Suing the KKK: Klan Under Fire

July 26, 2007 — -- They didn't need their white sheets or pointed hats this time.

Their steel-toed black boots with red laces were enough to crack the teenage boy's ribs, break his arm, hurt his jaw and inflict enough emotional damage to last a lifetime.

For Jarred Hensley and Andrew Watkins, two members of the nation's second-largest Ku Klux Klan group, the mistaken belief that Jordan Gruver was Hispanic was apparently reason enough for them to beat the 16-year-old to the ground after showering him with racial slurs, spit and whiskey at a Kentucky county fair in July, according to court papers.

The year was not 1865. It was 2006.

The two Klan members are locked up in a Kentucky state prison for the next three years while, until this week, their white supremacist organization continues to operate undeterred.

But Wednesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit group known for taking on some of the country's largest hate groups, added the entire Imperial Klans of America organization and three of its high-ranking officials to a civil lawsuit the organization filed against Hensley and Watkins in February. The consolidated suit seeks an unspecified amount of money for both punitive and compensatory damages.

The IKA, whose headquarters are in Dawson Springs, Ky., "promotes violence and intimidation and calls for the death of racial and ethnic minorities, homosexuals and so-called 'race traitors,'" said SPLC president Richard Cohen in a statement.

There has been a 40 percent rise in the number of hate groups since 2000 as documented by the SPLC — an increase experts say has been fueled by anti-immigration rage aimed largely at Hispanics. The SPLC says legal action has proved to be one, if not the only effective way to put these groups out of business.

On July 30, 2006, a group of IKA members went to the Meade County Fairgrounds in Kentucky to hand out ads for a "white-only" Klan function as part of their official recruiting drive, according to court documents.