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I wonder the average IQ/income of a klansman is anyway?
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1203/31cross.html
The men came after midnight to Eva Hurst's northwest Georgia mountain home to leave a burning cross as a warning to her daughter, who was seeing a biracial man.
But moments after the fire was lit, one intruder panicked and called 911. The woods surrounding the Dade County house were dry, Hurst recalled, "and they thought they might burn down the elderly couple right next to me."
The phone call led the FBI and local investigators to six men, who were indicted Tuesday on federal civil rights charges.
"They should be on the 'world's dumbest criminals' TV show -- burning a cross, then calling the law on themselves," Hurst said. "They didn't scare anyone. They just messed themselves up."
Hurst, who says her own late father was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, said the cross burning wasn't Klan-related. Authorities agree.
"I was raised around the Klan," Hurst said. "The Klan had morals. If a man was drinking up his paycheck and abused his kids, the Klan stepped in."
Hurst, 53, knows some of the families of the suspects and says that most are good people. "I really hate it for those old boys," she said. "But you just can't say, 'Don't do it no more.' There are laws and all that."
She said some of the relatives had apologized to her, and the sheriff said some of the suspects had expressed remorse over the Nov. 5 incident. But the new federal charges -- the men already faced state charges of making terroristic threats -- show that authorities are taking the case seriously. The men, ranging in age from 25 to 41, face up to 10 years in prison on each charge if convicted.
U.S. Attorney Bill Duffey in Atlanta said such acts "degrade us as a society" and that "we will prosecute that conduct forcefully." Dade County officials say they probably would drop the state charges pending the outcome of the federal cases.
Jerrell Timothy Garner, 29, Stacy Paul Jones, 30, Steven Garland Jones, 41, Jeremy Ray Sims, 28, Eric Shane Sullivan, 25, and Billy Richard Wells, 31, all of Trenton, have been released on bond on the state charges and are scheduled to appear Jan. 6 before a federal magistrate in Rome.
The indictment alleges that the men concocted the plan Nov. 4, built a cross out of wood, shrouded it in white cloth and doused it with transmission fluid. Sometime after midnight, authorities say, they put the cross into Sims' pickup truck, drove it to Hurst's home and tried unsuccessfully to light it. Three of them allegedly returned a second time to light it.
Hurst said her father, Sam Brandon, would not have stopped his granddaughter from dating a biracial man. "He would have treated him like a man," Hurst said. "He's half white and half black. Do you divide him like that?"
Dade County, in the 2000 census, had 96 black residents out of a population of 15,154. The county has sometimes been called the "state of Dade" because of its remote location in the extreme northwestern tip of Georgia. Local lore has it that the county did not "officially" rejoin the Union until 1945, 80 years after the end of the Civil War.
Officials in Trenton, the county seat, raised eyebrows last year when they adopted a version of the old Georgia state flag, with its dominant Confederate symbol, as the city flag.
Dade County Sheriff Philip Street said the men accused of the cross burning were exhibiting "old school" thinking.
"Some of them were raised in the old school, but that mentality is not around here anymore," Street said. "They heard that an Afro-American gentleman was on the mountain. They wanted to send a message.
"I think they were trying to relive old heritage," the sheriff said. "There's no heritage in cross burning. Those days are dead."
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1203/31cross.html
The men came after midnight to Eva Hurst's northwest Georgia mountain home to leave a burning cross as a warning to her daughter, who was seeing a biracial man.
But moments after the fire was lit, one intruder panicked and called 911. The woods surrounding the Dade County house were dry, Hurst recalled, "and they thought they might burn down the elderly couple right next to me."
The phone call led the FBI and local investigators to six men, who were indicted Tuesday on federal civil rights charges.
"They should be on the 'world's dumbest criminals' TV show -- burning a cross, then calling the law on themselves," Hurst said. "They didn't scare anyone. They just messed themselves up."
Hurst, who says her own late father was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, said the cross burning wasn't Klan-related. Authorities agree.
"I was raised around the Klan," Hurst said. "The Klan had morals. If a man was drinking up his paycheck and abused his kids, the Klan stepped in."
Hurst, 53, knows some of the families of the suspects and says that most are good people. "I really hate it for those old boys," she said. "But you just can't say, 'Don't do it no more.' There are laws and all that."
She said some of the relatives had apologized to her, and the sheriff said some of the suspects had expressed remorse over the Nov. 5 incident. But the new federal charges -- the men already faced state charges of making terroristic threats -- show that authorities are taking the case seriously. The men, ranging in age from 25 to 41, face up to 10 years in prison on each charge if convicted.
U.S. Attorney Bill Duffey in Atlanta said such acts "degrade us as a society" and that "we will prosecute that conduct forcefully." Dade County officials say they probably would drop the state charges pending the outcome of the federal cases.
Jerrell Timothy Garner, 29, Stacy Paul Jones, 30, Steven Garland Jones, 41, Jeremy Ray Sims, 28, Eric Shane Sullivan, 25, and Billy Richard Wells, 31, all of Trenton, have been released on bond on the state charges and are scheduled to appear Jan. 6 before a federal magistrate in Rome.
The indictment alleges that the men concocted the plan Nov. 4, built a cross out of wood, shrouded it in white cloth and doused it with transmission fluid. Sometime after midnight, authorities say, they put the cross into Sims' pickup truck, drove it to Hurst's home and tried unsuccessfully to light it. Three of them allegedly returned a second time to light it.
Hurst said her father, Sam Brandon, would not have stopped his granddaughter from dating a biracial man. "He would have treated him like a man," Hurst said. "He's half white and half black. Do you divide him like that?"
Dade County, in the 2000 census, had 96 black residents out of a population of 15,154. The county has sometimes been called the "state of Dade" because of its remote location in the extreme northwestern tip of Georgia. Local lore has it that the county did not "officially" rejoin the Union until 1945, 80 years after the end of the Civil War.
Officials in Trenton, the county seat, raised eyebrows last year when they adopted a version of the old Georgia state flag, with its dominant Confederate symbol, as the city flag.
Dade County Sheriff Philip Street said the men accused of the cross burning were exhibiting "old school" thinking.
"Some of them were raised in the old school, but that mentality is not around here anymore," Street said. "They heard that an Afro-American gentleman was on the mountain. They wanted to send a message.
"I think they were trying to relive old heritage," the sheriff said. "There's no heritage in cross burning. Those days are dead."
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