KKK Ordered To Pay $37.8 Mil. In S.C. Church Burning Case

Ku Klux Klansmen must pay $37.8 million for creating a climate of hate that led to a fire in 1995 that destroyed the predominantly Black Macedonia Baptist Church in Manning, SC, a jury recently decided.

The verdict went beyond the $25.2 million in damages originally sought by the church. The jury of nine Blacks and three Whites deliberated only 45 minutes.

Atty. Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL, represented the church.

The church contended Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan factions in South Carolina and North Carolina and four White men now serving federal prison sentences for the arson conspired to burn the church. The four men pleaded guilty.

Horace King, the 65-year-old grand dragon and South Carolina Klan leader, defended himself during the trial, denying he encouraged Klansmen to commit violence.

But videotapes played at the trial showed a man filled with such hate for Blacks that he urged they be burned out or run out of town.

King, at a Klan march in Washington dressed in Klan garb, said, in reference to Blacks, "If we had this garbage in South Carolina, we would burn the bastards out or run them out of town."