“They don’t look like white supremacists to me.”

They’re not. They are Lumbee Indians from North Carolina. On January 18, 1958, James W. “Catfish” Cole, a KKK organizer from South Carolina, decided to hold a cross burning to encourage upholding segregation in Robeson County, North Carolina. Robeson County had a triracial population of whites, blacks and Native Americans. The point of the rally was to encourage racial purity. It was not a good idea. About 50 Klansman came north from South Carolina and gathered in a cornfield nears Hayes Pond on the outskirts of the city of Maxton.  Several hundred Lumbee showed up and, with firearms, scattered the KKK members. Catfish Cole escaped into a nearby swamp while the Lumbees seized the Klan’s memorabilia from what is now known as the Battle of Hayes Pond. 

www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi.

Steve Levi is an Alaskan writer who specializes in the Alaska Gold Rush (nonfiction) and the ‘impossible crime,’ (fiction.)  An ‘impossible crime’ is one where the detective must figure out HOW the crime was committed before going after the perpetrators – like a Greyhound bus with bank robbers and hostages disappearing off the Golden Gate Bridge –THE MATTER OF THE VANISHING GREYHOUND. Steve’s books can be found at www.authormasterminds.com/steve-levi

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