endogenous organizational processes shape contentious political outcomes in
potentially divergent ways.
Keywords Repression-mobilization nexus . State repression . Ambivalence
Most analysts of the relationship between popular protest and state action—the so-called
repression-mobilization nexus—focus on the indeterminate impact of state-induced
sanctions on subsequent protest activity. When faced with this question of how repression
impacts protest, researchers have found that, depending on the context examined, dissidents
have responded by increasing their resolve, backing away from the fight, or some complex
combination of the two (Lichbach 1987; Rasler 1996). But Davenport (2005) notes an
equally important finding involving the inverse relationship: an escalation in protest
produces a seemingly uniform response by state actors, namely increased repression.
Perhaps because this repressive escalation seems a straightforward instance of the state
acting to protect itself from threats to its legitimacy, there have been relatively few attempts
to explore more deeply the analytic underpinnings of this uniform relationship (for
exceptions, see Davenport 1995; Poe and Tate 1994). However, given recent calls to
disaggregate highly-generalized hypotheses about the interplay of repression and
D. Cunningham (*)
Department of Sociology, Brandeis University, MS 071, Waltham, MA 02454-9110, USA
e-mail: dcunning@brandeis.edu
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mobilization (Davenport 2005), to give attention to the “quality” as well as the quantity of
state repressive action (Chang 2008), and to identify constitutive mechanisms that explain
outcomes tied to contentious episodes (McAdam et al. 2001), there is much to gain by
examining more closely how protest impacts the allocation of state repression.
Such an effort requires that we develop a more sophisticated understanding of the
processes through which state action occurs. Reducing state action against dissidents to
simple interest-based behavior implicitly assumes non-problematic relationships among
state agencies’ goals, actions, and outcomes. In contrast, rich accounts of the inner
workings of government intelligence and policing agencies (Cunningham 2004; Deflem
2002; Donner 1990; Kryder 2007; Marx 1988) have clearly demonstrated that state efforts
to exert social control are shaped by a wide range of internal and external contingencies,
suggesting that state actions neither follow perfectly from the stated goals of particular
agencies nor translate directly into predictable and homogeneous outcomes. Such
mismatches highlight the dangers associated with explaining the patterning and impact of
state action against perceived threats in straightforward strategic terms.
Here, I draw on the case of government policing of the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan
(KKK) to consider the processes that complicate our understanding of these relationships. In
particular, the discussion that follows highlights three sources of such complications. The first
stems from the simple fact that states are best conceptualized as organizational fields rather
than unitary actors. In other words, the monitoring and repression of political targets is often
carried out simultaneously by multiple agencies. Strong assumptions of perfect informationsharing and goal alignment across these agencies are highly untenable, and the level of
communication and coordination across agencies can best be considered as dimensions to be
analyzed through the disaggregation of varied simultaneous efforts. Second, the structure and
resources of any particular agency shapes its capacity to successfully carry out actions that
match its stated mission. Third, the culture of an agency—observable through the internal
negotiations that mark decisions about courses of action—impacts whether and how the
intelligence it gathers translates into action designed to control targets. In many cases,
agencies do not engage in unidimensional action, but rather initiate a range of strategies
oriented in complex, and sometimes contradictory, ways to stated organizational goals.
Indeed, while a baseline examination would confirm that state actors did increase their
aggregate repressive action in the face of heightened KKK activity, this finding does not
capture the significant heterogeneity in action and outcomes that existed across constituent
agencies within the relevant organizational field. It also elides the fact that these actions and
outcomes sometimes lacked any consistent predictable relationship to state agencies’
endogenously-defined goals. The presence of this heterogeneity and unpredictability serves
to complicate straightforward understandings of the effect of protest on repression, and also
provides an opportunity to examine the mechanisms that contribute to such diverse trajectories.
This paper focuses on one particular mechanism: “sociological ambivalence” (Merton
and Barber 1963), which in this context is produced by a mismatch between organizational
culture and organizational goals. In the analysis below, I demonstrate how the presence of
organizationally-rooted ambivalence shapes interactions between state and dissident actors,
as well as emphasize the variable nature of related outcomes. Indeed, as with Gamson’s
(1995, p. 6) conception of “evasion”—in which organizational actors “don’t openly
disobey, but neither do they perform in the manner desired” by their superiors—the
“mismatches” that enable ambivalence emerge when state agencies are not able to exploit
or create conditions in which their agents view dissident targets in a uniform manner,
detached from investments that can motivate action that deviates from organizationallydefined goals (see also Kelman and Hamilton 1989).
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The ability of agencies to suppress ambivalent action is shaped by factors associated
both with the makeup of state organizations and with features of broader political
environments. In particular, the analysis here supports the general proposition that
ambivalent action is enabled by organizational settings (in this case, vertically-segmented
bureaucracies) that allow agents in the field to exert some form of discretion in their
decision-making (della Porta and Reiter 1998). It also demonstrates the importance of
macro-level contextual factors often subsumed under the rubric of “political opportunity
structure” (della Porta and Reiter 1998; McAdam 1995; Tarrow 1998). In particular, periods
marked by significant political conflict are likely to enable ambivalence, as such volatilities
increase the likelihood that state elites view dissent as an overarching security threat (Cole
2003; Donner 1990). As a consequence, mandates to police citizens whose dissenting
actions can viably be framed as participation in a democratic political process, rather than
as explicitly criminal activity, can give rise to “intrinsic moral ambiguities” among policing
agents (Waddington 1998).
Such tensions can be further exacerbated by the presence of even a small degree of
ideological overlap between state agents and dissidents. While it would be overly simplistic
to reduce the likelihood of overlap to a straightforward left- vs. right-wing dynamic (see
Cunningham 2003a), one scenario in which these ambiguities are especially pronounced is
when protest targets are reactionary in their orientation—i.e. they seek to uphold values that
are shared by the state, but do so by employing tactics, ideologies, and/or frames that are
viewed as inappropriate or even illegal. In such cases, state agents must balance their
potentially sympathetic views of targets’ goals with the fact that their means pose a threat to
legal and political structures.
I consider the trajectory of one such reactionary organization—the North Carolina
Realm of the United Klans of America (UKA)—to tease out the sources and consequences
of state ambivalence. Following Merton and Barber (1963), I first explicate the conditions
under which ambivalence emerges, by examining the political context within which North
Carolina agents engaged with the KKK. I then outline the range of state and federal
policing agencies with jurisdiction over klan activity before focusing more closely on how
ambivalent actions by individual agents played out in diverse ways in two particular
agencies. Assessing the multivalent forms and impacts associated with ambivalent action
complicates our understanding of the seemingly straightforward impact of protest on
subsequent state action, providing one explanation for how state repression can yield
heterogeneous, unarticulated, and sometimes unintended outcomes.
The repression-mobilization nexus
In an early effort to assess the impact of government action against perceived threats,
Snyder (1976) noted a “near consensus” that state repression does in fact influence the
extent of subsequent protest. Explaining the shape and even the direction of that influence,
however, has proven to be considerably more difficult. Zimmerman (1980, p. 191, quoted
in Lichbach 1987) suggested that there are “theoretical arguments for all conceivable basic
relationships between government coercion and group protest and rebellion, excepting no
relationship.” Relatively little has changed over the intervening quarter-century, as specific
studies have confirmed that, depending on the case examined, repression has both reduced
(e.g. Hibbs 1973) and escalated (e.g. Francisco 1996; White 1989) dissidence. Opp and
Roehl (1990) and Rasler (1996) have argued that such inconsistent results can be explained
by recognizing that repression imposes direct short-term costs, while also providing a basis—
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through “micromobilization processes” that unfold over time—for longer-term indirect
support for opposition efforts. Other analysts (e.g. Khawaja 1993; Olivier 1991) have built on
the contextually-sensitive theoretical foundation provided by Tilly (1978), proposing that the
effects of repression are curvilinear, varying by level of sanction imposed by the state.
Such difficulties have sparked a number of efforts to fine-tune analyses. Davenport
(2005) notes that recent research has placed renewed emphasis on alternative data sources,
more robust indicators of repression, longer-term temporal dynamics, and a range of
contextual factors. A parallel effort has refined the “nexus” question itself, to examine how
social control impacts the “quality” rather than only the quantity of protest (Chang 2008).
This approach is promising, as it recognizes that the imposition of social control can
produce a range of reactions from activist targets, affecting their ability and propensity to
form coalitions, redefine strategic and tactical priorities, generate innovative frames, and so
on (Cunningham and Noakes 2008).
But, as noted above, the inverse relationship—i.e. the effect of protest on the level of
subsequent state repression—is interesting for precisely the opposite reason. Empirical
studies have shown a seemingly uniform tendency for states to increase levels of repression
when faced with opposition (Davenport 2005). Efforts to disaggregate this relationship,
however, have uncovered significant variation along several dimensions. States differ in the
range and number of agencies that engage in repressive action, and those agencies in turn
differ in the forms of repression they impose as well as the spectrum of targets they select.
Uncertainty over the impact of repression on dissidence poses a significant risk for state
actors, and a range of theories have been advanced to explain how they weigh such decisions.
Earl (2003) usefully organizes the field into its dominant approaches, each of which seeks to
explicate the causal logic that undergirds state repression. These approaches variously assert
that the patterning of repression can be explained through the fact that states:
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act against dissidents posing the greatest threat, or
act against dissidents that are weakest and most likely to succumb, or
act when the structure of political opportunities becomes favorable, or
react to an interactive dynamic associated with the timing and form of protest, or
act in accordance with endogenous organizational factors rather than to these various
external elements.
The analysis in this paper falls in the latter tradition, focused on how processes within
state agencies themselves impact the extent, shape, and impact of repression. Previous
research in this vein (Cunningham 2003a, b, 2004) examined how the logic of state action
was tied to the formal structure of communication within and across state organizations. In
contrast, I focus here on how the ambivalence of state agents can, in certain contexts,
structure their subsequent orientation to targets defined by elites as threatening. This
ambivalence does not lead to uniform outcomes; instead, it interacts with the goals,
methodology, culture, and organization of state agencies to produce a range of trajectories
not easily explained by the other dominant approaches identified by Earl.
Sociological ambivalence
In a 2006 paper, Akerstrom focuses not on ambivalence as a “feeling,” but rather on how
workers “do ambivalence” (p. 71, emphasis in original). Akerstrom argues that, when faced
with policy change dictated from above, workers in bureaucratic organizations enact
ambivalence by oscillating between “embracement” and “distancing” practices. As a result,
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policy innovations emerge not as linearly-diffused decrees, but through the enactment of
workers’ “accommodative rhetoric,” which involves “presenting an understanding of and
appreciation for the new, while simultaneously expressing reservations” (2006, p. 57). As
such, street-level bureaucrats do far more than implement the policy dictated by their
superiors—they define the shape of that policy through the practice of ambivalence.
Akerstrom’s insightful analysis owes much to the conception of “sociological
ambivalence” first advanced by Robert Merton and Elinor Barber in their classic 1963
essay. Merton and Barber distinguished sociological ambivalence from its better-known
psychological counterpart, centering their attention on the relational context within which
ambivalence emerges as well as the “social consequences of ambivalence for the workings
of social structures” (Merton and Barber 1976 [1963], p. 4). For Merton, ambivalence was
“built into the structure of social statuses and roles,” arising in settings where such roles
contain “incompatible normative expectations” (1976, pp. 5–6).
The analyses that followed, pursued by Merton and several colleagues, focused mostly
on the structurally-induced contradictions that arise within particular professions.
Physicians, for instance, are socialized to be both sympathetic and detached when dealing
with patients (Merton 1976). Likewise, scientists are trained to value universalism and an
emotional impersonality toward their topics of research, but also to establish a deep
affective involvement in their work (Mitroff 1974).
Merton argued that, in these instances, roles are characterized by opposing normative
tendencies—i.e. by dominant norms as well as emergent subsidiary counter-norms. As the
“contradictory demands” imposed on persons that occupy such roles “cannot be
simultaneously expressed in behavior, they come to be expressed in an oscillation of
behaviors” (Merton and Barber 1976, p. 8). Merton viewed the emergence of counternorms, and therefore the behavioral oscillations that result, as functional to the reproduction
of social structure, enabling individuals to creatively negotiate various contingencies that
might arise. But one need not adopt such explicitly functionalist assumptions to exploit the
broader analytic utility of this formulation.
Importantly, Merton’s conception of sociological ambivalence points us toward an
examination of the institutional bases for the emergence of contradictory norms, the ways
which these norms generate ambivalence among individuals in those institutions, and the
ways in which the subsequent enactment of that ambivalence enable otherwise surprising
outcomes. As Smelser (1998, p. 5) argues, while the negotiation of ambivalence does not
presuppose a different decision-making process than that assumed within conventional
instrumental or rational-choice models, the presence of ambivalence creates instability,
which “express[es] itself in different and sometimes contradictory ways as actors attempt to
cope with it.” Conceiving of motives in this sort of conflict-laden manner adds a layer of
complexity to standard conceptualizations of rational decision-making.
Within the literature, the concept of ambivalence is generally deployed to capture
individuals’ simultaneous perceptions of positive and negative feelings toward regimes as
diverse as family (Luescher and Pillemer 1998; Sarkisian 2006; Steinbach 2008; Willson et
al. 2006), equality (Hochschild 2006), cosmopolitanism (Skrbis and Woodward 2007),
political party platforms (Basinger and Lavine 2005), and particular social issues such as
the presence of women in military academies (Drake 2006) or adolescent sexual activity
(Bruckner et al. 2005). As such, this work tends to be more tightly-bounded than early
research that followed directly from Merton’s framework, which ambitiously sought to link
structural conditions for ambivalence to its consequences. In that latter vein, Deborah
Gould’s (2001) study of the emergence of militant AIDS activism by the organization ACT
UP nicely demonstrates the ways in which heterosexist societal norms created feelings of
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ambivalence that gave rise to particular emotions (i.e. shame, guilt) within the gay and
lesbian community. This emotional backdrop, in turn, provided a context for the
mobilization of militant activism.
Following Gould—and, by extension, Merton—the analysis below identifies the
structural context for the emergence of ambivalence within particular state agencies. By
assessing how the presence of ambivalence shapes relational dynamics, I then show how
ambivalence serves as a key mechanism linking particular structural conditions to the
outcomes of political contention. Applied to the context here, ambivalence over the role of
the KKK within Southern communities shaped the way in which state agencies negotiated
mandates to prevent the klan’s continued mobilization. By comparatively examining
multiple agencies, I show that such processes are not uniform. Instead, the presence of
ambivalence interacts with particular features associated with these agencies’ organizational
structure as well as with broader political environments to produce potentially divergent
outcomes.
To make this case, I draw upon a range of archival and interview data. Most importantly,
I make use of internal memos written by agents assigned to monitor or police the UKA.
Memos associated with each of the North Carolina-based police or intelligence agencies
discussed below are held in Governor Dan K. Moore’s papers at the Office of Archives and
History in Raleigh. As I detail later, most federally-initiated action against the UKA came
from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), as part of the counterintelligence program
(COINTELPRO) they directed against the Ku Klux Klan between 1964 and 1971. Memos
associated with that FBI program have been collected on microfilm by Scholarly
Resources, Inc. Here, I draw upon all memos between the Special Agent in Charge of
the FBI’s Charlotte field office and members of the Director’s office at FBI National
Headquarters in Washington, DC, documenting communication associated with the UKA
(for more detail on this FBI data, see Cunningham 2004). I supplement these internal
accounts with contextual detail on klan-police interactions contained in various local
newspaper articles compiled in Smiley (1966). Interviews with policing agents active
throughout the 1960s, conducted by the author or by other researchers and journalists,
provide additional insight into motive and action.
The rise and fall of the civil rights-era KKK in North Carolina
By the early 1960s, the KKK was undergoing a resurgence in the American South, led by
the rapidly growing Alabama-based United Klans of America (UKA). By the mid-1960s,
the UKA had more than 20,000 members spread over nearly 400 chapters (within the Klan,
they were referred to as “units” or “klaverns”) in seventeen states (US House of
Representatives 1967). Though the UKA never achieved the broad national appeal of the
1920s klan, which had boasted millions of members from coast to coast, it did retain a
similar public character, building support through nightly rallies and cross-burnings across
the South, as well as periodic street parades featuring members in full regalia. Despite
considerable opposition from community elites and the media, the UKA’s hard-line
response to federal desegregation efforts drew hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of
supporters to its nightly rallies.
In late 1963 the organization made its first inroads into North Carolina. Within two
years, the North Carolina “Realm” would dwarf the group’s membership elsewhere; more
than half of the UKA’s overall membership resided in the state by the close of 1965. Soon
after, the so-called “Carolina Klan” was given national exposure, in the form of Stewart
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Alsop’s April 1966 Saturday Evening Post profile of North Carolina klansman Raymond
Cranford. An exceptionally militant and committed klavern leader from impoverished
Greene County, in the state’s rural mid-east region, Cranford epitomized the public face of
the UKA. But within months of the article’s publication, he had left the group to form his
own militaristic splinter organization, lamenting the klan’s declining fortunes:
The Klan [we] knew is gone....[State leader, or “Grand Dragon,” Bob] Jones is sellin’
souvenirs, which really ain’t what a Dragon is supposed to be doin’. The units are
skeletons. A bunch of ‘em turned in their charters. The rallies are down to nuthin’.
Most of the real good boys have left. Seems like each one of ‘em has gone out to
form his own Klan.... I’m tellin’ ya, it’s just awful. The boys need leadership real bad
(Young 1968).
Indeed, there is a multitude of evidence that, beyond these internal difficulties, there was
a serious drop-off in public support for the UKA’s activities in the later 1960s. By 1967, a
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation report noted that klan leaders were having
difficulty securing leases for many of their nightly rallies (SBI Report #7 to the Law and
Order Committee, 10/31/66). Increasingly, the advance advertisement of these rallies was
countered with anti-klan resolutions by local ministerial and civic associations. In late 1966,
for example, the Lee County Ministerial Association published an announcement in the
local Sanford Herald, viewing with “alarm” the arrival of the UKA, and condemning the
klan’s “long record of preaching hate, practicing violence and taking the law into its own
hands” (Crum 1966). Similarly, the Baptist State Convention, an institution representing
3,423 churches and nearly one million members, unanimously passed a resolution “decry
[ing] the bigotry, prejudice, intolerance and ill will which characterizes the Ku Klux Klan in
its treatment of social and economic problems, and...protest[ing] the Klan’s perverted use of
the Christian Cross, thus making the symbol of eternal love into a symbol of contemporary
hate” (Erwin 1965).
The UKA’s rallies were also attracting many fewer supporters and curious onlookers. While
these rallies had developed a reputation as being large-scale events in North Carolina—drawing
anywhere from 300 to 6,000 attendees each night—average rally attendance in 1967
was 60% lower than that in the previous three years. According to a police report, a
Wilmington rally in the summer of 1967 attracted “approximately half of that at the last
KKK rally in this area,” which had been held on a cold night the previous November
(SBI Memo from W.S. Hunt, Jr. to Director, 8/28/67). Two months later, a rally in the
northeast corner of the state, known as a klan hotbed, was cancelled for lack of
attendance after only six spectators showed up. Similarly, state leader Bob Jones
complained to his following that “for the first time in four years as...Grand Dragon of
North Carolina,” he was disappointed by the state’s poor participation in the UKA’s
1967 national meeting (“News from Klansville,” 1967).
Militant responses from African-Americans became increasingly common as well. When
UKA members rode through a black neighborhood outside of Raleigh, throwing out
pamphlets threatening violence, a group of locals gathered at a neighborhood soda shop
with shotguns and pistols, splitting up in separate cars in an (ultimately unsuccessful)
search for the klan perpetrators (SHP Report from R. H. Chadwick to Charles A. Speed,
4/12/66). Another resident who had drawn the klan’s ire informed local officials: “I have a
household of ten and I intend to protect them. If any one comes on my property again, I
intend to shoot.” On at least two occasions, small bands of black marines stationed in North
Carolina’s Camp Lejeune attempted to “engage the KKK in armed conflict” (see SBI
Report by W. V. O’Daniel, 11/15/65), and in 1968 four black teenagers managed to burn
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down the building that served as a Johnston County klavern’s headquarters (Cockshutt
1969).
Explaining the UKA’s decline
To explain the Civil Rights-era klan’s sharp decline, historians have highlighted constricted
opportunities to preserve Jim Crow in the face of Civil Rights Movement successes, which,
among other things, had resulted in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the following
year’s Voting Rights Act. By 1968, with the stock quote, “It is now or never—the hour is getting
late” appearing below national leader Robert Shelton’s signature, even the UKA’s letterhead
signaled that the time for confident claims that the UKA would lead the South’s defiant defense of
segregation had passed.
It is also apparent that the UKA’s vulnerability to internal conflict played a role in its
decline. Large sums flowed into UKA officers’ hands—each member paid ten dollars to
join the klan and another fifteen dollars for their robes, as well as regular monthly dues—
which created a basis for frequent charges of financial impropriety. Sometimes these
charges were substantiated and dealt with internally, as when an officer of one klavern was
banished from the organization after taking more than $4,000 to pay his delinquent personal
tax bill (SBI Memo from SA W. V. O’Daniel to Director, 7/18/67). Higher-level
indiscretions were more complex. State officer Bob Kornegay was relocated to Virginia
as a result of various financial sleights, and several state meetings were held in 1966 to deal
with grievances tied to Grand Dragon Jones’ failure to disclose the klan’s financial details.
“Without exception,” an informant reported, “each officer that had anything to say was very
critical of the way the Grand Dragon had conducted his personal life and also the business
affairs of the UKA.” Shelton, however, failed to discipline Jones or further investigate the
members’ claims (SBI Memo from L. E. Allen to Director, 6/16/66).
Similar cleavages emerged over tactical decisions. Jones generally viewed klan violence as
costly to the UKA’s growth and stability, and consequently spent much of his energy
discouraging members from engaging in autonomous militant action. Others felt differently.
When Cranford split from the UKA, he ceremoniously handed his klavern’s charter to Jones at a
UKA meeting, telling him “Me and the boys done got you a Cadillac with three forward gears
and one in reverse, and I’ll be damned if you ain’t been doin’ nothin’ but backin’ up ever since!”
(Young 1968). Such differences also contributed to George Dorsett, the UKA’s “Imperial
Kludd” (national-level preacher), breaking away from the UKA to form his own Confederate
Knights of the KKK in 1967. Within months of Dorsett’s secession, the Confederate Knights
had formed more than forty units, with a consequent 25% drop in UKA membership (FBI
Memo from Charlotte to Director, 1/30/69; SBI Memo from L. E. Allen to Director, 5/24/67).
But it is impossible to assess these internal weaknesses apart from the efforts of state
actors, who alternately monitored, reacted to, constructed, and exacerbated conflicts within
the UKA. Indeed, from 1964 onward half a dozen state and federal organizations were
actively engaged in simultaneous efforts to surveil, and sometimes hinder, the actions of the
UKA in North Carolina. To fully understand how these efforts ultimately affected the UKA,
we need to examine the broader political context that shaped the repertoire of actions
available to any constituent agency. We must also account for the ways in which these state
agencies operated in parallel—variously replicating each other’s efforts, operating at crosspurposes, exhibiting coordination, or engaging in a combination of these dynamics. Finally,
we need to be sensitive to how endogenous cultural schema and relational patterns defined
in part the ways in which organizationally-defined goals translated into action.
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Each of these dimensions informs the ways in which organizational values interact with
articulated goals. The particular focus of the analysis below is to demonstrate how a degree
of mismatch between these elements produced ambivalence among field agents that,
consequently, contributed to the emergence of outcomes that relate to organizational goals
in non-obvious ways. This presence of organizationally-defined ambivalence provides one
mechanism for explaining how the actions and outcomes of state repression fail to match
neatly onto articulated goals.
To illustrate how this mechanism plays out in the UKA case, I first discuss the broad
political context within which state and federal agencies within North Carolina operated.
This context shaped the goals defined by governmental elites, which—when at odds with
durable cultural norms—provided a basis for the emergence of ambivalence among state
actors charged with implementing elite policy. Such ambivalence does not necessarily play
out in uniform ways, and through case studies of the North Carolina State Bureau of
Investigation (SBI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), I highlight how
ambivalences at both the state and federal levels shaped the ways in which the state affected
the trajectory of the UKA.
North Carolina politics: Segregation, civil rights, and the “progressive mystique”
The klan’s widespread emergence in North Carolina was tied to the role the UKA played
within the state’s political structure. As with the rest of the South prior to the passage of the
1964 Civil Rights Act, all state and public institutions in North Carolina adhered to a strict
policy of Jim Crow-style racial separation. This institutionalized segregation had broad
support among white residents; the 1964 Democratic gubernatorial primary1 featured three
candidates, all of whom publicly supported the maintenance of Jim Crow. However, the
tenor of mainstream political debate was defined by what many referred to as the “North
Carolina way,” which emphasized “progressivist,” rather than hard-line, support for
segregation (Chafe 1980). This progressivism affirmed racial separation as intrinsically
valuable to the state’s social, economic, and political structures, but paired this sentiment
with a paternalistic sense of racial goodwill and an emphasis on the maintenance of social
order that was perceived to be attractive to the northern industrial interests that state elites
were trying to court. Consistent with these motives, the “North Carolina way” valued law
and order above all, advancing the notion that the state would find a way to move forward
on the race question without outright defiance of the Civil Rights Act or other federal
legislation. Dan Moore, who won the race for governor in 1964, was a law-and-order
politician of this stripe, consistently emphasizing that the state would not defy federal
orders to integrate (Spence 1968).
As such, North Carolina’s political climate was quite distinct from Deep South states such
as Mississippi, which actively resisted federal desegregation orders, militantly battling to
preserve “states’ rights” and maintain Jim Crow within its borders. Through the actions of state
officials, along with the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (or MSSC, a governmental
agency charged with investigating threats to the segregationist order) and a thriving network of
Citizens’ Councils (composed of white civic elites, who employed economic, political, and
1
As virtually all Southern elections during this period were won by Democrats, the serious campaigning
occurred among Democratic candidates during the primaries. Robert Gavin, the Republican candidate in the
1964 general election, also opposed integration legislation.
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social pressures to thwart Civil Rights efforts), Mississippi’s white-controlled institutions
exerted an unambiguous opposition to federal desegregation efforts (Dittmer 1995; McMillen
1971). Both the UKA and the more secretive and militant White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
were highly active in Mississippi, engaging in literally hundreds of acts of violence and
intimidation to regulate the efforts of activists and others who challenged Jim Crow (US House
of Representatives 1967). In this context, klan members frequently enjoyed the active or tacit
support of state officials, who refused to enforce the law to prevent klan-perpetrated crimes and
sometimes collaborated directly in those criminal acts.2 As such, it is important to view the
Mississippi klan as an entity that functioned to reinforce, rather than compete with, the efforts
of institutional actors. State officials, in return, held an unambivalent view toward the KKK,
policing their actions only in cases in which klansmen violated the law—and even in many of
those cases refusing to pursue or prosecute their illegal acts (Cagin and Dray 2006; Dittmer
1995).
In North Carolina, relationships between klan and state actors differed significantly.
While UKA membership was more widespread than in Mississippi and other states
throughout the South, the state’s progressivist political climate was at odds with klan efforts
to deal with racial issues through violence and intimidation. Richardson Preyer, a
Democratic candidate for governor, highlighted these differences in a 1964 speech:
North Carolina must not slip back and be another Alabama or Mississippi. We don’t
want to have anything to do with those whose attitudes would only stir up trouble and
result in closed schools, federal troops and violence and encouragement of the Ku
Klux Klan....The North Carolina way avoids violence and preserves law and order
(Raleigh News & Observer, 5/29/64).
This emphasis on law and order ultimately meant that state officials would follow rather
than oppose federal mandates to end Jim Crow segregation in public facilities. As a result,
the klan, as the only significant organized force for popular expression of militant white
supremacy in the state, in effect became an alternative, and oppositional, political vehicle.
The UKA’s rhetoric and actions often conflicted with institutional state actors, whose efforts
to deal with racial issues were generally subsumed under Governor Moore’s Good
Neighbor Council (GNC). The GNC was a confederation of municipal groups, which in
practice served as a pressure valve by employing diplomacy to encourage the gradual
integration of African-Americans into the workforce. Through its moderate orientation, the
Committee would ideally reduce the likelihood of racial strife fomented by either
segregationist or civil rights “extremists,” and thus preserve the state’s appeal as a vibrant
industrial and economic region (Waynick et al. 1964).
The GNC had no direct dealings with the klan itself, but rather sought to avoid the
emergence of contention that the KKK could exploit in its efforts to mobilize followers in
2
The best-known instance of such collaboration occurred in Neshoba County, where three Civil Rights
workers in the 1964 Freedom Summer campaign were murdered in a klan-orchestrated plot. Neshoba
County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and his Deputy, Cecil Price, both of whom were affiliated with the White
Knights, took part in the plot. Both later made appearances at a well-attended klan rally, with Rainey
announcing to the crowd, “I have met some of the finest people today that I have ever met” (Cagin and Dray
2006; MSSC file #2-112-2-19-2-1-1). On another occasion, a state agent arrived at the jailhouse in
Mississippi’s Adams County to find the county sheriff telling jokes with a number of klan officials, one of
whom had just been arrested for bombing a local jewelry store whose owner had attended a recent NAACP
meeting (MSSC file #2-36-2-69-1-1-1).
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
365
militant resistance to desegregation. A number of other state efforts, however, dealt more
directly with the UKA:
&
&
&
The State Highway Patrol (SHP) was present at each of the UKA’s nightly public
rallies, formally to deal with traffic issues created by the large-scale events. But SHP
officers additionally engaged in the monitoring of the klan’s actions, filing summary
reports of the rallies themselves and sometimes compiling a list of attendees’ license
numbers. While it is unclear how this data was subsequently used, lists of the relevant
cars’ owners were sometimes forwarded to the governor’s office, and presumably this
information could be employed in future investigations of racially-motivated crimes. In
1968, in an effort to publicly shame rally attendees, the SHP license plate list for a rally
held outside of Raleigh was matched to registrants’ names and published in the Raleigh
News and Observer (Lynch 1968).
The Governor’s Law and Order Committee (L & O) was formed in late 1965, as a result
of extensive efforts undertaken by Governor Moore’s legal advisors to formulate a
strategy that would outlaw the KKK by executive decree. Often dubbed the “anti-Klan
committee” by reporters, the L&O had the initial aim of publicly exposing the klan’s
membership lists and its inner workings. “We’re through playing games with the klan,”
argued L & O Chair Malcolm Seawell, as he clarified that “the Committee intends to
first prevent violence and second to see that every resource will be used in tracking
down and bringing to justice persons responsible for violence....I think this task force
emphasizes that the Governor doesn’t intend to tolerate violence and law-breaking in
North Carolina” (Greenville Daily Reflector, 1/3/66).
The State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), like the SHP, assigned agents to monitor each
UKA rally, where they sometimes recorded license plate numbers and sometimes the
rally speeches themselves. SBI agents also carried out more extensive intelligence
efforts against the klan, which I discuss in more detail below.
At the federal level, the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) initiated a
series of hearings against the klan, which featured a detailed investigation of the UKA in
North Carolina. Despite a lack of substantive testimony from many klan leaders—who
repeatedly asserted that their answers might incriminate them “in violation of rights as
guaranteed by amendments 5, 1, 4, and 14 of the Constitution of the United States of
America” (see, e.g., US House of Representatives 1966, p. 1706)3—the hearings provided a
high-profile venue for the airing of much of the FBI’s intelligence data on the UKA,
resulting in significant attacks on the legitimacy of the klan as a patriotic organization and
increased suspicion that klan leaders engaged in frequent financial impropriety. Legal fees
incurred during the hearings also drained the UKA’s coffers.
Additionally, in September 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a
systematic effort to infiltrate the UKA and other klan organizations. These anti-klan efforts were
part of the Bureau’s formal counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) against a range of
perceived threats to national security. The monitoring of COINTELPRO target organizations
involved physical surveillance by agents, wiretaps, break-ins (referred to within the FBI as
“black bag jobs”), and the recruitment of literally thousands of informants. Bureau efforts to
infiltrate various KKK groups were especially successful; within the first six months of
COINTELPRO-White Hate Groups, agents boasted that they had recruited hundreds of
3
Shelton and Jones were among the handful of UKA leaders who later served 1-year jail sentences on
resulting contempt of Congress charges.
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informants, and by early 1966 their North Carolina informant coverage extended to 165 of the
approximately 225 active UKA klaverns in the state (FBI 1966).
The progressivism that provided the overarching context for the establishment of these
anti-klan efforts in North Carolina was itself characterized by conflicting normative
expectations. By 1965, it was no longer possible to both comply with federal statutes and
maintain de jure racial separation. As a result, North Carolina officials engaged in a variety
of strategies to circumvent civil rights laws (tokenism, providing private school tuition
vouchers to white students, “freedom of choice” school plans, etc.), some of which were
only dismantled after a series of NAACP lawsuits and federal funding suspensions forced
changes in the later 1960s and early 1970s. This conflict within progressivist political
ideology was reproduced within state and federal policing agencies as they engaged in
various efforts to repress the KKK. This meant that, in the field, agents often were “doing”
ambivalence (Akerstrom 2006), i.e. adopting strategies that allowed them to engage with the
repressive policies specified by superiors despite their significant support for the klan’s
mission to maintain Jim Crow. But such ambivalence was enacted within the context of
particular agency-specific mandates, and it is only through an examination of the
organizational contexts within which repressive efforts played out that we can understand
how such mechanisms impacted the linkage between organizational goals, actions, and
outcomes. In the next section, I examine two such cases: the North Carolina SBI and the
FBI.
The enactment and consequence of ambivalence in two state agencies
Case 1: Proactive vs. reactive action against racial “extremes” in the North Carolina SBI
Formally, the SBI was charged with administering all agencies focused on identifying and
apprehending criminals in the state, supervising forensic analysis, preparing evidence for
court cases, and “investigating any criminal procedures as directed by the Governor”
(Moss, n.d.). As discussed above, the SBI had significant dealings with the klan, with
agents in attendance at all UKA rallies to monitor the proceedings, including the recording
of license plate numbers and sometimes the rally speeches themselves. Agents would
compile summary reports of each rally, which typically included a summary of each speech
made at the rally, along with detailed observations of the event and its attendees, and even
the size of the cross burned at the climax of the proceedings.
Former SBI Director Haywood Starling notes that, with these overt tasks, SBI agents
had a “working relationship” with the klan, as their regular contact with the set of UKA
leaders who attended each night’s rally bred a routinized familiarity that tended toward
basic cooperation. Jones regularly provided agents with a list of upcoming UKA meetings
and rallies, as well as an open invitation to attend each event (e.g. SBI Memo from
Satterfield to Director, 9/18/67; SBI Report from W. V. O’Daniel to Director, 3/7/66). But
SBI agents’ actions would also sometimes be the subject of the UKA’s attacks. Jones told
agents on multiple occasions that he felt that the recording of license numbers constituted
“harassment.” During a 1966 rally, Virginia Grand Dragon Bob Kornegay harangued agents
parked in a car at the edge of the rally site, sarcastically imploring them to “turn up the
volume on the recorder so you can get exactly word for word what I’m saying” (SBI Report
from W.V. O’Daniel to Director, 3/7/66). In response to rumors that Jones and other UKA
members threatened bodily harm to SBI agents, the Director warned all agents to “use
caution in the parking of their cars and the entering of their cars after same have been
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
367
parked for any length of time” (letter from SBI Director Anderson to Malcolm Seawell, 4/
14/66).
Beyond the monitoring of klan rallies and other public events, the SBI engaged more
covert efforts to deal with the KKK. Most of this intelligence-based work occurred through
its Civil Intelligence Desk, established by Director Walter F. Anderson in September 1965.
This initiative provided organizational space to coordinate extensive intelligence-gathering
on the klan, as well as the infrastructure for linking with the FBI to exchange information.
The following year, Governor Moore and State Attorney General T. Wade Bruton also
requested that the SBI conduct what they referred to as “Specialized Investigations” into
civil disturbances, with sustained attention paid to the KKK, as well as White Citizens’
Councils, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), Black Muslims, and the Communist Party (in practice, the klan took
up the lion’s share of the SBI’s attention). Four agents were assigned to this task full time,
under the direct supervision of the SBI Director. These investigations were essentially
intelligence-based, with agents utilizing informants and other sources to (in the language of
one SBI memo): “a) Determine the number of Klaverns in North Carolina; b) Determine
who are the officials of each local Klavern; c) Determine the approximate number of
members of each local Klavern; d) Determine the plans, programs and participation of each
local Klavern in any civil disturbances in North Carolina” (SBI Memo from Director, 3/16/
66). Information gathered through this initiative could be used to aid future SBI
investigations, and was also provided to the Governor’s Law and Order Committee.
As part of this effort, the SBI recruited a large number of informants, some of whom
overlapped with the FBI’s stable of infiltrators (Emerson 1998, p. 190; Starling 2003).
According to one Special Agent, this informant coverage created a situation in which the
SBI often had advance notice of klan actions. When informed that klansmen were planning
criminal acts—dynamitings were relatively frequent occurrences—agents would sometimes
stake out suspected locations to apprehend klan perpetrators (Emerson 1998, p. 191; Hardee
2003). But such aggressive investigation of discrete criminal acts obscures a larger pattern
of SBI inaction against the UKA, with agents’ ambivalence about this work reflected in
their day-to-day contact with klan leaders as well as their policing of racial conflict.
Privately, SBI agents’ interactions with klan leaders and members departed from North
Carolina officials’ tough-talking public anti-klan stance. In former Special Agent Robert
Emerson’s view, “most [klan members] were harmless, honest, and law-abiding citizens who
were misguided in their thoughts and beliefs.” Emerson (1998, pp. 189–90) explains that
the Kluxers knew we had our jobs to do, and I must say that we were treated with
respect. There were many times the Grand Dragon of North Carolina would sit in the
backseat of my car and talk about sports or current events unrelated to race as another
agent and I recorded license numbers.
Similarly, as noted above, Haywood Starling, a future SBI Director, recalls that the SBI’s
close knowledge of UKA plans came through information supplied by its many informants,
but also through a sort of collegial relationship between agents and klan leaders.
One result of this relationship was that the SBI’s efforts were limited to investigating
discrete violations of the law. Despite the mandate to monitor and expose the UKA’s
frequent acts of terror and intimidation, the Bureau demonstrated a marked inability to deal
with the UKA as an organization. Take, for example, the case of the UKA booth at the 1966
State Fair. Jones and the klan had procured the booth to distribute UKA literature, sell its
paraphernalia, and broadcast racist comments over their loudspeaker system. Despite a
boycott by the state NAACP, which referred to state officials’ willingness to rent a booth to
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the UKA as “an insult to the Negroes of North Carolina” (Kelly Alexander, Address at
NC State Conference of Branches 23rd Annual Convention, 10/14/66, p. 16) and a SBI
agent’s report that “the records being played and the remarks being made about
‘nigger’ over the public address system is intimidating against the Negroes present at
the Fair” (SBI Report from Crocker to Director, 10/12/66), SBI involvement was
limited to placing agents in the vicinity to defuse potential conflicts. Following an
argument between UKA officer Herbert Rouse and two white college students, Special
Agent Emerson arrested Rouse for possessing a concealed weapon (Emerson 1998,
p. 217; Charlotte Observer, 10/18/66), the only punitive action taken against the UKA
that week.
The point here is not that the SBI would look the other way to allow klansmen to
perpetrate violence, but rather that the agency refused to exert control over the group
apart from the policing of discrete criminal acts, even when they had the support of
higher state officials to do so. The SBI’s prevailing orientation to both sides of the
Civil Rights struggle was that activists on both sides (i.e. the KKK as well as the
NAACP) were extremist threats to law and order. The cultural context that pervaded
the SBI and other state agencies, however, precluded equal treatment of both
“extremes.” In striking contrast to agents’ frequent collegiality toward klan leaders,
the actions of the SBI were characterized by a pronounced and often proactive hostility
toward Civil Rights activists. When Civil Rights protests in some majority-black
counties in the northeastern corner of the state were met by klan rallies and other acts
of UKA intimidation, for instance, an SBI report characterized Southern Conference
Educational Fund (SCEF) Field Secretary John Salter as being “largely responsible for
most of the tension” and effectively ignored the long string of UKA reprisals against
Salter’s colleagues.
Such attitudes were reproduced by other state officials connected to the SBI’s
“specialized investigation” of the KKK. After Salter criticized local officials’ dismissal of
various acts of racial intimidation—including cross burnings, rock and brick-throwing,
“threats, physical beatings, efforts to force Negro cars off the roads, and efforts to run down
walking Negroes with automobiles”—as teenage “pranks,” GNC chairman Dave Coltrane
told a colleague that “Salter is inclined to exaggerate the facts” (letter from Coltrane to Joe
Branch, 8/3/64). Similarly, Coltrane noted in 1966 that SCLC Field Secretary Golden
Frinks was currently “in command of the Negroes, but we hope to get him out before too
long.” A county official agreed, noting that Frinks was “a notorious liar who specializes in
spreading hate and damning North Carolina, its laws and its people all over the country.”
When Governor Moore met with Civil Rights leaders Frinks, Floyd McKissick (of CORE),
and Dr. Reginald Hawkins (of the Charlotte NAACP) in 1965, he largely ignored their
grievances, but (in his words) “left the impression with them that we would not tolerate
lawlessness and violence in this State.” To explain an upsurge in klan-related activity in the
Spring of 1966, SBI officials argued that they were rooted in a series of Civil Rights
demonstrations supported by visits from Ralph Abernathy and Martin Luther King, Jr. (SBI
Report #2 to Law and Order Committee, 5/26/66). The result was a pervasive sense that the
UKA, conceived as a reaction to Civil Rights activity, could most effectively be policed by
hindering the work of the organized integrationist efforts that ostensibly aroused
klansmen’s ire.
The resulting suspicion of, and hostility toward, the Civil Rights Movement, combined
with the state’s failure to adopt legal restrictions on the UKA, implicitly validated the klan’s
right to militantly defend the Jim Crow status quo. SBI officials’ refusal to police the klan
in the same manner as they did Civil Rights demonstrators played out clearly in a number
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
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of instances, including a large-scale conflict near the city of Roanoke Rapids in November
1966. On the first Sunday of that month, the UKA had scheduled a rally in a field adjacent
to a black neighborhood. In response, members of the black community, with the support of
SNCC, mobilized a counter-protest. SNCC field workers and their allies provided state
leaders with advance notice of their intentions, sending multiple letters to North Carolina
Director of Administration E.J. Rankin, Jr. and other officials.
Tensions were high the day of the rally, as Robert Lee Vincent, a black Roanoke Rapids
resident, approached a group of klansmen preparing for the event. After words were
exchanged, Vincent announced that he was going to go home, get his gun, and run the klan
members off the property. He then returned with a .22 caliber rifle and fired a dozen shots,
leaving three klansmen with minor injuries and Vincent in jail. By 4:00 that afternoon,
approximately 500 klan members and their supporters had arrived at the rally site. The rally
itself featured some militant talk by George Dorsett (who, as we will see below, was
working as an FBI informant at this time), who referred to the earlier shooting and made an
appeal for violent retaliation. Meanwhile, a group of black residents, some of whom held
picket signs, gathered on the opposite side of the highway from the rally site. Dorsett’s
speech grew in intensity, as he criticized the police for not removing the protestors for
“interfering with a religious service,” and then (in the words of a SHP officer) “urged
[the rally attendees] to go to the highway and remove the Negroes themselves.”
Approximately 400 people began moving toward the highway, at which time the police
and SBI decided “to arrest all the [Civil Rights] pickets for walking on the wrong side
of the road in violation of the pedestrian law, in an effort to clear the situation.”
Despite the clear threat of klan violence against non-violent protestors who had
requested state protection days in advance, and the fact that members of the UKA’s
Security Guard were armed with shotguns, only one klansman was arrested (SHP
Report from Speed to Moore, 11/7/66).
While such policing actions might be viewed as strategic efforts to benevolently control
a volatile situation (i.e. by dealing with the two dozen Civil Rights picketers, rather than the
more than 400 klan adherents who challenged them), it is important to view them within
their broader context. Aware of the threat posed by a large-scale klan rally adjacent to a
black neighborhood, the SBI implicitly affirmed the UKA’s rights to hold such a
provocative event by not attempting to prevent or otherwise deal with it proactively. While
SHP officers were on hand only to control traffic, they routinely encouraged local officials
to deny permits to Civil Rights groups who planned similarly contentious gatherings on
other occasions.
These sorts of disjunctures illustrate SBI and other state agencies’ ambivalent orientation
to the UKA. Clearly concerned about the klan’s capacity for illegality and violence, SBI
agents employed informants and physical surveillance to gather extensive intelligence on
the KKK’s activities. When such efforts provided information tied to a particular criminal
act, SBI agents took steps to investigate and arrest individual perpetrators. However, the
broader cultural climate within the Bureau precluded the use of this intelligence data to
pursue the sort of broader control over the UKA’s actions that marked their orientation to
Civil Rights activism, which they viewed as the root cause of racial strife. Clearly, when
viewed alongside the state’s active hostility toward the Civil Rights Movement, their
treatment of the klan failed to contribute to any far-reaching program to provide equal
protection to both white and black citizens from racial conflict. In 1967, this very dynamic
was noted by US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who used North Carolina’s poor record
in dealing with Civil Rights crimes to illustrate the need for tougher federal laws against
racial violence (Charlotte Observer, 9/23/67).
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Case 2: Control vs. elimination strategies in the FBI
The FBI’s efforts against the UKA fell under the purview of their formal counterintelligence
program (COINTELPRO) against a range of perceived threats to national security. During
the 15-year life of COINTELPRO—first deployed against the Communist Party-USA in
1956, and ended only after the program was publicly exposed in 1971—FBI agents
engaged in actions to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the
Communist and Socialist Workers Parties, “White Hate Groups,” “Black Nationalist/Hate
Groups,” and the New Left (Churchill and VanderWall 1988; Cunningham 2004).
The goals of the FBI’s efforts against the UKA were established explicitly at the outset
of the COINTELPRO-White Hate Groups program, in a memo penned by Domestic
Intelligence Director Fred Baumgardner:
[W]e intend to expose to public scrutiny the devious maneuvers and duplicity of the
hate groups; to frustrate any efforts or plans they may have to consolidate their forces;
to discourage their recruitment of new or youthful adherents; and to disrupt or
eliminate their efforts to circumvent or violate the law. Our counterintelligence efforts
against hate groups will be closely supervised and coordinated to complement our
expanded intelligence investigations directed at these organizations (FBI Memo from
Baumgardner to William Sullivan, 8/27/64, 1964–1971).
The FBI at this time was comprised of 59 field offices scattered throughout the country,
each accountable for its own jurisdiction and to Bureau leadership located in Washington,
DC. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover charged the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) of each
office with the task of exploiting their local knowledge to propose “hard-hitting”
counterintelligence actions against specified targets. Once these actions were approved by
the Director, they would then be carried out by field agents, with “tangible results” reported
in subsequent progress reports (Cunningham 2004). All North Carolina UKA activity fell
under the jurisdiction of the Charlotte field office, and the discussion below consequently
focuses on communication between Charlotte agents and National Headquarters.
Between 1964 and 1971, 240 memos concerning COINTELPRO-White Hate Groups
were exchanged between the Charlotte SAC and Director Hoover and his high-level
advisors. Of those, a total of 67 actions were proposed, and 60 actions carried out, by
agents in the Charlotte field office.4 The overarching strategies that underlay this group of
actions were clearly articulated at the outset (i.e. in Baumgardner’s statement of purpose
excerpted above) and also in a memo sent by the Charlotte SAC on 12 October 1964. In
that memo, Charlotte agents formulated their general approach, based on their knowledge
of the North Carolina UKA. Their strategy had five primary elements: 1) to avoid
disrupting klaverns that lacked “well-established informant coverage,” as it was
hypothesized that such actions would reduce the likelihood that informants could be
placed in those klaverns in the future; 2) to avoid relying on negative publicity, which was
not thought to be an effective means to deter potential klan members; 3) to ensure that the
FBI’s disruption of the UKA remained secret, so as not to alienate the Bureau within
communities that broadly supported the klan; 4) to avoid disrupting, and thus “stirring up...
small, inactive, and peaceful” klaverns; and 5) to engage in actions focused on the UKA’s
4
The discrepancy between the number of proposals and actions is due to a number of factors: some
proposals were rejected by the Director, some actions were initiated as part of blanket authorizations in
response to proposals offered by different field offices, and a small number of authorized proposals lent
themselves to multiple actions over time.
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
371
particular organizational weaknesses, including the sense that leaders may be exploiting the
membership financially, the fact that many members had limited employment prospects,
and an abiding suspicion among wives of klan members that klavern meetings were in fact
a ruse for adulterous activities.
Though actions initiated under COINTELPRO-White Hate Groups were purportedly
designed to hit the UKA with a “death-dealing blow” (see FBI Memo from Brennan to
Sullivan, 8/24/67), it is evident that outcomes, though frequently meeting or “exceeding the
Charlotte [field office’s] expectations insofar as fostering discontent, dissension, and
confusion” (FBI Memo from SAC, Charlotte to Director, 6/14/67, 1964–1971), were in fact
intended to control the klan rather than eliminate the group entirely. This dynamic emerged
in large part through the efforts of agents to reconcile the fact that the klan’s beliefs were
largely in alignment with the FBI itself, though at times its means—i.e. its tendency toward
lawless violence—were considered clearly unacceptable. The UKA could not be considered
subversive, as it was fundamentally reactionary—largely supportive of existing power
structures and traditional American values. Indeed, KKK members tended to view
themselves as strongly patriotic, vehemently anti-communist, and as strong opponents to
the tactics and goals of the Civil Rights Movement. As such, they had considerable
ideological overlap with the FBI, which was then engaged in a massive counterintelligence
program to neutralize communist agents. Civil Rights organizations were equally dangerous,
Hoover believed, as they had been deeply infiltrated by members of the Communist Party
and their allies, and were using the idea of integration to dupe black leaders into weakening
the state to advance a “red” agenda.
This significant overlap in ideological foundation was exacerbated by the presence of a
number of southern agents in the Charlotte field office. Dargan Frierson, a Special Agent
well-known for his ability to develop klan informants, made good use of his deep local
accent, and made sure that UKA members knew that his own grandfather—once a
slaveowner in Sumter, SC—had himself been in the klan during the 1920s. He also advised
his FBI superiors not to “send any Yankees” to work with klan informants (Schlosser
2007). Klan members, in turn, often found FBI entreaties compelling, as many had deep
respect for the FBI and law enforcement generally and were thus susceptible to patriotic
appeals by agents (see Cunningham 2004, p. 157).
But this dynamic also produced considerable ambivalence among agents, which was
expressed through actions designed to control rather than to eliminate the UKA. Frierson
clarified the FBI’s de facto orientation to the UKA during this period, emphasizing that, in
spite of frequent talk in formal memos of wiping the KKK out altogether, agents in his field
office felt that “the klan itself was perfectly permissible to join—but let’s not have
violence.” Frierson could easily establish a political rapport with many klan members—he
was open about his lack of enthusiasm about integration, and prone to telling klansmen to
“cuss LBJ all you want; I don’t think any more of him than you do.” He would also “look
the other way” when his informants were involved with cross burnings or other actions that,
in his view, “wouldn’t hurt anyone” (Frierson 2004; Schlosser 2007).
Such ends were also apparent in Charlotte agents’ communication with the Director. The
Charlotte SAC’s initial strategy statement (outlined above) emphasized that the disruption
of klan units be avoided when such action would hinder Bureau efforts to place informants,
and/or if the klaverns in question were considered “small, inactive, and peaceful.” Later
proposals for action increasingly focused on efforts to “hold down membership” and keep
existing hard-core members stably within klaverns with significant informant coverage. In
late 1967, an extended negotiation with the Director surrounded the Charlotte SAC’s
contention that the FBI should not move forward with efforts to eliminate North Carolina
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UKA leader Bob Jones. The agent’s fear was that Jones’ possible replacement might
actually “give the state organization a ‘shot in the arm’ which it now needs to continue as
an effective klan group” (FBI Memo from Charlotte to Director, 11/6/67). The presence of
Jones, in contrast, might serve to maintain a climate in which informants were able to easily
control UKA actions. The Director, however, disagreed with this course, arguing that Jones
“has been, without any doubt, the most effective leader and organizer in the UKA
establishment,” and therefore someone who should be removed if possible (FBI Memo
from Director to Charlotte, 11/15/67).
The subsequent unfolding of actions to unseat the Grand Dragon was telling, as agents
proceeded to ensure that delinquent klaverns sent in their UKA dues—even though they
recognized that this approach would “plac[e] additional funds at Jones’ disposal”—so that
informants would be eligible to vote against Jones (Memo from Director to Charlotte, 11/
15/67). Additionally, Charlotte began a campaign to use informant George Dorsett to
foment dissent within the UKA by providing him with resources to create the upstart rival
Confederate Knights of the KKK (CKKKK). Initially, the core of the Confederate Knights
was composed largely of informants, and the rival group was designed to be an
“acceptable” alternative to the historically violent North Carolina UKA. During the
following year, the Charlotte office began a campaign to systematically discredit the UKA
and foster discontent within the organization. The hope was that the disgruntled members
would shift their allegiance to the CKKKK; in April 1968 the Bureau even sent letters to
various UKA members urging them not to renounce the klan entirely but instead to leave
the UKA for the CKKKK. Soon, the CKKKK had approximately 40 functioning units,
while the UKA was so decimated that the Charlotte SAC requested that the program against
the group be phased out to conserve agents’ time.
The CKKKK had accomplished its intended results—“the idea was to siphon off
members of UKA, thereby diminishing the power of UKA.” However, this did not mean
that those who left the UKA were no longer active klan members. The Charlotte SAC
hypothesized that “there are many members who will join any klan organization in
existence. If the CKKKK ceases to function as an organization, these members undoubtedly
will return to UKA. This is not desirable” (FBI Memo from Charlotte to Director, 1/30/69).
Thus, the product of FBI agents’ ambivalence about the threat posed by the klan—a group
perceived as dangerous not because of any subversive ideology, but rather because of its
propensity to engage in unpredictable lawlessness—was to pursue a strategy that deviated
from their stated overall goal of eliminating the klan: channeling members toward
acceptable klan alternatives controlled by the Bureau itself.
Conclusions
Models that purport to explain interplay between dissidents and the state—the “repressionmobilization nexus” (Davenport 2005)—are primarily interested in explaining the path(s)
through which state interests and goals tie to acts of social control and, subsequently, to
political outcomes. I have argued that this path is frequently assumed to be linear, when in
fact several aspects of the interactions in question create contingencies that break down
such an assumption. To begin to account for these contingencies, we must disaggregate our
understanding of the “state” to recognize the simultaneous actions of multiple agencies—
variously operating in parallel, in conflict, or in combination—as well as the ways in which
endogenous organizational processes impact the relationship between goals, actions, and
outcomes.
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
373
Here, I have explored the case of the UKA in North Carolina, first outlining the political
context within which state and federal agencies operated against the KKK, and then
pursuing more detailed case studies of two agencies (the SBI and the FBI) to examine how
organizational context shapes organizational action. This case study approach has an
important limitation, however: it misses key aspects of the ecology of state action. Simply
put, to the extent that state agencies have overlapping goals, the fact that one organization
successfully achieves a particular goal means that other organizations no longer need to
initiate action toward that end. This dynamic is evident in the actions described above, in
particular with the FBI’s investment in undertaking repressive action to remove Grand
Dragon Jones from the UKA. While their campaign was not directly successful, a contempt
of Congress charge stemming from Jones’ 1965 HUAC testimony and his subsequent 1year prison sentence effectively severed his connection to the UKA membership in 1969
(Young 1969). Ongoing FBI-based efforts to achieve that same goal, of course, became
immediately redundant, which shaped the Bureau’s subsequent strategic options. The larger
point is that the actions of any particular state agency need to be understood as occurring
within a constellation of actions undertaken by the full population of relevant state
agencies.
Endogenous processes matter as well. Within any agency, communication patterns,
authority structure, and broader organizational cultures shape the manner in which
organizational resources are deployed. Here, I have identified one specific mechanism—
ambivalence, produced by dissonance between organizational goals and organizational
values—that in part defined the ways in which organizational actors pursued action related
to stated goals. The manner in which organizational mandates were conveyed and
monitored in the SBI and FBI—which clearly specified how agents were to pursue defined
ends regarding the klan, while also permitting a degree of latitude in the field—allowed
agents to employ discretion in their work, which in turn enabled ambivalent performances
to shape field reports and actions. As della Porta and Reiter (1998, p. 22) argue, given such
space for discretion, police agents “seem to intervene first of all on the basis of their
appreciation of the situation, and only secondarily on the basis of rules and regulations.” To
be sure, procuring intelligence by discussing sports with Grand Dragon Jones in the back of
a Bureau car, or by openly stating to klan adherents that the UKA was “perfectly
permissible to join,” was not necessarily compatible with the SBI and FBI’s organizational
mandate to put the UKA “out of business.” But the autonomy given to agents in the field
allowed such pseudo-collegial routines to develop, providing the foundation for more
generally ambivalent orientations toward klan targets.
The enactment of ambivalence was also facilitated by the broader political opportunity
structure, in particular the presence of significant contention surrounding civil rights
dynamics in the South throughout this period. This volatility operated in two important
ways. First, it provided an impetus for state agencies to define even lawful protesters as
security threats, creating ambiguity over police work that centered on the expression of
politically-extreme positions rather than consistently unlawful acts (Waddington 1998).
Second, racial contention served to enhance the salience of particular identity categories,
creating a basis for the construction of durable boundaries across groups. A context in
which the SBI and FBI were composed entirely of white male agents, with at least some
holding segregationist leanings, activated racial identity in ways that increased the
likelihood that agents would feel ambivalently about excluding klansmen by defining them
as illegitimate political actors. Conversely, SBI agents’ consistently repressive orientation to
civil rights protest might be explained by an increase in the salience of categories that
distinguished state agents from their targets—i.e. race, as it distinguished white agents from
374
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
African-American civil rights adherents. The strengthening of these identity boundaries is
one key condition for the “othering” process that suppresses the emergence of ambivalent
action that would otherwise create a basis for agents’ deviation from stated organizational
goals (Gamson 1995).
While the analysis above lacks comparative cases that might more definitively
demonstrate how variation in these dimensions impacts the emergence of ambivalent
policing action, future research might productively assess the general propositional
implications advanced here. In particular, we should expect that ambivalent action should
play a lesser role in the interaction between state policing agencies and dissenters: 1) when
state agencies exert tight control over field agents’ discretionary action, and 2) during
periods of relative quiescence, when boundaries associated with contested identity
categories are less salient.
Indeed, even given the relative similarities in organizational and political context in the
cases described above, the analysis demonstrates the general point that ambivalence varies
considerably across settings. While the analysis here has shown that organizational
ambivalence complicated the relationships among goals, actions, and outcomes in both the
SBI and FBI, its presence played out quite differently across the two cases. Within the
counterintelligence framework of the FBI, agents’ ambivalence about the UKA (a group
whose values overlapped considerably with those of agents, but whose tendency toward
terroristic action was unlawful and therefore unacceptable) meant that they still engaged in
a sustained effort to disrupt the klan, but in a manner that sought to control the UKA rather
than eliminate it altogether. Perhaps ironically, given the fact that the FBI’s counterintelligence programs against Civil Rights, Black Power, and New Left targets were
unambiguously designed to eliminate those groups, the Bureau’s efforts against the KKK
were far more successful than those undertaken in other COINTELPROs during that period.
Because of their ideological overlap with klan members, agents were highly effective in
their efforts to develop informants and infiltrate klaverns, which allowed them to frequently
achieve significant tangible results against the UKA and other KKK groups (Cunningham
2004). But such outcomes are not easily extrapolated from the Bureau’s overall goals and
the pattern of actions initiated by agents, which was marked by the considerable
ambivalence outlined above.
The SBI, in contrast, supplemented its normal investigative routines to enact a program
of proactive intelligence-gathering against the UKA. However, the milieu within which this
monitoring effort was enacted strongly bounded the agency’s efforts, serving to focus its
energies on the investigation of discrete criminal acts rather than on broader efforts to limit
the UKA’s ability to act. This reactive orientation to breaches of the law was in marked
contrast to the SBI’s more consistent proactive stance against a number of Civil Rights
leaders.
Beyond the particular incidents discussed previously, such tensions were evident during
the summer of 1966, when the SBI was embroiled in a controversy regarding their
treatment of klan investigations. The controversy was tied to a mandate from the Governor
to supply his Law and Order Committee with data to aid the latter’s efforts to “expose” and
potentially outlaw the UKA as an incorporated organization. L & O chair Malcolm Seawell,
however, accused the SBI of withholding data that could assist in the effort to attack the
UKA’s claims of legality. The accusations against the SBI were reinforced by L & O
researcher William O’Quinn, who resigned from the committee after being told by SBI
Director Walter Anderson that the L & O was a “vigilante group” and not a “dulyconstituted law enforcement organization,” and would thus not have access to certain
confidential files (Clay 1966).
Qual Sociol (2009) 32:355–377
375
Here again, we see the importance of disaggregating state action to account for conflict
and cooperation across constituent agencies. The conflict between the SBI and the L & O
also highlights the ways in which, as with the FBI, outcomes fail to follow neatly from
organizationally-defined goals and actions. In these instances, marked by tensions between
values and goals, we must interrogate the ways in which ambivalence impacts actors’
decision-making and, by extension, shapes dynamics tied to the repression-mobilization
nexus.
Acknowledgements Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2007 Hixon-Riggs Forum on
Science, Technology, and Society hosted by Harvey Mudd College, and at the American Sociological
Association’s 2007 Annual Meeting in Boston. I thank participants in those sessions, in particular Gary Marx
and Christena Nippert-Eng, as well as Wendy Cadge and Sara Shostak, for their helpful comments on early
drafts.
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David Cunningham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University. His current research focuses
on the scope, organization, and legacy of anti-civil rights violence in the American South. He is the author of
There’s Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence (University of
California Press, 2004).