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Blindfolded, hunkered down in a back seat of a pale yellow Lincoln Continental, counting turns and distinguishing between gravel and paved roads until the compass inside his brain became too disoriented to keep track, former Tribune Chronicle photographer Gary Green said he remembers details from a trip 20 years ago to a small town in Ohio like it was yesterday.
"I was young and dumb and not afraid of anything, even if I should have been. But I figured, I'm a white male, what do I have to be afraid of?" Green recalled.
The first thing Green remembers after he was permitted to remove his blindfold was the sight of children playing. The kids were running around the yard of a mobile home wearing uniforms that made Green's destination obvious -- the home of a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
"It was absurd. Like a school yard of hate. It was one of the most shocking things I ever saw, hate indoctrinated at such a young age. Kids that couldn't comprehend what it meant to shout, 'white power,' screaming it, running around, like kids do," Green said.
Green and Alyssa Lenhoff-Briggs, a former Tribune Chronicle reporter, were at the home of James E. Hogg, who was serving as Ohio's exalted cyclops of the American Knights of the KKK and organized rallies the next day in Warren and Mercer, Pa. It was August 1998.
Green and Lenhoff-Briggs were invited the night before the rallies to Hogg's home, where about 10 adults, most wearing T-shirts with the KKK emblem, gathered in Old Washington, about two hours southwest of Warren.
They met Hogg at a truck stop before heading to where he lived.
"I can remember lying down in the back seat of the car, blindfolded. It was pretty hot and smelly and there were cans rolling around. Mr. Hogg was playing loud music and had the windows open. There was no air conditioning," Lenhoff-Briggs recalled recently. "I wondered if Gary and I had made a mistake. I was a little worried about our safety and thinking about my young children."
But when the car stopped, they went inside Hogg's home and began interviewing the people there in the small kitchen and living room.
"It was a small trailer home, but everything in it, I mean everything in it, was Klan oriented. There were Confederate flags, pictures and images, trinkets. It's been 20-plus years, but I still remember it. Everything in the there was white supremacist-oriented," Green said.
The men, there was a grand dragon and a grand wizard -- different levels of KKK leadership -- were eating dinner. One of the men ate his dinner with an oversized butcher knife.
"I got the feeling they were putting on a show for us. It was like the night before a play, they were preparing for a show and it was all pomp and circumstance," Green said.
Green said he never felt he was in danger, but now thinks he was naive. Months later, one of the men in the room was charged after he pulled a knife on a reporter when an interview went wrong, Green said.
Green was also allowed to attend the KKK's cross burning, gaining access to a part of their activities women and minorities were forbidden from attending. After, he said he was asked if he could support their organization.
"They thought I would understand, that I would sign up. My response was vague … It was dark, we were in the middle of the woods and I still had to get out of there," Green said.
After the crew got back from the assignment, the editor decided not to use the photographs. "They were too inflammatory," Green said.
Looking back, Green said he doesn't think the KKK lifted the veil on its mostly secretive activities in order to enlighten the Tribune Chronicle's reporters or readership, but instead thinks the group was seeking exposure.
"They are actually very manipulative and use the media for their propaganda purposes only. They want their pictures on the front page. And what they do, to soften their images, they hide behind the guise of religion. They say, 'We aren't racists, we are just purists.' They say we like our black neighbors, we invite them over, we just think God wanted us separate in some ways.' They use the cloak of religion to draw people in," Green said.
Lenhoff-Briggs said she worried her stories might glorify the KKK and help draw more people to the rally in downtown Warren's Courthouse Square.
"I kept thinking about what our ethical obligation was," Lenhoff-Briggs said. "And then when we got there and I met the woman who worked at the University of Akron admissions office, I had my answer. The public needed to know that an active member of the Klan was working in the office that made decisions about who would be admitted to a university. It's always better to shine lights on situations."
Now, Green, deputy news editor and digital director at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications, said he uses the experience to teach his students about storytelling and how to approach writing about controversial issues.
rfox@tribtoday.com