32. When you, from many years experience, realize how easy it is to help people abandon their racist way of thinking towards “the others”, it becomes a vivid sport to try with even the most hopeless cases. Some years ago I was planning to meet Virgil Griffin, one of the most disrespectable Klan leaders-that I myself had terrible prejudices against, he was actually the leader who in 1979 was behind the massacre of an anti-Klan-demonstration where five people were killed. One of my old girlfriends Villena Cannon was shot at, but my co-worker Tony Harris’s ex-girlfriend Sandi Smith, whom I remembered from the time I spent with them in Lee College, Greensboro, was among those killed.  Tony, who was on tour with American Pictures in Norway, was so shook up by seeing his murdered ex. girlfriend on the TV News from his hometown, which we had to fly him home. Yes, not all Klan people are angels :-)

33. When I was to meet, the now old Griffin, at a large Klan gathering, I decided to not in any way let him feel my negative thoughts about him. Since I came straight from a visit with Tony Harris in Atlanta, I wanted to ask him why he committed the Greensboro-Massacre, His answer was the same as what got him acquitted at the trial, “we shot communists in Vietnam back then, why should we not fight them back home?”
Very well, the demonstration was arranged by the communistic textile-workers union, thus I had to admit that he had acted “political correctly” in this reactionary Southern state, were we once again were together.
Since Griffin knew that I was an anti-racist, and therefore had the same prejudices against him, I knew I would get nowhere with trivial quarreling, and I decided to let bygone be bygone. Instead I wished to attempt, as we do in racism workshops, to communicate with his inner humanity….. assuming that he had a such J

34. Therefore I spent the rest of the day trying to get enough courage to send him my most loving thoughts, which is what is called non-violent communication or “giraffe-language”. For selfish reasons this is also rather sensible if you are standing alone among 50 stark raving mad Klan people in a deserted forest :-)
By “raving mad” I mean precisely “Children of pain” as their entire life has been chained by our negative distancing from them or downright hateful thoughts towards them, and from them never receiving any kind of love. I know from the ghettos how they really thirst for our love and acceptance, and that is never too late for us to show them a little kindness and humanity, But a Klan leader must as the “nature of the beast” appear tough to the members, so for a while he avoided me or spoke rhetorically to me, if they were close by. I used the time to find” allied” among the members, as the above “tough guy”, who of course was as “soft” inside as the black gangsters I have worked with for so many years.

35. As the day went on, Griffin clearly got more and more influenced by my “loving” thoughts (thou true love is something far more). First he started, almost flirtingly, to smile back at me, but late in the day, he suddenly asked me to take a walk with him alone in the forest. Here it is important to point out that he was not the one who had burned down the  black’s church, as he had been convicted of, because in one of the real culprits belongings was found an old membership card from Griffin’s Klan group. “You must believe me Jacob, I am a deeply religious man, and would never dream of burning down a church.”
Since I could see that it was extremely important to him, that especially I believed him I ended up doing just that, as he in that way indirectly showed that he was seeking my friendship.
He now told me how he had been in the Klan his entire life, but lately he had had three by-pass operations and “I know I am going to die soon, but in February I will turn 70, and it would mean the world to me if you will come for my birthday party, will you promise me that” he asked. I promised that I would make an attempt.

36. At the end of the day, when I said good-bye to my new friends, I said “so I will see you all soon at Virgil’s birthday party”, “WHAT” they said surprised, and it dawned on me that not a single one of them were invited to his party.  With all the self loading that is typical for the Klan members, Griffin was not interested in socializing with “his own kind”.
“The children of pain” are so thirsty for love from us with a surplus – us outside their mental ghetto. They will not find much human affection in the Klan, which emotional callous members always attend the meetings alone and lonely.
However, my small experiment with non-violent communication demonstrated in its successfull reaching of Griffin once again for me how easy it is for “we, the others” through an established friendship to help even the most radical and violent racist escape their pattern of suffering.
Only a few months later, Griffin actually left “The Cleveland Knights of the Ku Klux Klan”, which he had ruled most of his life, after which the the group dissolved.

37. The present times Klan isn’t marked by extrovert violence, but of course attracts violent types who have experienced a violent upbringing. As Jeff told me: “80% of those seeking memberships, are useless to me, they are violent fools.”
As the Klan is infiltrated by the FBI, no Klan leader wish to accept memberships from such types. Still they always say  in USA , about racist attacks, that KKK was responsible, and the Klan has nothing against that, they survive on their bad reputation, and therefore they laugh at the naïve school kids “who think that we string up blacks in trees”.  In fact, this has the Klan never done. Most of the 10.000 lynchings were committed by crowds of whites, the same poor types as the Klan themselves.
Michael Donald here, lynched in 1981 by a Klan leader's abused son, is the exception who confirms the rule. During my six years of working with KKK, I have only experienced self-loathing Klan people murder other Klan people.

Continue with examples of
Love disguised as a hatred