That the Cajun Guard, a militia-type organization tied to the Three Percenters should be headquartered in Livingston Parish should come as no surprise to observers of the white supremacist movement.
Bill Wilkinson, after wresting control from David Duke in 1975, ran the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from Denham Springs for 10 years.
Wilkinson, left, leads a KKK rally
Not long before his contentious split with Duke, Wilkinson organized one of the largest Klan rallies since the 1920s on April 4, 1975, at the Old South Jamboree in Walker, five miles east of Denham Springs.
Reporter Tyler Bridges, in his book The Rise and Fall of David Duke, described that rally as filled with racial slurs that skirted on the edges of advocating outright violence.
When Duke asked the overflow crowd of 2700 for a solution to what he described as racial “problems,” someone in the crowd yelled, “Kill the n***ers.”
Instead of rebuking the crowd, Duke responded, “Get your guns. No, no, wait, I’m not saying it’s time for killing yet. We can’t say that. But get your guns ready.”
Wilkinson, meanwhile, was whipping his organization into one of most notorious, violent and dangerous KKK movements in the nation.
Wilkinson, with bodyguard, in Bogalusa
From appearances on national television shows like Donahue and Crossfire to conducting “special forces” training, he kept a high profile both here and abroad, once holding a cross-burning in Kent, in southeast England. He even conducted “special forces” training in South Alabama.
The Phil Donahue Show
When Duke left to form his National Association for the Advancement of White People, Wilkinson became the undisputed leader of the KKK, but clouds were on the horizon. In 1981, a Nashville newspaper revealed that Wilkinson had served as an FBI informant since 1974.
Wilkinson denied that he had given any information other than where and when rallies would be held, but the damage was done. Membership plunged and in 1983, Wilkinson’s Klan filed for bankruptcy and a year later, he was gone, only to reappear years later in the majority black Caribbean nation of Belize, living in a multi-million-dollar resort that he owned.
Livingston Parish has gone from a sparsely-populated rural parish in 1975 to a bustling, thriving Baton Rouge suburb to which whites began fleeing in the 1980s in favor of cheap land and good schools. Business development here is such that a resident can find anything he needs right here without having to ever travel to Baton Rouge other than for work or hospitalization.
And while political attitudes have softened considerably, there are still pockets of racism, bigotry and entrenched attitudes of white supremacy that are difficult, if not impossible to penetrate. But then, that’s true of just about anywhere you are—Idaho or Chicago, Oklahoma or Pomona. Hatred knows no geographic boundaries.
Perhaps it is these pockets that outfits like Cajun Guard, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers are attempting to attract.
But from a personal standpoint, I can’t help but believe that Livingston Parish will not embrace office-seekers who advocate a new Civil War simply because they’re “fed up” with an opposing point of view. At least, that’s my fervent hope.
The last thing we need is another David Duke or Bill Wilkinson promoting their special brand of hatred.
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