Original subtitles

Someone has taken a young man,

hung him in a tree.

Who would do something this hideous?

Michael Donald was an innocent, good Samaritan, not a thug.

The Mobile Police Department just didn't want to believe

that Mobile would still have Klan in it, but they did.

That's why we kept marching and protesting,

telling them we ain't taking this lying down.

[reporter] The Klansman turned ashen

as the words guilty of capital murder sank in.

It was the first time since at least the early 1900s

that a white had been sentenced to death

for a crime committed against a Black person

in the State of Alabama.

Beulah Mae Donald is grieving

but also seeking justice for her child.

This is a Black woman,

who has just lost her son to lynching,

finds the strength to move forward

in a civil suit against the Klan in Alabama.

The stakes could not be higher.

[reporter] The body of a Black man has been found

hanging from a tree in Mobile, Alabama.

Lynching is a tool to control and oppress Black people.

Racialized violence is as old as the constitution.

Klans are not running around with white sheets

over their head, but it's still happening.

Today, people are horrified at the police.

[crowd chanting]

It's the modern-day lynching.

What are we going to do about it?

We move forward with people deciding,

I'm bold enough, and I'm gonna make it change.

Beulah Mae Donald took on

one of the most violent criminal organizations

in the United States.

This is an incredible story of courage.

-[Tamika] No justice. -[crowd] No peace.

-[Tamika] No justice. -[crowd] No peace.

And if we don't get no justice,

there ain't gonna be no damn peace.

That's the bottom line.

[crowds protesting]

There is a level of mental illness

that has been inflicted upon our society

that can no longer stand.

And it didn't just start today,

but it is at a critical point.

[group chanting]

When you get too far away from your history,

then you're unable to understand the moment we're in

and the direction that we can continue to go in

if we don't stop.

[crowd singing protest song]

Lynching became a tool

used by both white citizenry

as well as law enforcement,

to control and oppress Black people.

While there appeared to be progress,

we had the reminders of racialized violence,

of murder, of lynching,

and we see it most clearly

with the murder of Michael Donald.

[slide projector clicking]

My uncle, Thomas Figures and my father, Michael Figures,

they worked incredibly, incredibly hard

to ensure that justice was served

in the criminal case.

They both knew that that was not going to be enough.

The Klan was just as much of a threat

as it was before the criminal case.

And that's when my father teamed up with Morris Dees.

After law school, in 1960, when I got to practicing law,

there were a lot of violent acts

that we saw in the United States.

The beating of the Freedom Riders

in Birmingham, the violent deaths

around Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, and other places.

The killing of Viola Luizzo,

committed by what people suspected were Klan members,

but very few of them were actually apprehended.

I thought to myself, if I ever get an opportunity

to get on the other side of fighting those that did it,

I'd do it in a minute.

[urgent music]

I decided I'd go down to Mobile

and watch Michael Donald's criminal trial.

I wanted to know everything I could.

Following the criminal trial,

my father, Michael Figures and Morris Dees teamed up

to bring a $10 million civil suit against the Klan.

Morris Dees, he came and he talked to my mother.

He says, "I'm gonna get everything

"that you want for you, Mrs. Donald,

"because you have been good through this.

"I don't think I could go through this."

He told her that.

Morris Dees and Senator Michael Figures

went after the organization, rather than individuals.

And a lot of people questioned

whether he was gonna be successful.

The Michael Donald civil case was the first time

that a jury had a chance to rule on the acts

of a hate group organization and its members,

for doing a serious, horrible lynching.

If we could win this case,

we could wipe out all of the groups.

Beulah Mae Donald,

having endured the emotional rigors

of a criminal trial, knew that she wasn't done.

[slide projector clicking]

My mother, she said, "The worst has already been done.

"My child is gone. I want to make them pay

"for what they've done to my child."

It became a national case.

[newsreader[ The Donald family felt others were involved,

and filed a civil suit against the United Klan.

The aim was to dismantle whatever financial base

the group has, and to establish a precedent

that can be used by other victims of Klan violence.

We filed a civil suit against a group

of named Klan individuals.

Bennie Hays chose Tiger Knowles and Henry Hays to do this deed.

Got them a gun, got them a rope,

to go out and find a Black person to kill,

just any Black person.

We also filed a civil suit against Robert Shelton

when he was the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America.

My take on Robert Shelton was that he was very smart.

You could tell by the way he organized,

the way he dressed.

He wore Klan uniforms and paraphernalia

around Klan gatherings and stuff,

but not in the public,

he was a coat and tie kind of guy,

and he set up an organization that was pretty sophisticated.

Shelton's chapters were responsible

for really horrific violence.

Shelton's people were organized and were vicious.

A number of them had military training,

and that made them a much more dangerous threat.

Over the last several months,

members of the Aryan Nations Church

and other neo-Nazi groups have been connected

to a whole series of very violent events.

The United Klans of America, the country's oldest group

of Ku Klux Klansmen, is threatened

with financial ruin.

So they started calling late into the night,

in the wee hours of the morning to say, you know,

"We're gonna come and get you."

They just kept calling, kept calling, kept calling.

They got fired up because we sued them.

[ominous music]

In 1983,

the Klan burned our building in Montgomery, Alabama.

Not only had our office been firebombed in the night

by a Klan group,

Morris lived, at that time, on a farm.

They came to my house trying to track me down

and they found that I had security guards out there.

They discovered, on his property,

camouflaged Klan people,

with high-powered assault rifles,

trying to sneak up to Morris's house.

[reporter] The neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan

are closely allied.

Both groups claim they have infiltrated

military reserve units and can get their hands

on a variety of sophisticated weapons.

They had a hit list of people they wanted to kill.

The hit list assigns value to targets.

They included everything

from killing a random person of color,

all the way up to the assassination

of major targets that they would like addressed.

The FBI showed me a copy. I was on top of that list.

One of the guys that they wanted to kill was Alan Berg,

Denver radio talk show host,

because he had a radio program, he's Jewish,

and he was condemning the neo-Nazis.

And they mowed him down, killed him, shot him.

That got our attention in a-- in a big way, I can assure you.

Morris Dees told my mom, "I have gotten death threats.

"Are you prepared for this?"

She said, "I don't care. I just want the world to know

"what has happened to my son."

Beulah Mae Donald versus United Klans of America.

She put her name, one person, one individual, one mother,

against the Klan.

She knew that the Klan

had no problems killing children,

why would they refrain

from killing an elderly Black woman?

She knew what the risks were...

and she did it anyway.

Not merely on her behalf,

she did it on behalf of other mothers,

on behalf of their children.

I fought for a departmental trial.

One officer fired,

which there should have been at least six officers fired.

The idea that your child can be killed by the State,

and there be no justice,

is enough to make someone lose their mind.

Justice would be when all of those officers

stand accountable for my son's death.

Then, at least, it would be closure

'cause there is no justice for Eric,

because Eric is dead.

And the fact that these mothers continue to work

and go about life,

and try to encourage other people,

that's some powerful shit.

[dramatic music]

[haunting music]

The trial, it was the Klan in there,

the benefactors sit on one side, and then my mom

and her supporters sit on the other side,

and then some days, it was so full

you couldn't get in there.

When you looked at-- in Ms. Donald's eyes,

oh, it ju-- it would break my heart

every time I talked to her,

because I knew that her son had been murdered

and here she was, having to go through this trial,

which had to be hard on her, but you would never know it.

I mean, she was so solid.

If they could stand to see Michael,

I could stand to see their faces.

People were just surprised of the courage that we had,

not knowing that sometimes we had to cry at night,

'cause we didn't know.

And we had to moan sometimes, 'cause we didn't know.

But when we walked out,

we presented ourself as a family.

In most prior cases of when hate people were involved in it,

they indict the hate people,

but not the leaders of the group,

unless they could prove that the leaders

had a plan to commit violent acts.

And that's not easily said, nor done.

So for this trial, I had to show

that the United Klan had a history of carrying out

its white supremacy acts with violence.

We started by the things that the Klan had done

and that Robert Shelton, the leader, had been behind.

After we filed the civil suit,

I got a letter in the mail from Bennie Hays.

He sent me a copy of the charter,

given by Shelton to the Unit 900 in Mobile.

He said, "I want you to have this,

"and if you would come down to Mobile, to my house,

"I can give you some documentation

"that will help me in the civil suit."

I stuck my Beretta 357 in my hip pocket

and off I went to Mobile.

And there sat a box of documents,

and I had a chance to look at them.

And that was the 50-page

Constitution of the United Klans of America.

[haunting music]

Documents that you don't get to see

unless you're in the Klan.

So I said, "I'd like to take these with me."

He said, "No. I want you to get my son off death row."

I said, "Well, a jury put him on death row, a judge did,

"and I can't do anything about that.

"But don't you destroy these documents."

So I walked out of there with nothing.

In about a week or two, Bennie Hays was arrested

and put into Mobile County jail.

He had burned his house down

to get money to hire a lawyer to represent his son

and he'd been indicted for that.

We were able to establish it was, in fact, arson,

so our office prosecuted him under the mail fraud charge.

The judge gave him five years.

I said, "Now is the chance for me to get these documents,"

and I took a long shot.

I sent a deposition discovery document to Mrs. Hays,

and said, "Bring all the documents

"to the federal court house."

She appeared with all the documents,

every one of them.

The Constitution of the United Klans of America

ended up to be some of the most powerful evidence

that we had against the UKA.

And so we had to put witnesses on the stand.

[slide projector clicking]

The perfect witness was Gary Thomas Rowe.

Gary Thomas Rowe was an FBI informant.

He was involved in some of the most significant

and important moments in civil rights history,

like the beating of the Freedom Riders,

like the murder of Viola Liuzzo.

At one point, he actually testifies to the Senate,

and he tries to disguise himself in the most bizarre way,

of putting a white napkin over his head,

shaped in such a way

that it looked as though he was wearing a Klan hood.

I had been instructed to disrupt, discredit,

or disorganize the Klan organization

-to the best of my ability. -And to get the information,

was it necessary to participate in the violent acts yourself?

Some of the information, I think, yes,

-and some I would say no, sir. -In connection

with the Freedom Riders incident that you mentioned,

did the Birmingham Police give you

the time to perform the beating?

Yes, sir. We were promised 15 minutes

with absolutely no intervention

from any police officer, whatsoever.

And then were they beaten?

They were beaten very badly, yes.

Gary Thomas Rowe, he was able to connect the dots

between the Klan and the violence

of the Klan during that time.

So we had this man tied to a whole series of acts,

and it was read to the jury.

It was very, very powerful.

He was behind the beating of the Freedom Riders,

the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham,

the killing of Viola Liuzzo.

Robert Shelton, the leader, was behind it all.

In Mobile, Alabama, in 1981,

there was a Klan group operating there,

United Klans of America,

a part of Robert Shelton's empire,

In our civil case, the strategy was used

to tie the local folks' actions

on to the national Klan organization.

You don't have to show

that the head of the United Klan,

Robert Shelton said, "Kill Michael Donald."

We had shown all these other violent things he had done.

All you had to do with this corporation,

and it was a corporation,

was show some of his top officials

were behind and promoted the killing.

Some of the conspirators were high-ranking officers

in the United Klan.

In fact, Bennie Hays

was the second or third highest ranking Klansman

in that organization, in that state,

at the time of the murder.

Bennie, he gave the orders,

he manipulated these young people.

Tiger Knowles was 17 years old at the time.

Bennie Hays was just as culpable

and should have been held just as accountable.

All that together went to shw

the pattern of violence that this group

had encouraged around the tie

that the Michael Donald lynching took place.

When I had Tiger Knowles testify,

I got some help from the Attorney General

of the United States at the time,

and they broke every rule you could break

to get him brought down to Mobile.

I concentrated on information that he could give me

about who was involved in this planning session,

down there in Mobile the week before this all happened.

He got on the stand, and in detail,

told exactly what happened.

He pointed out people sitting out there,

the individuals who were at that meeting that night,

and their knowledge of everything.

He talked about the United Klans of America head,

Robert Shelton.

I showed him that photograph of the face of Michael Donald

and you could see on the photograph, a boot print

because when they put the rope around his neck,

they put the boot against both sides of his face,

pulled on it until there was no breath left in him.

And I know Ms. Donald couldn't have helped but have seen

that picture when it was passed on to the jury.

At the end of the trial, he looked over at Ms. Donald,

he looked at her sitting there at that table.

He said that his own family had turned against him.

And he also said he didn't have a family.

And to know that somebody cares about someone,

it made him have a deep feeling in his heart,

and he felt sorry.

I told her that I was sorry,

and that...

...if I could, I would take her son's place.

That's when he asked me, will I forgive him?

-What did you say? -Oh, yes.

-I had already did that. -You had already forgiven him?

Yes, sir. I had already asked the Lord

to take it in His hand.

[slide projector clicking]

I don't think there was a dry eye in that court room.

I know there weren't at our counsel table.

And I saw jurors brushing back tears.

[church bell tolling]

Beulah Mae Donald's ability

to forgive James Tiger Knowles of an unspeakable crime

is a commentary on her character,

and not on his crime.

But it also raises the question...

...how long must America

count on the bottomless well of Black people's forgiveness?

I was angry.

I was angry for a long time.

I just had to forgive them

because it won't-- we weren't going to bring the girls back,

it wasn't going to bring my sight back.

And when I just let it go,

that's when I started to feel better.

These stories of Black forgiveness

are character lessons.

But the character lesson is not,

let us ask Black people to serially forgive,

but rather, let's challenge ourselves

to not engage in unforgiveable behavior.

This is a portion of my father's closing statement

from the civil trial.

"It was Michael Donald on March 21st, 1981,

"but who will it be tomorrow?

"Unless you speak very loudly and very clearly

"to send that message throughout the country,

"who will it be tomorrow?

"What should your verdict be?

"Obviously, we think it should be for the plaintiffs.

"We think it should be the amount we have asked for.

"Surely, we don't ever expect them to ever pay $10 million,

"they don't have that kind of money.

"But the message has to be loud and clear,

"no man is an island."

[slide projector clicking]

"We are all a part of one another.

"Each man's death diminishes me,

"for I am involved in mankind, and therefore,

"never seem to know for whom the bell tolls."

[slide projector clicking]

"They toll for Mrs. Donald right now.

"But one day they may toll for thee. Thank you."

The outcome of the criminal trial was step one.

The outcome of the civil trial

could be the most important statement

that could possibly be made here.

Essentially an indictment on the entire culture

that led to Michael Donald's death.

[reporter] In Mobile, Alabama,

an all-white federal jury hit the United Klans of America

with $7 million in damages.

The lawsuit grew out of the murder, six years ago,

of a young Black man, Michael Donald.

That was my baby, and nothing they can do can bring him back.

But I still say I am proud that this came to court.

We think this verdict sends a very strong message

across the country

that white southerners, white Mobilians,

will not tolerate this kind of activity.

This is a very vicious Klan group.

And I hope the decision of this jury today

will put it out of business.

I didn't want it to happen to nobody else's child

like it has mine.

You don't know the agony it is, until you go through it.

There had really been some justice done in this.

I was doubtful, though,

because had it been up to some people,

it wouldn't have advanced far.

It's not really about a jury award of $7 million.

It's not really about getting, if you will,

the keys to the Klan kingdom.

What it was about is that we hold accountable

institutions and organizations that propagate hate.

And we, as a society,

are holding everybody accountable.

[reporter] The Klan was hit with a $7 million

wrongful death verdict

in a case brought by Donald's mother.

The Klan didn't have the money and wound up having

to sign over its Tuscaloosa building to her.

I just said, "I-- I just don't care about the money.

"I really don't."

But the building sold really fast.

That's why she was able to get the home

that now stands where it is today.

[slide projector clicking]

I wasn't expecting any,

you know, death bed confession from Henry Hays.

He had never done that.

He didn't admit to the crime,

but he did admit to having made poor choices,

having bad associations.

He said, "If my association with the Klan makes me guilty,

"I apologize for that."

He never said, "I committed this crime."

[reporter] We're about to close a chapter in what many call

the last lynching in America.

Henry Hays now has four and a half hours now

to say his final goodbyes to his family and friends.

You have no idea what I'm fixing to go through.

This guy only had numbers of years

to realize 'til this point,

what was-- what's going to happen to him.

He had-- He had plenty of opportunities

to correct himself, but he's a diehard Klansman.

And so when we went to the execution,

the news media came down and said,

"One of you all can go in." He say, "I'm going."

Stanley said, "I'm going in."

And when he went in, Henry Hays looked at him and said,

"Will you forgive me?"

And he said, "I forgive you."

[reporter] 42-year-old Henry Hays

died in Alabama's electric chair early this morning

after refusing a last meal.

-[slide projector clicking] -And, um,

I think we cried all the way back home from Holman prison,

we cried all the way back home.

Because we knew that chapter was finally over.

Nobody wins when it's like that,

because two families have been destroyed,

over a simple act of pure hatred.

At some point, Bennie felt some guilt,

because he knew

that he probably had cost that boy his life.

My biggest regret is never having tried Bennie Hays.

The trial ended in a mistrial

because Bennie Hays either faked, or had a heart attack,

in the presence of the jury.

Chris Galanos and team indicted him in the murder,

but he died while in custody.

He was officially the leader of the group,

and unofficially, the evil force behind it.

[slide projector clicking]

There were threats, there was a contract on my life.

Everybody hated me.

I was given a life sentence. I really thought

my life sentence was going to be reduced

so I could get out.

But it wasn't.

I was made promises that were not kept

and nobody would put anything in writing,

but they would say things.

And I ended up spending a long time in prison.

The Justice Department--

United States Justice never intended

to agree that he'd be paroled,

but because of him helping me

and providing me with very, very good information,

I began an effort to try to get him

released from federal prison.

And that happened after 20 years.

They finally released him.

I disagree with it.

It was just the epitome of senseless, mindless violence.

I don't think he should have ever been released.

[Klansmen] Death to our enemy. Death to our enemy.

The Klan has resurrected itself throughout American history.

And so the idea that one case would finish off the Klan...

...wasn't anything I could believe.

[dramatic music]

[haunting music]

Mrs. Donald bankrupted the structured organization,

but not the mentality.

We still got Klan in Alabama.

We don't have evidence,

'cause they bankrupt, but that don't mean a thing.

That ain't gonna stop them from hurting people, I know it's not.

-I know it's not. -The settlement

in the Michael Donald case

certainly was something that organizers

in the white power movement were paying attention to,

as they planned what was next for their movement.

What doesn't destroy us makes us stronger.

And I believe that these type of attacks, in many ways,

will strengthen our movement.

The old way of activism was a problem,

because the Michael Donald case really brought down

that model of organizing.

The Klan becomes one strand

of a broad and intertwined social movement

that brought together Klansmen, neo-Nazis, white separatists,

Christian identity proponents,

and other followers of white religious theologies.

Later on, it brought in skinheads and militiamen.

And it brought people together

in a much more violent and revolutionary way

than they had organized their violence

under Shelton and the UKA.

[slide projector clicking]

Off to the battlefield, my fellow Texans.

-White victory! -[crowd] White victory!

We don't need to be in the same group.

At this point,

in the history of the Klan in the United States,

it would be against our interests

to totally combine.

[reporter] Beam's contribution to the movement

has been to take its message...

...and move it into the computer age.

Libertynet was the first foray

into social network activism by the white power movement,

and perhaps one of the earliest examples

of social network activism by anyone in the United States.

So it really was like Facebook before Facebook.

People talk about the hate that's propagated on Facebook,

and say you have to take responsibility

for what is broadcast,

what is disseminated on your platform,

because there are real world consequences.

What we're seeing now is yet another morphing.

The Klan and the neo-Nazi groups,

they've gone online.

They don't really have headquarters,

it's hard to find them.

This is where we get the idea of the lone wolf,

white power gunman, which is largely fictional.

What happened with the Oklahoma City bombing

is that we got the story of Timothy McVeigh

and a few co-conspirators.

We did not get the story

of McVeigh's extensive and deep connections

with the white power movement that fomented that action.

White Power changed its methods very effectively

in a way that would allow it to resurface

in the present moment. To be clear,

in the white power movement, we're talking about

cells attempting to overthrow the nation.

The nation in white nationalism,

within this ideology, is not the United States,

it is the Aryan nation.

We see a lot of stories about the changing face

of America, when the nation as a whole

will no longer be majority white.

What is happening in America

is that white nationalism ideology is running wild.

And the reasons why buildings are burning

is because this city, this state,

would prefer preserving that white nationalism

and that white supremacist mindset,

over arresting, charging and helping to convict

four officers who killed a Black man.

I'm so tired of police saying, "I was afraid."

Afraid of what?

You've got a gun, with 15 shots.

You can call in backup from everywhere.

What are you afraid of?

The Klan, at a time when they were being sort of dismantled,

they directed many of their members to do,

was to go into police departments

and other institutions where they would maintain power.

The FBI issues a report only a few years ago,

about the effort of white nationalists

to infiltrate law enforcement.

This is not some fringe organization

that drew this conclusion, it's the Justice Department.

We can take this back to the era of slavery.

We can think about slave patrols, in particular.

There were men, mostly men, who were deputized,

and it was their responsibility to make certain

that enslaved men or women who took the attempt to escape,

be brought back.

Hunted.

So after the Civil War, these slave patrols

literally morphed into Southern law enforcement,

Southern police departments.

And so systemic racism

is literally baked into law enforcement

in this country.

We have allowed, in many instances,

terrorist cells to spring up in our midst.

It's an ugly history, it's a tragic history,

but it is an undeniable history.

We went through what I think in Mobile

was a real change in attitudes

and relationships among the populace.

We were doing a lot of things

in terms of trying to achieve equality

in a lot of different areas.

I think we developed a new character.

That's why it was possible for me to get elected mayor.

That's why it was possible for a lot of other things

that's happened in Mobile.

[slide projector clicking]

This many years later,

Morris Dees has left the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Southern Poverty Law Center

and so many other civil rights organizations

have a great many new challenges to face.

[slide projector clicking]

Mrs. Donald was a very strong lady.

She went through the criminal case,

she went through the civil case,

she went through a whole lot with this.

But it never changed her character.

She was still a very, very nice lady, that everybody loved.

She exemplified that love

that she gave her children herself, personally,

with her family, and she brought that love

to the children that she served.

[chuckles]

Well, I just want everybody to know that Mom,

my mom, Beulah Mae Donald, was a good woman.

She loved her children

and she would let everybody know that.

She raised us good

and she taught us how to survive in life,

to work for what we have today.

The more you talk about it, it is healing.

It's healing to the soul.

She would just share her feelings with me.

She would say, "That was my baby."

I'd say, "I know." I would tell her, "I know."

Somedays it gets hard,

but I just believe that there's sharing in heaven, I do.

After years of seeking justice for her son,

this beautiful mother, an extraordinary human being,

died at the age of 67, in 1988.

To have an African-American woman die

a year after holding the Klan accountable for her son's death

says everything about the weight of this racial trauma

on Beulah Mae Donald's shoulders.

This was a heavy burden.

She endured two trials,

investigations, stress, grief, pain.

We should all ask ourselves,

how can we demonstrate the same degree of courage

and character in our lives, to pursue justice,

to do so with grace and dignity,

to find a way to extend forgiveness?

Her eulogy is ongoing.

[slide projector clicking]

Black women carry the entire struggle on our backs.

What goes along with that is a lot of trauma.

So people look at us and say, "Black women are so angry."

We demand too much. We are never in a good mood.

But we've got a lot to be angry about.

Beulah Mae Donald's story should leave us all wondering,

why do we not know of a woman who was unafraid

to take on the Ku Klux Klan,

who did not have many resources at her disposal

but had her courage

and her love for her son to propel her?

Why aren't more of these stories told?

Perhaps, with this 21st century movement,

where we are reminding people that Black lives matter,

perhaps...

Black mothers might be able to sleep a little easier.

I am optimistic. People are ready.

We've just got to love one another,

and turn away from all this hatred.

We cannot forget. We cannot forget,

and we must continue to fight.

We're trying to save our children.

We're trying to save our future generations.

Let's get rid of the system that we have now

and build a new system that will be fair to all of us.

People should come together as they are coming together now.

This shouldn't just be a moment, it should be a movement,

to come together.

In the present moment...

...we honor the names of people who've been lost to hate.

By singing loud.

Say his name,

say her name,

say their names.

Every hashtag that you read today

and endeavor to see the humanity behind the hashtag,

is a party of his legacy,

because his mother, Beulah Mae Donald,

chose to take on his killers and hold them accountable.

Which inspires us today to hold accountable

those who desecrate and destroy Black lives.

[slide projector clicking]

That's the legacy of Michael Donald.

That's the legacy of Beulah Mae Donald.