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This chapter focuses on the Ku Klux Klan and its place in the civil rights movement in Mississippi, with emphasis on its link to violence or armed self-defense as part of how to address issues of race and politics in the mid-1960s. It considers the notion that the Ku Klux Klan was a constant presence or unified organization and shows that multiple klans existed in Mississippi, including the White Knights, Original Knights, and the United Klans of America. It also examines the differences in tactics, membership, and rituals among these klans, particularly their attitudes toward violence. The chapter highlights the efforts of some klans to shed their reputations as terrorists by claiming that they espoused nonviolence and were not involved in bombing churches.

As the felony trials of B. J. Brooks and H. K. Matthews approached, the Escambia County freedom struggle encountered obstacles from organizations both familiar and unanticipated. Sheriff Royal Untreiner refused to discipline deputies for their actions, and the United Klans of America (UKA) organized several events in Pensacola to rejuvenate the Florida Ku Klux Klan. SCLC and NAACP actions, though, proved the most surprising and tragic. Discord within the NAACP distanced the local, state, and national offices from each other and suggests that tensions existed between the NAACP and SCLC. Each conflict eventually undermined and divided local leaders at the expense of group members. The self-interests of the NAACP and SCLC national offices, along with their mutual distrust and jealousy of each other, proved as damaging to the Pensacola civil rights movement as the white resistance activists encountered. The Escambia County SCLC and Pensacola NAACP could do little, then, when the unrestrained white backlash to the long civil rights movement in Northwest Florida cost both of its primary leaders their livelihood and one his freedom.

In 1976, violence resumed at Escambia High School over the continued presence of its Confederate imagery. Student rioting captured national attention and ensured that city and county officials could no longer deny that the symbols caused the racial unrest on campus. The local Human Relations Commission determined that “clouds of interracial revolution” threatened to consume Pensacola, particularly due to the heightened activities of the United Klans of America in the city. Considerations besides their racially offensive nature, though, determined the selection of a new nickname, mascot, and accompanying imagery at EHS in 1977. A series of internal and external conflicts rendered the Pensacola NAACP and Escambia County SCLC ineffective, which illustrated how the convictions of B. J. Brooks and H. K. Matthews weakened the local black freedom struggle.