The New York Times

Sunday, October 24, 1999

Unmasked and Overwhelmed, the Klan Is Besieged at Rally

PAUL ZIELBAUER

Eighteen Ku Klux Klan members, vastly outnumbered by scores of reporters, photographers and television crews, hundreds of riot-helmeted police and thousands of counterdemonstrators, stood in silent protest for an hour and 15 minutes Saturday in the limp finale to a constitutional melodrama stretching from City Hall to the United States Supreme Court.

But after the police hustled the Klan members -- 16 men and 2 women, most wearing pointed white hoods, but no masks -- into the basement of the State Supreme Court building on Foley Square 45 minutes before the scheduled end of their rally, a series of running clashes between the counterdemonstrators and the police broke out nearby, around the Municipal Building.

The scuffles went on, with about a dozen arrests, swirling, jeering crowds and cantering mounted police even as, a few dozen yards away, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was holding a news conference in City Hall's Blue room to praise the police for peacefully containing the situation.

Earlier, seven people -- all counterdemonstrators -- were arrested during the Klan demonstration, the police said. At least three police officers were injured, including a Community Affairs officer who was hit in the head by a thrown D-cell battery, the police said.

The day began badly for the Klan members, who had been unmasked Friday by a three-judge appellate court's reversal of an earlier ruling that the city could not deny them a permit on the basis of an obscure 1845 state law prohibiting masked gatherings.

Thousands of shouting protesters -- 6,000 by the police count, along with another 2,000 tourists and curious onlookers -- had already gathered in two fenced-in sections, at the north and south edges of the square, rimmed with government buildings and courthouses.

The area set aside for their protest, a small triangle of grass and trees just north of the State Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street, was already surrounded by helmeted police and sealed with barricades of steel and of concrete.

But, witnesses said, five men, two dressed like skinheads and three older men in street clothes, were already there, having talked their way past the police by saying they were Klan supporters joining the rally.

As the little band of Klan members made their entrance, the five men rushed them and began pummeling the Klan grand dragon, James W. Sheely.

Police officers pulled them off and arrested at least three. One of them, a white-haired man, shouted, "Death to the Klan" as he was led off in handcuffs.

Sheely was cut on the cheek, and was later seen pressing a napkin to his face at during the protest.

One of the men who posed as a Klan supporter was John Lewis, 47, a shop teacher at George Westinghouse High School in downtown Brooklyn. "We ran into the group, and I ripped their banner away from them," Lewis said Saturday at the 84th Precinct in Brooklyn, where he and the other two men were taken after their arrest. "I was put to the ground before I had a chance to do anything more. I would have done all I could to try to stop that group from organizing."

Lewis's friend, Derek Pearl, 62, a former teacher at Westinghouse High, grabbed a Klan member's face when he rushed the group. "I wish I could have grabbed his neck, but there were about eight cops dragging me down," he said.

Asked how he justified fighting racism with violence, Pearl said: "How could someone who believes in racial superiority have a just rally? If that's not reason enough to hurt someone, I don't know what is."

The Klan members were unmasked after they lost a legal battle with the city that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court Saturday.

On Friday, the Federal appeals court reversed a lower court decision and barred Klan members from rallying with their faces hidden by masks. In a victory for the Giuliani administration, the justices unanimously rejected the Klan's arguments that the city was selectively enforcing a state law that bars the wearing of masks during most rallies.

Lawyers for the Klan group, the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, had argued that if its members were forced to unmask themselves, they faced retaliation because of their unpopular views -- and that the law thus violated their First Amendment rights.

About 11 A.M. Saturday, the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a petition on the Klan's behalf with the United States Supreme Court, and it was referred to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has responsibility for emergency petitions from the New York region. At 2 P.M., Justice Ginsburg rejected it.

City officials said they were pleased with the Supreme Court decision upholding the antimask statute. "We are gratified by the decision of Justice Ginsburg," said the city's Corporation Counsel, Michael D. Hess. "It supports the case that we presented to the Court and supports the 3-to-nothing decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. We also feel that the policy behind the antimask statute helps to avoid violence, makes people accountable for their actions and, so far, the event has been virtually violence-free and, hopefully, will conclude that way."

On a makeshift stage in front of the State Supreme Court building where placard-carrying anti-Klan protesters had gathered, Alan G. Hevesi, the City Comptroller, yelled into a microphone: "These are stupid people. They need to blame their targets for their own failure." The Klan, which once boasted of membership in the millions, is believed to have dwindled to about 4,000 members as it struggles to compete against newer, bolder and more Internet-savvy groups proclaiming white supremacy.

Perhaps the Klan was looking for a fight Saturday, or hoping to update its image from hooded men on horseback burning crosses in country fields. What better way to pick up a few members, free publicity, and compete with groups like the World Church of the Creator, the Aryan Nation and Christian Identity than to hold a little rally in Manhattan, the heart of American liberalism?

"I think the Klan has a plan: to let it be known around the country that they can do whatever they want," said Charlene Mitchell, a labor organizer from Manhattan who came to one of the two pre-Klan protest gatherings Saturday. "That's why they want all this attention, to grow their membership."

Like some others among the protest crowd, Ms. Mitchell, 69, has seen other Klan rallies, in Cleveland, Georgia and Tupelo, Miss., where hooded, armed Klansmen rode through town on flatbed trucks. "It was a scary thing," she recalled. "You can't see their faces. You can't see their eyes. It's terrorizing."

Kevin Stinson, 45, a social studies teacher from Leonia, N.J., who was also at the protest, said: "They have a right to speak, but people who believe in tolerance should also speak out. I feel it's important not just to talk about it, but we must use as much energy as those who encourage hate."

Nikeisha Mustafa, 24, a student at the College of New Rochelle, said she had skipped class to attend. "It's time for people to realize how dangerous the Klan is in America as a whole, not just in the South," said Ms. Mustafa, who is black. "Their white power means destruction to the rest of our nationality." She said she was pleasantly surprised at the racial diversity of those at the protest. "I can go back and tell people it's more than just black and white. That this involves everyone."

Aside from the specter of a few dozen members of a racist fringe group taking a stage in lower Manhattan before hundreds of police officers and the throng of jeering protesters, the event was filigreed with smaller, quieter ironies.

Among the defenders of the Klan's right to rally, for example, were the city's largest black newspaper, The Amsterdam News, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who both filed legal papers last week supporting the Klan's efforts.

(Though the paper said it had acted from a sense of First Amendment inclusiveness, Sharpton clarified that he was not "for the Klan," simply "against the Mayor.")