Michael Donald was the baby of the family, having eight siblings older than he. On March 21, 1981, he was beaten, then choked, his throat was slit, and he was hung from a tree. Michael was 19 years old when he was murdered. His killers, Henry Hays, James Knowles, and other members of Unit #900 of the United Klans of America. Let that sink in for a minute; Unit #900.
Hays and Knowles were angered by the trial of a Black man for the murder of a white policeman. Josephus Anderson had been tried twice on the charge, ending in a mistrial each time. I won’t speculate whether the policeman was a member of the Klan as well, but the odds were good. Hays’s father, Bennie Jack Hays, the second-ranking member of #900 is reported to have said the following:
“If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.” — Bennie Jack Hays
Henry Hays and James Knowles went cruising thru Black neighborhoods looking for someone Black to kill. They came across Michael Donald exiting a convenience store with cigarettes he’d purchased for his sister. They pulled up near Michael, drawing him close under the ruse of asking directions to a club. They forced him into their car at gunpoint, taking Michael to a secluded area where they and others beat, stabbed and hung him. Members of the Klan Chapter burned a cross that night at the Mobile County Courthouse. Following the example of Emmett Till’s mother, Beulah Mae insisted on an open casket so the world could see what his killers had done.
Local authorities knew it was the Klan, the Klan themselves announced it with their cross burning, yet the Mobile, Alabama sheriff, and others initially denied it. They arrested three men based on weak evidence who they soon released. Mobile, police were ready to shrug their shoulders and give up, until it became national news. Jesse Jackson brought a lot of attention to the case and the FBI got involved, soon ready to give up themselves.
Beulah Mae Donald wasn’t one to let it go. She pressed law enforcement to continue pursuit of the case. It was two years later that Henry Hays and James Knowles were arrested with Knowles being the star witness, snitching on Hays. Henry Hays was sentenced to death, the first white man given a death sentence for killing a Black man in Alabama since 1918. Knowles was sentenced to life in prison.
A year later, Buelah Mae Donald agreed to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center against the United Klans of America, Unit #900. Donald and the SPLC were ultimately successful in their lawsuit, winning a verdict for $7 million. Money the local Klan didn’t have. Unit #900 ultimately declared bankruptcy, they were forced to hand over the deed to the only asset they had. Their headquarters worth an estimated $225,000. Give that a thought, the not-so-clandestine Klan had a headquarters building in their name. Buelah ultimately sold the building and used the money to purchase her first home.
The tactic became a common one to help take down the Klan, one of the reasons the third wave of the Ku Klux Klan came to an end. The courage it took for Buelah Mae Donald to publicly stand up to the Klan while continuing to live in the community is more than I can imagine. Buelah died a few years later of natural cause, she was instrumental in leading the way in taking down the Klan, not only in Mobile but everywhere.
Like cockroaches, the Klan has been hard to kill. There are no longer 900 or more Units, the number today is less than 300. Others have taken their place using various names like the Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, and MAGA. The new groups are better funded and might be able to pay their legal bills should it get to that point. One can only hope?
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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