Three arrested at Claiborne Klan rally over infant death case

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Posted 8:25AM on Sunday, April 28, 2002

TAZEWELL, TENNESSEE - Ku Klux Klan leaders vowed to ``march across Tennessee'' as they tried to rally support on Saturday by protesting the sentence of a woman who threw her newborn in a trash bin in 1996 and is implicated in a similar case this year. ``It's time for us to march across Tennessee and time to make the Confederate flag our state flag,'' said Scott Fultz, organizer of the rally and grand dragon of the Tennessee Realm of the White Knights Coalition. About a dozen members of the Klan and the American Nazi Party from Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia staged a 1.5-hour rally on the steps of the Claiborne County courthouse, where Courtney Jo Dukes faces a Friday hearing on whether her probation should be revoked. Counter-protesters, about 150 bystanders and 150 members of law enforcement were on hand. Three Klan sympathizers were arrested following a scuffle with a spectator that involved spitting, shouting and a thrown punch. A woman and man were charged with disturbing the peace and a woman with assault, authorities said. No one was injured. The wife of a Tennessee Klansman, Karen Gregg, said the group was rallying over the Dukes case ``because no one else will. No one else will stand up and say this is wrong.'' Dukes, 25, was sentenced to six years probation in 1996 after she admitted delivering a baby in her Lincoln Memorial University dorm room and then dumping it in a convenience store's trash bin. An autopsy determined the newborn bled to death. Dukes was returned to Tennessee in March on a charge of violating probation after the decomposing body of an infant was found in a trash bag inside her mobile home in Virginia. She hasn't been charged, but Tennessee prosecutors plan to use suspicions that she killed another newborn to persuade the judge to revoke her probation at Friday's hearing. A member of the American Nazi Party dressed in a red beret spoke against child abuse during Saturday's rally. ``If you see someone beating a child, you don't take them to court. You put a bullet in their head right then,'' said the speaker, who didn't give his name. The Klansmen, most of them wearing white robes and hats, also used a public address system to issue expletive-filled invectives against blacks, Jews, Catholics, gays and Mexicans. They denounced counter-protesters from the Earth! First environment movement, who carried signs, banged on drums and buckets and blew whistles during the speeches. Occasionally they yelled ``White Power'' and gave a Nazi-style salute which was returned by a few in the crowd. John Ford, a Tazewell resident who is black, agreed with comments against Dukes but said the speakers ``did get off the issue and into racism.'' Ford, 29, also objected to their foul language. ``How they could call themselves Christian and cuss while holding the Bible?'' he said. Sabrina Buis, 21, a college student from Tazewell, attended the rally with other students to counter-protest. As for the Klan's focus on the Dukes case she said, ``It's not what they came here for.'' Security was heavy with State Highway Patrol troopers on guard in riot gear, sharpshooters atop building roofs and sheriff's deputies and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents on patrol. Department of Safety spokeswoman Beth Tucker Womack estimated the security costs could total $80,000 to $100,000. Last month, a 6-foot-tall cross was burned and a dog hung from it in the yard of Dukes' attorney, public defender Martha Yoakum. Fultz also organized a January rally in Cocke County, the first public Klan event in the region since the 1970s.