BURNED AT STAKE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 326, 11 April 1928, Page 9

BURNED AT STAKE

Grim Tale of the Klan kEBEL MEMBERS’ TESTIMONY Story of Tar and Flogging By Cable. —Press Association. — Copyright. liecd. 8.35 a.m. PITTSBURG, Tuesday. ROY BARCLAY, chief witness for the rebel group of the Ku Klux Klansmen, who have filed counter suits in the Federal Supreme Court, testified that the riots at Niles, Ohio, in 1924, resulted when Klansmen, who had been sworn in as deputy-sheriffs, ordered everyone from the streets who was ignorant of the Klan’s password.

■yynTNESS said the Klan had mach-ine-guns mounted on the outskirts of Niles, and they were prepared to use them to stop a rush of townsmen against them. He declared that one man was killed in a riot at Lilly, Pennsylvania. The victim’s name was recorded at the burial as “Poor Boy.” Clarence Ludlow testified that he

saw Klan members burn eight men at the stake. He described the death of one victim who was a white man, and declared that he was sentenced by a “Kangaroo Court,” after which “he was tied to the stake. Someone poured kerosene and oil over him. They pushed brush up around him, and the victim was burned there before 300 or 400 Klansmen, dressed in full uniform.”Clarence Ludlow further testified that Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans personally directed the torture of one man who was sentenced to be flogged and then tarred and feathered. “Evans was there and saw it all,” said Ludlow. “He told how it should be done. The man was suspended over a barrel with his hands fastened to a stake in front of him. His feet were held by two Klansmen, who stripped him to the waist. “As he was flogged over the back and shoulders with a long leather whip, he was warned to make no outcry. “The welts rose on his back.

“Then his whole body was stripped and the tar heated so as to run freely. Potatoes were placed in the man’s eyes so that the tar would not blind him and the liquid poured over his body.”—A. and N.Z.