Mississippi Public Safety Finds 1960s Klan Records in State Office, Sends Them to Archives
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The Mississippi Department of Public Safety has disclosed that it recently uncovered a suitcase of Ku Klux Klan artifacts—including a White Knights handbook, Klan charters, a robe, recruitment flyers, propaganda attacking Martin Luther King Jr., meeting minutes, ledgers, and a dues list—while clearing out an office ahead of a headquarters move. All items have been transferred to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, which says it will take months to process the unusually detailed administrative records from a group long known for secrecy. NAACP state conference director Charles Taylor and archives commissioner Barry White say the documents offer rare, concrete evidence of Klan organizing and finances in 1960s Mississippi, particularly troubling given they were stored in a state public-safety facility with links to law enforcement. Officials frame the move as an effort to confront, not bury, this history and to give researchers new tools to examine how white supremacist networks intersected with state power, at a time when debates over structural racism and police legitimacy remain front and center nationally.