Nightmare on Pine Mountain

On Pine Mountain, 37 miles from Columbus, Ga., a group of men awaited their initiation into the Ku Klux Klan one night last week. One by one they were summoned, unsheeted, into a tar-paper shack to "take the obligation." When the last man had been called, three still remained outside. They had not been invited; they were three newsmen from the Columbus Ledger who had been tipped that this was to be the biggest Ku Klux Klan gathering around Columbus in 20 years.

After an hour or two, the white-sheeted Klansmen emerged. With them, regal in his green robes, came Georgia's Grand Dragon, Dr. Samuel Green, who is an Atlanta physician in his spare time. The Ledger's photographer, Joe Talbot, 36, stepped forward, started shooting flashbulbs.

Torture by Liquor. He did not get many shots. The Klansmen grabbed him, began smashing his equipment. They also grabbed Talbot's colleagues, Reporters James Bellows, 25, and Carlton Johnson, 22, both, like Talbot, Navy veterans. What happened after that the newsmen described in print next day. The Klansmen handed them each a bottle of whiskey and ordered them to drink. When they refused, the Klansmen shouted that they would pour the liquor down them. They drank--a pint each within about 30 minutes--surrounded by the threatening, yelling mob.

Talbot recalled later: "Bellows just kinda folded up on the ground. . . . They just threw him down beside the fire." Talbot and Johnson went on drinking. Finally the Klansmen dragged all three into the shack, jabbed a hypodermic into Johnson's arm, gave Talbot two jabs in the leg.

Bellows was unconscious, the other two only half conscious, but Johnson was able to remember what happened next. They were carried to their car. Bellows and Johnson were put in the back seat, arranged in a position which suggested that they were in an act of perversion, and photographed by flashbulbs.

Morning After. Two Klansmen drove the car and its three occupants to the outskirts of the town of Manchester, carefully wiped the steering wheel clean of fingerprints and vanished. Minutes later, discovered by a Manchester cop, the newsmen landed in the Manchester jail charged with drunkenness. Their city editor, Joe Hall, bailed them out.

The Sunday morning Ledger-Enquirer spread the story across its front page. At the gathering, the three newsmen had spotted not only Dr. Green but the Ledger's country circulation manager, Hollis Cooper, who hurriedly quit his job. Dr. Green admitted that he was at the meeting. But, he said virtuously, the attack on the newsmen was all news to him.

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