Demand erupts for probe of hate groups in US military

by Tim Wheeler

This article was reprinted from the December 16, 1995 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The murder of a young African American couple in downtown Fayetteville, N.C. Dec. 7 and the arrest of three memebers of the 82nd Airborne division for committing the heinous crime touched off calls for a probe of Ku Klux Klan infiltration of the U.S. military.

Jackie Burden, 27, and her friend Michael James, 36, an unemployed welder, were shot in the head at point blank range. They had been strolling along the street when they were accosted by the three paratroopers identified as Pvt. James Norman Burmeister II, 20; Pvt. Malcolm Wright, 27; and Specialist Randy Lee Meadows, who drove the getaway car. All were white paratroopers assigned to the 82nd Airborne at nearby Fort Bragg.

According to a police report, the soldiers had been drinking and decided to go "hunting" for Black victims. They left the bar and soon encountered Burden and James. The paratroopers provoked an argument, then one of the soldiers pulled out a handgun and shot Burden and James five times. The men were arrested soon after.

Police searched their mobile home at a trailer park in Harnett County north of Fayetteville and found the handgun used in the murders, together with Nazi flags and KKK hate literature. Jason Brady, Fayetteville's public affairs spokesperson told the World the city is in shock over the double murder. "We have people from so many different cultural backgrounds here," he said. "Fayetteville is well integrated and we take pride in that. This is a very tolerant community. And then they come in here and commit this heinous crime!"

James Florence, president of the Fayetteville branch of the NAACP, told the World that there must be a full investigation of Klan and Nazi infiltration of Fort Bragg. Florence had just returned from the funeral for Burden when reached by telephone. "It was a big crowd and people came up to me and asked what we are going to do to make sure this never happens again," Florence said. He and other community leaders held a meeting on Dec. 13 to discuss measures to counter the racist danger.

Florence, who served 27 years with the 82nd Airborne including a tour in Vietnam, continued, "A military base is a breeding ground for hate groups. I think we have to get with the commanders at Fort Bragg to put in place a program to counter the danger of these soldiers falling into these hate groups."

Timothy McVeigh, accused bomber of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 167 persons, went through the Special Forces basic training program at Fort Bragg. McVeigh, Florence said, "went through basic training here where they teach how to make explosives."

Florence charged that the entire chain of command at Fort Bragg was complacent. The arrested paratroopers had moved off base because of arguments with other soldiers when they attempted to display their Klan and Nazi paraphernalia in their barracks.

"That should have been a signal right then that there was something terribly wrong," he said. "The officers in charge should have seen it and taken prompt action."

Instead, they allowed the soldiers to move into off-base housing, "out of sight, out of mind." It turned out that the owner of the trailer, park is a member of the White Supremist Party who displays Nazi paraphernalia in his trailer evidence, of a far broader network of Klan activity.

"We've clearly got a problem here," said Florence. "The question is how deep is it? Will the Army treat this as routine or will they bring out the danger of these hate and racist crimes?"

Florence said, "We must make a fast effort and not let this fester. It is a powder keg."

Fort Bragg -- and Fayetteville -- have a long history of harboring racists and right-wing extremists. The 82nd Airborne was deployed to Detroit in 1967, part of an occupation force assigned to crush the rebellion of the poor in that city. At least 43 people died, mostly from National Guard and police gunfire.

Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) once had a hate radio program in Fayetteville, Florence said. "I had a run-in with him when he refused to allow Black children on his program." Helms recently made a thinly-veiled threat against President Clinton, warning him that he would not be safe visiting the state of North Carolina.

The Southern Poverty Law Center sued the North Carolina White Patriot Party in 1985. During the trial, Robert Norman Jones, a soldier at Fort Bragg, testified that he had sold $50,000 worth of weaponry stolen from the fort's munitions depot to the White Patriot Party. Iincluding 13 LAW anti- tank missiles, rifles, C-S anti-riot gas, TNT, C-4 plastic explosives, and claymore mines. Ultimately the army recovered 21 blocks of stolen C-4 explosives from the Klan outfit together with 13,991 rounds of ammunition.

Common Cause Magazine reported that much of the munitions had been "used for weapons training ... to create a paramilitary guerrilla unit for later use in creating a white Southland."