Local NAACP and KKK meet

Casper Tribune, WY - They didn’t think he would come.

He was a Ku Klux Klan organizer, after all, and they were local leaders of the NAACP, historic enemies. They spent months negotiating the terms of his visit to Casper. There were ground rules, topics to be discussed and guarantees of a security team.

They wait in a small, low-ceiling conference room in the Parkway Plaza hotel. Four NAACP leaders. Ten mints, striped red and white, sit clustered on the table. The pitchers of ice water on the table drip sweat.

“Showtime,” a security man says.

A security check, swipes with a metal-detecting wand, and he steps into the room.

Here is John Abarr, an organizer for the United Klans of America, carrying a brown briefcase, shaking hands, settling into a high-backed swivel chair, leaning in, ready to talk. This could be the first time representatives of the two groups purposely met in peace.

Keisha Simmons, the secretary of the Casper branch of the NAACP, pours the Klansman a plastic foam cup of water.

A security man locks the wooden conference room door.

Jimmy Simmons, the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s branch in Casper, didn’t expect to get a return letter from the KKK.

For months he had been hearing reports that black men in Gillette were being beaten up. Invariably the men were with white women when assaulted. Then Klan literature showed up around town. Simmons considered rallying against the Klan, but then decided to try something different: talking.

“If you want to talk about hate, get a hater,” Simmons said later. “Let him tell you something about hate.”

He looked up some contact information and in June, asked for a meeting with the KKK.

Simmons wouldn’t get specific, but it seems the NAACP headquarters wasn’t pleased he planned to talk to the Klan. He eventually got the go-ahead, provided the meeting took place in Casper, Simmons’ turf. A moderator from Colorado planned to come, but then she broke off contact.

The Casper NAACP would meet with the Klan alone, in the person of John Abarr, on Saturday evening.

Now here was Abarr, not dressed in his Klan regalia – the white hood and robe, the history of hateful violence – but in a dark suit, white shirt and a nondescript tie, his hand extended toward Simmons.

“Hello, John.”

“Hello Jimmy.”

Abarr makes a point of proving he’s a member of anti-racism groups. Membership: American Civil Liberties Union, the hate-group watchdog Southern Poverty Law Center, and oh, yes — also the United Klans of America, an organization with a website image gallery that includes a target with an Obama campaign symbol bull’s-eye.

Then there’s the desire to secede from the United States of America. The northwest U.S. — Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Washington, Oregon — should secede and form a territory. Blacks can stay there, he supposes, but no more should be allowed in, to keep the region white. States such as Georgia, which are primarily black, should secede from the union and become a black state.

A question from the NAACP: How do you plan to secede from the union?

“Legally, hopefully,” Abarr says.

The meeting was to be a give-and-take on race relations, but the NAACP leaders asked most of the questions.

A certain amount of segregation is a good thing, he says. White police should stay in white neighborhoods and black officers in black neighborhoods. Color-blindness doesn’t even make sense. Interracial marriage? No. It’s better if the races are kept separate. Completely opposed.

“Because we want white babies,” he says.

The line hangs in the air. Next question.

Beatings of black men in Gillette? Those are hate crimes, Abarr agrees. Something must be done. Talk to the police. His tone is clear: Who would think of doing such a thing? Just terrible...

Hate-driven violence may still occur, but those perpetrators are hoodlums, he says. There’s no proof that’s Klan violence, Abarr says. There was certainly violence in the past, but even with the splintered KKK, there’s no proof the Klan is violent any more.

“You’re really confusing me, because I don’t think you understand the seriousness of your group,” says the NAACP’s Mel Hamilton.

The disbelief in the room is palpable.

“I think what Mel is saying, is that based on your history, based on the Klan’s history, it’s hard to shed the skin of your group not being violent, not being killers, murderers, terrorizers,” Simmons says. “It’s hard to imagine that.”...

“I just know what it is today,” he says. “I had relatives in the Klan in the ’20s and they didn’t lynch anybody.”

Hamilton shoots back: “As far as you know.”

His relatives quit the Klan because someone wanted them to kill somebody, Abarr says.

The Klan is a secret society, and Abarr won’t discuss how it’s evolved or what it does. It’s a canned answer. Abarr reads it in a rush, from a piece of paper.

Not good enough.

“You tell us what you want, and you maintain the secrecy of injustice,” Hamilton says. “But you’re here, we’re trying to do something good, and you are half-stepping on us. You’re not serious about this, I don’t think.”...

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