Resurrections

With the civil rights movement gaining momentum, the Ku Klux Klan once again set out on the march in the Southern United States. Complicit with local authorities, white supremacists unleashed a wave of hatred in the 1960s: the attack on the church in Birmingham, the assassination of civil rights activists. Their crimes shocked public opinion. Under political pressure, the FBI went on the offensive. The result: in the 1970s, the Klan had only a few thousand members left. A new leader, David Duke, tried for a time to give it a veneer of respectability, but terror was still part of the organization's DNA. Little by little, the Klansmen swapped their hoods for military fatigues and swastika tattoos. Today, the ranks of the Klan and other supremacist groups are once again swelling.