[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 52 (Thursday, April 15, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E671-E672]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EXPOSING RACISM

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. BENNIE G. THOMPSON

                             of mississippi

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, April 15, 1999

  Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, in my continuing efforts to 
document and expose racism in America, I submit the following articles 
into the Congressional Record.

    Justice Department Announces Arrests in Indiana Church Burnings

                           (By Rex W. Huppke)

       Indianapolis (AP).--A man charged with seven Indiana church 
     fires may be responsible for up to 50 such arsons across the 
     Midwest and South, including Mississippi.
       Probable cause affidavits accompanying the formal charges 
     brought against Jay Scott Ballinger paint a picture of a 36-
     year-old who burned churches at random while traveling with 
     his girlfriend, an exotic dancer.
       The U.S. Department of Justice announced Tuesday that 
     Ballinger had been arrested and charged with setting seven 
     Indiana church fires dating back to 1994. The Yorktown man 
     was being held in federal custody in Indianapolis while a 
     multi-agency investigation continues.
       Charged with one count each of arson are Angela Wood, 24, 
     of Atlanta, Ga., and Donald A. Puckett, 37, of Lebanon, Ind. 
     Wood is in federal custody in Macon, Ga., and Puckett is 
     being held in Indianapolis.
       Wood has admitted to serving as a lookout during some of 
     the other fires Ballinger allegedly set, according to the 
     affidavit, and both Wood and Puckett are believed to have 
     helped Ballinger burn down the Concord Church of Christ in 
     Lebanon, Ind., in 1994.
       U.S. Attorney Judith A. Stewart would not give information 
     on a motive for the arsons. She said that because the charges 
     are part of a federal criminal complaint she couldn't comment 
     on the investigation until formal charges were brought before 
     a grand jury.
       All three arrested are white and most of the church 
     burnings in Indiana have involved rural churches with 
     predominately white congregations.
       ``When someone sets fire to a house of worship, they are 
     not just setting fire to a building, but to an entire 
     community,'' said Bill Lann Lee, assistant attorney general 
     for the Justice Department's civil rights division.
       The arrests stemmed from the work of the National Church 
     Arson Task Force, established in 1996 after a series of fires 
     at black churches in the South.
       An affidavit from a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms 
     agent says that searches of Ballinger's central Indiana 
     residence turned up a gasoline container and satanic books 
     and writings. Also found were credit card statements showing 
     purchases made in Indiana and other states on or about the 
     dates of church fires in those areas.
       The affidavit says Ballinger admitted to setting ``a total 
     of approximately thirty to fifty'' church fires in Indiana 
     and other states.
       Jerry Singer, a special agent with the ATF, said the fires 
     involve 11 states, including Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
     Ohio, Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama, all of which were 
     mentioned in the affidavits. Singer would not identify the 
     other four states involved.
       He said that in his 21 years with the ATF, this is the 
     largest serial arson case he's seen.
       The affidavit details the events that led to Ballinger's 
     arrest: On Feb. 6, 1999, a church in Brookville, Ohio, was 
     burned. Three days later, a detective from the Ball State 
     University Police Department in Muncie overheard an emergency 
     radio call for medical assistance at the Ballinger residence 
     in Yorktown, a few miles west of Muncie.
       The officer recognized the last name from a previous church 
     arson investigation. He went to Ball Memorial Hospital in 
     Muncie and interviewed Ballinger's father, who said his son 
     was badly burned when he came home early in the morning on 
     Feb. 7.
       The officer notified federal investigators of the incident 
     at the hospital. During interviews with law enforcement 
     officials Feb. 19-21, Ballinger admitted to the various 
     arsons.
       Ballinger had at least one prior offense--a 1993 arrest on 
     charges of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. 
     According to court records, he was arrested near Daleville 
     for allowing two teen-agers to consume alcohol in his car.
       A warrant was issued for his arrest in Delaware County in 
     1994 after he failed to show up at a court hearing on those 
     charges.
       One of the affidavits in the church arson case said that 
     Puckett admitted that he, Ballinger and Wood set fire to the 
     Concord Church of Christ in Lebanon, Ind., in January 1994.
       According to the affidavit, Ballinger and Wood met at 
     Puckett's home, mixed several flammable liquids together then 
     left to find a church to burn.
       They picked the Concord Church of Christ at random. Wood 
     allegedly wrote satanic symbols on the porch, Puckett sprayed 
     the flammable mixture and Ballinger lit the fire.
       The church was destroyed.
                                  ____


          Jury Awards $720,000 to Couple in Cross-burning Case

       Chicago (AP).--A federal jury has awarded $720,000 in 
     damages to a black couple whose suburban home was targeted by 
     a white neighbor with a cross-burning.
       After a one-day hearing, jurors deliberated about an hour 
     Monday before deciding in favor of Andre Bailey and Sharon 
     Henderson of Blue Island, who are married, and who filed the 
     lawsuit against Thomas Budlove Jr.
       Budlove has failed to respond to the lawsuit or appear in 
     court, prompting a judge to rule last year that his conduct 
     amounted to a tacit admission to the cross burning.
       The incident occurred less than a year after Bailey and 
     Henderson moved into the rented bungalow in the predominantly 
     white neighborhood in September 1995. The couple alleged 
     Budlove regularly shouted racial slurs at them from his 
     property. Their tires were slashed, windows were broken, 
     their dog wounded by gunfire and leaves burned on their front 
     porch.
       On June 13, 1996, Bailey said that as he stepped from his 
     house to start his car, he was confronted by a 6-foot cross 
     burning in the yard.
       Lawyers for the couple and their two children sought at 
     least $300,000 in damages from Budlove. Attorneys for the 
     family told the jury they doubted Budlove has that amount of 
     money. But they urged the jury to send a message that hate 
     crimes won't be tolerated.

[[Page E672]]

     
                                  ____
                    Trial Begins in Racist Plot Case

       Little Rock, AR (AP).--Prosecutors opened their case 
     against two white supremacists charged with murder by calling 
     a former associate who said one suspect linked Jews and 
     blacks to insects and animals.
       Chevie Kehoe, 26, of Colville, Wash., and Danny Lee, 26, of 
     Yukon, Okla., are also charged with racketeering and 
     conspiracy.
       Kehoe and Lee are accused of using a campaign of violence 
     to set up a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest and 
     could get the death penalty if convicted.
       John Shults, a convict who says he has left the white 
     supremacy movement, testified Monday that he joined Kehoe in 
     the Northwest.
       ``We would make such comments as `The Jews are nothing but 
     maggots. The Jews should be exterminated.' . . . Black people 
     were the beasts of the field, how they were meant to be lower 
     than the white man, how we used them for caretaking,'' Shults 
     said.
       Members of the mostly black jury were expressionless. 
     Shults also said Kehoe spoke of executing judges to spark a 
     revolt.
       The crimes associated with the alleged plot include a 1996 
     bombing at City Hall in Spokane, Wash.; shootouts with Ohio 
     police; the slayings of two people in Idaho; and the 
     drownings of a white Arkansas family of three.
       U.S. Attorney Dan Stripling told jurors that Kehoe's 
     beliefs were based on those of Robert Mathews, the founder of 
     the Aryan Nations white supremacist group. Mathews was killed 
     in 1984 when his hideout caught fire during a shootout with 
     federal agents in Washington state.
       The prosecutor said Kehoe and Lee robbed the Arkansas 
     family in 1996 and killed them by taping plastic bags over 
     their heads, weighing them down with rocks and throwing them 
     into a bayou.
       Later, the defendants told Kehoe's parents that the family 
     was on ``a liquid diet,'' Stripling said.
       The judge has issued a gag order in the case, but Lee's 
     mother, Lea Graham, said her son is innocent and no racist.
                                  ____


 National Report Describes 12 Organizations in Wisconsin as Hate Groups

                       (By the Associated Press)

       Twelve Wisconsin organizations are being described as hate 
     groups in a quarterly journal published by the Southern 
     Poverty Law Center.
       The ``Intelligence Report'' listed six groups described as 
     neo-Nazi. They are the Euro-American Alliance in Milwaukee; 
     the New Order in Milwaukee; the Knights of Freedom in 
     Sullivan; and World Church of the Creator in Milwaukee, New 
     Berlin and Franklin.
       Also listed were two Ku Klux Klan groups, the American 
     Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mercer and Imperial Klans of 
     America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Adams.
       Two skinhead groups listed were the Hammerskin Nation in 
     Hartland and Oi! Boys in Kenosha.
       One Christian Identity church, the Wisconsin Church of 
     Israel in Appleton, was named. Christian Identity describes 
     ``a religion that is fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic,'' 
     the report said.
       Also included was one black separatist group, a Nation of 
     Islam affiliate in Milwaukee. Black separatists are 
     organizations ``whose ideologies include tenets of racially-
     based hatred,'' the report said.
       Wisconsin had 10 hate groups listed by the journal in 1997, 
     said Joseph Roy Sr., intelligence project director for the 
     law center in Montgomery, Ala.
       The law center listed 537 hate groups and group chapters 
     nationwide engaging in racist behavior in 1998 up from 474 
     the previous year.
       Officials of nine of the Wisconsin groups listed could not 
     be reached for comment.
       Donald V. Clerkin, 60, of Greendale, chairman of the Euro-
     American Alliance, called the organization a ``white 
     nationalist'' group concerned with, among other things, the 
     threat immigration poses to ``Western culture, European 
     culture in North America.''
       ``I consider it a badge of honor,'' he said of the listing. 
     In Mercer, Michael McQueeney, 43, calls himself the national 
     grand dragon for the National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan--
     Not the American Knights cited in the report.
       He disputed the hate-group label. ``I dislike a lot of 
     blacks, Jews and homosexuals because of what they're doing in 
     this country, but there's a lot of good Jews out there, and 
     there's a lot of good black people out there,'' he said.
       At Muhammad Mosque No. 3 in Milwaukee, part of the Nation 
     of Islam, minister William Muhammad, 40, called it ``totally 
     false and slanderous'' to call his denomination a hate group.
       ``The Nation of Islam teaches love--love of God, love of 
     justice and love of self,'' Muhammad said. ``Our goal and 
     purpose is the upliftment of our people--the moral, 
     spiritual, social and economic development and cultivation of 
     our people.''

     

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