Overview
- State workers clearing a closet at the Mississippi Department of Public Safety found a small blue suitcase of 1960s Ku Klux Klan materials and transferred it to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
- The cache includes a robe, charters, meeting minutes, a ledger, a 1964 Imperial Executive Order, and a United Klans pamphlet titled The Ugly Truth about Martin Luther King.
- Archivists say they will catalog and digitize the records for researchers and the public, and they expect the intake and processing work to take several months.
- Folders in the suitcase held news clippings about the 1961 Freedom Rides with references to T. B. Birdsong, who led the state’s Public Safety Department and Highway Patrol during that era.
- DPS leaders framed the transfer as preservation and education, while some item-level details reported by single outlets—such as a violent line attributed to a White Knights charter and a family claim about a Klan handbook’s authenticity—await verification by the archives.