In 1979, armed Ku Klux Klan members attacked an SCLC-organized civil rights march in Decatur, AL, narrowly missing SCLC President Joseph Lowery and his wife; in the same year, five demonstrators were murdered by Klansmen and Nazis in Greensboro, NC, sparking a surge in organized white supremacist violence and galvanizing a new generation of anti-racist organizers. Norman funded three interconnected organizations working to combat hate groups and protect communities from racial violence:

• Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR, Norman grantee 1977–1998): The Ku Klux Klan Legal Project developed and deployed legal strategies to hold white supremacists accountable in federal court. In 1980, three Klansmen burned a cross, fired shotguns in Chattanooga, TN, and injured five Black women, who became known as the Chattanooga Five. After an all-white jury acquitted two of three Klansmen and lightly sentenced the third, the local NAACP president contacted CCR attorney Randolph McLaughlin, who filed the first-ever federal civil lawsuit against the KKK, using the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. In 1982, a jury ordered the Klan to pay the Chattanooga Five a $535,000 settlement, and a federal judge issued a permanent injunction prohibiting the Klan from assaulting, threatening, or intimidating Black Chattanooga residents, setting a nationwide legal precedent and chipping away at their power.
• Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizations (1981): This collective of church and community leaders developed strategies to counter hate groups and provided support to the National Anti-Klan Network.
• National Anti-Klan Network (1985): Founded in 1979 by Rev. C.T. Vivian — a close aide to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — and civil rights activist Anne Braden, NAKN was the first nationally coordinated effort to track white supremacist violence, defend targeted communities, and undercut Klan recruitment through public education and organizing. In 1985, the organization changed its name to the Center for Democratic Renewal, which Norman funded from 1990–1993.

Tags: Civil Rights/Civil Liberties

Media:

• Documentary trailer: How to Sue the Klan
• Center for Constitutional Rights blog post from 2017: Post-Charlottesville, a look back: How movement-based legal strategies can prevent white supremacist violence
• Center for Constitutional Rights historic case post: Crumsey v. Justice Knights of the Ku Klux Klan