MODERN WHITE SUPREMACY

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The white supremacist movement  was  rooted in Southern California in the 1980s. Glendale experienced a swell of rallies, marches, and demonstrations by white power groups influenced by neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacists, and the Christian Identity religious sect. Recruiters for extremist groups targeted white people: youth, working class and military veterans  who felt  victimized and short-changed by society. The late 1970s and 1980s offered a variety of economic and political factors that fostered a boost to white supremacist activities. These movements grew as a backlash to a variety of movements seeking equality in the 1950s through the 70s - the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War and Student Movements, the Feminist Movement,  the  Gay  Rights  Movement,  and  other movements challenging the status quo.  White Supremacist groups also grew  in response to factors, such as the move of the United States from a creditor to a debtor nation,  increasing income disparity, and the end of the Vietnam War. 

A significant  internal effort was made to refashion the image of white supremacy and white supremacist organizations. After the war in Vietnam, white supremacists and the white power movement  “declared war” on the federal government. The militarization of white power groups began, the kind of violence carried out changed, and coordination, relationships and communications between groups became more sophisticated. White power groups became networked and connected in ways that they had never been in the past  pioneering  an early internet social network, publications, phone networks and radio and television programming.  Many groups were able to share  resources,  personnel, funding, and strategy.  

Glendale was home to the headquarters of the League of Pace Amendment Advocates,  a far-right white supremacy group, and it was the stomping ground of the Reich Skins, San Fernando Valley's local racist skinhead group. Glendale’s racist reputation attracted neo-Nazis including J.B. Stoner and representatives from the Christian Identity Church. The presence of groups and appearances of leaders in the white supremacy movement incited and encouraged racist acts of vandalism across the city, which were met with a largely ineffectual response. 

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We invite you to enter the portal and discover the history of  KKK in Glendale. Click on any of the icons in the interactive image or use the menu bar along the bottom to see photos and articles selected from Glendale Library, Arts & Culture’s History Room and other archival sources. 

This section of the exhibition focuses on hate groups which engaged in racist violence in Glendale; the content and historical imagery may be upsetting to some viewers. 

There are absences in the Library’s collection due to implicit and explicit bias against people of color, which has created an incomplete history of our community. This is true of the vast majority of archival collections in the US. We urge you to use this exhibition as a starting point for your own exploration of racial inequality in Glendale and the United States.

The image used in this episode is taken at Glendale Central Library, the site of a violent anti-racist confrontation in 1987 .

INJUSTICE LEAGUE

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In January of 1987, Glendale once again became home to the headquarters of a far-right fringe group obsessed with white supremacy: The League of Pace Amendment Advocates led by  William Daniel Johnson.  

Johnson created the Pace Amendment, a proposed constitutional amendment, that would have deported only non-white citizens of this country, with the goal of advancing an agenda to make the United States a nation that only concerned itself with the issues of the white male. 

The League of Pace Amendment Advocates’ short stay in Glendale would be yet another stain on the city’s history of housing racist groups.  

LIBRARY BRAWL

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On June 25, 1987, the Glendale Human Rights Council invited  the head of the League of Pace Amendment Advocates, William Daniel Johnson to a debate at Glendale Central Library  with Rey Reyes, the Chairman of the Human Rights Council. The debate was meant  to give the public  perspective on the League’s  ideas, and to answer the question posed by Reyes “whether Glendale seems to be a congenial home for racists?” Many advised against the debate, stating that giving the racist  League a public forum would only amplify their message. Those against the event  were the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).   

On the day of the event a violent confrontation unfolded between anti-racist demonstrators from groups such as the International Committee Against Racism (InCAR) and  white supremacists from the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party. 

After the mini brawl,  the Glendale Central Library  again became the location of a racist rally, this time in the form of the Knights of the Green Mountain. This group, made up of members of the Klan and the Nazi party, planned the rally to correspond with another Glendale Humans Rights Council event. Rally turn-out was dismal with Knights and counter-protestors outnumbered by police.     

W.A.R.

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In September of 1984 over 100 racist stickers with swastikas and epithets were posted along Brand Boulevard. In 1987 a Glendale car dealership was vandalized with the words “white power.” Another rash of graffiti hit the city of Glendale during the weekend of September 10-11, 1988. Ahmed Khalek arrived at the business he owned to find white power slogans, racial epithets, and racist stickers posted on the rear door. Similar vandalism appeared at six other Glendale locations. In 1993, racist leaflets were left over a six-month period on cars near Glendale Community College. The following year the California Grocers Association sued the White Aryan Resistance for placing racist flyers in the packaging of grocery store items throughout Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego Counties. 

All of these incidents reflected the overlapping influence of white supremacist groups in Southern California in the 1980s and 90s: neo-Nazis, racist skinheads, the Ku Klux Klan, Christian Identity Ministries, and the White Aryan Resistance founded by Tom Metzger. 

Recruiters for extremist groups targeted white working class, youth, and military veterans who believed they had been victimized and short-changed by an increasingly diverse society. The most active of these in Glendale were the skinheads, but the most violent and nationally known were the groups affiliated with Metzger. 

LIBRARY BRAWL

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On June 25, 1987, the Glendale Human Rights Council invited Johnson to a debate at the auditorium of the Glendale Central Library to have him express his views, give the public a perspective on his group’s ideas, and answer the question, as Chairman of the Human Rights Council Ray Reyes put it, “whether Glendale seems to be a congenial home for racists?” Many advised against this, stating that giving the racist a public forum would only amplify their message. Against this public forum was the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The event was canceled the day-of after a violent confrontation unfolded between racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi Party. It also attracted demonstrators and protestors such as INCAR (International Committee Against Racism).

After the notorious attempted debate, the Glendale Central Library again became the location of a racist rally, this time in the form of the Knights of the Green Mountain. This group, made up of members of the Klan and the Nazi party, planned to hold a rally a month later to correspond with another Glendale Humans Rights Council event. The rally was dismal, the GHRC was not even scheduled to hold an event at the library that night, and the Knights of the Green Mountain met with counter-protestors and were outnumbered by police.

InCAR (International Committee Against Racism), the group that clashed with the League of Pace Amendment Advocates in Glendale, continued to disrupt any public forum that would give racists a chance to speak publicly. InCAR also had an eye on Glendale, a city where they believed little to no effective action against racist groups was occurring.

CHRISTIAN IDENTITY

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Pastor Robert Record arranged a conference of the Christian Identity Ministries at the Glendale Masonic Temple on April 28-30, 1989. The conference closed a day early after protest from local anti-racism groups, and their call for a demonstration. 

Christian Identity, a religious sect and one of the longstanding influences within the white supremacist movement, centers its  beliefs on a political theology that holds  that white people are the true lost tribe of Israel and that people of color and Jewish people descended from animals or Satan. Embedded in most of the major extreme-right movements, Klan leaders such as Thomas Robb and Louis Beam adopted the faith, as did some racist skinheads. Christian Identity members were involved in extreme anti-government activism, the tax protest movement, the sovereign citizen movement and the militia movement.  

LIBRARY BRAWL

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TEMPLE VANDAL

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The appearance of J.B. Stoner in Glendale, and his incendiary speech at the Holiday Inn, provoked racist acts of  vandalism across the city in the weeks following the event. A particular target was Temple Sinai, which had their walls and door defaced by white supremacist Joseph William Dunlap. There were requests from the community and the County of Los Angeles to investigate the incidents and their cause, but little meaningful action was taken by officials who continued to deny that Glendale had a racist image. That said, Dunlap was arrested and imprisoned for his crime. 

LIBRARY BRAWL

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