It's a time in our nation's -- and particularly our state's -- history we all want to think is part of an ugly past. But a recent killing in Bogalusa has stirred up those horrible memories. The KKK appears to be alive and well in St. Tammany Parish, where an Oklahoma woman was alleged shot when an initiation ceremony went wrong. The AP reported the story yesterday.
Hattie Dillon got a first-hand taste of the racial hatred that gripped this city in the 1960s when a metal bolt flung by someone in an angry crowd gashed her head as she marched for civil rights.
On Wednesday, sitting on her front porch just off Main Street, the 61-year-old said Bogalusa is better now. But the bloody legacy of racial violence and brazen Ku Klux Klan activity in the area remains -- evidenced by the arrest of eight local people in the death of an Oklahoma woman shot when a weekend Klan initiation went awry.
Read the rest of the story here.