Wayne Sides

by Guy Martin

The Tennessee Valley is Klan Mesopotamia, the Fertile Crescent. It is named for the mile-wide river that curves down into Alabama below Chattanooga and exits northwest at the Alabama-Mississippi state line. The territory is famous for its succulent pork barbecue, for the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), and for its tremendous rockets which took America to the moon. It was also here, in Pulaski, Tennessee, on Christmas Eve 1865, that six young Confederate veterans formed a fraternity they called the Ku Klux Klan. Within a few years, this group spread well beyond the Tennessee Valley, with thousands of members belonging to hundreds of Klan dens with Nathan Bedford Forrest as Wizard. Although that version of the Klan died during Reconstruction, a longtime Klan observer once stated that "When the Klan doesn't show up for a few years I hear, 'The Klan is dead.' Fact is, it just looks dead. It's always been right there under the surface, ready for something to happen." The Klan periodically comes alive with varying degrees of success. This photography monograph by Wayne Sides, with introduction by Guy Martin, documents one of those periods of Klan activity, in 1978 and 1979 when Civil Rights activists and Ku Klux Klan members battled in Decatur, Alabama over the case of Tommy Lee Hines, a mentally disabled black man with the IQ of a six-year old who was convicted by an all-white jury of raping a white woman. In the unrest that followed, Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) civil rights activists protested at the Decatur City Hall and Louisiana native Bill Wilkinson came to the area to form several large and active Klan dens. This led to intimidation and violence, including a shootout at City Hall between civil rights activists and Klansmen that left four wounded.

56 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Guy Martin is publicly known primarily as an English motorcycle racer, who also works as a lorry mechanic and TV presenter. He has mainly competed in road racing events such as the Isle of Man TT, Ulster Grand Prix and North West 200. Since 2011, Martin has also found success as the front man of several television programmes focusing on his passions of engineering, motor vehicles and speed.