Fighting the devil in Dixie : how civil rights activists took on the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-300) and index.

Shortly after the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Ku Klux Klan -- determined to keep segregation as the way of life in Alabama -- staged a resurgence, and the strong-armed leadership of Governor George C. Wallace, who defied the new civil rights laws, empowered the Klan's most violent members. As Wallace's power grew, however, blacks began fighting back in the courthouses and schoolhouses, as did young Southern lawyers like Charles "Chuck" Morgan, who became the ACLU's Southern director: Morris Dees, who cofounded the Southern Poverty Law Center; and Bill Baxley, Alabama attorney general, who successfully prosecuted the bomber of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church and legally halted some of Wallace's agencies designed to slow down integration. This is the first book to tell this story in full, from the Klan's kidnappings, bombings, and murders of the 1950s to Wallace's run for a fourth term as governor in the early 1980s, during which he asked for forgiveness and won with the black vote.