KKK robes up for bid
LANSING, Mich. (AP) – Gary Gray said he felt more like a teacher than auctioneer Saturday, as visitors looked over the Ku Klux Klan robes he was putting up for bids in a sale that had attracted more interest than he’d seen before. He said a steady stream of people visited the auction house in Howell, about 35 miles east of Lansing, as he prepared to auction seven KKK robes and other KKK paraphernalia, including campaign buttons for George Wallace and David Duke, books, movies and a lantern.
“Maybe I have taught more people about history, at least this week, than some schools,” he said in a phone interview, saying the auction is a sale of history and that visitors want to know about the Klan’s past.
“It’s not a question of racism. That’s intertwined. But it’s not the main focus.”
The NAACP branch in neighboring Oakland County and other civil rights groups had criticized the auction as insensitive.
Members of a local diversity council planned to protest peacefully outside the auction and were raising money to buy one of the robes for an anti-racism museum exhibit.
Community and business groups said the planned auction would do nothing to fix the town’s racist reputation, which they trace to one man – Robert Miles, a KKK leader who lived on a farm outside Howell until his death in 1992.
The auction was originally scheduled for Jan. 15, but was delayed after Gray learned it was the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
After one robe was consigned for sale in early January, dozens of other items poured into Gray’s gallery because of the publicity.
Howell is a city of more than 9,000 people in Livingston County, one of Michigan’s least diverse counties. In Howell itself, only 29 blacks were counted in the 2000 census.