By Josh Holzbauer

On Aug.16, 1992, TV personality Geraldo Rivera and his entourage sauntered into the small city of Janesville to attend a white supremacist rally hosted by a local Ku Klux Klan member. Rivera scuffled with one of the supremacists, and the Janesville Police charged him with battery.

Around the same time, the results from the 1990 U. S. Census Report of Population appeared to the public. According to the report, whites constituted more than 80 percent of the country’s population, while blacks constituted just over 12 percent. In Wisconsin, however, whites accounted for more than 92 percent of the population, while blacks accounted for only five percent.

This discrepancy from the national norm hid from the national spotlight while the Rivera fiasco cooked under it. The Rivera story appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the St. Louis Post- Dispatch, the Jerusalem Post and even the Toronto Star. The general lack of diversity in Wisconsin received no such media attention.

In 2001, nearly a decade later, Daniel Levitas published The Terrorist Next Door, a book chronicling the rise of right-wing extremists in the U. S. from the post-Civil War era to the present. Levitas devoted an entire chapter to the growth of the Wisconsin Posse Comitatus, one such extremist group, over three decades. Levitas warns Americans of the dangers of hate groups.

“Americans would do well to be on the lookout for more hardened underground activity on the part of hate groups,” Levitas writes in the epilogue of his book.

During the same year that Levitas issued his warning, a study done by the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research concluded from the 2000 Census that the Milwaukee-Waukesha area was the third most segregated population in the nation. This information concerning Milwaukee, as well as the lack of diversity throughout the rest of Wisconsin illustrated by the 1990 Census and the 2000 Census, indicates the state may have a race relations problem. It just might not be the one Levitas and the press have warned Americans about.

Back in 1992, the gathering that Rivera crashed in Janesville featured approximately 70 white supremacists, and the majority of those in attendance did not hail from Wisconsin, much less the city of Janesville.

“The people who caused the problems and the people who were arrested were mainly from out of town … matter of fact, out of state,” Janesville Police Department Sgt. Brian Donohoue says.

More than 80 protestors, the vast majority of whom were from Janesville, confronted the supremacists and drowned out their chants with chants of their own. Despite the ruckus caused by the rally in 1992 and a few others in the mid-1990s, the city has not had more problems with race relations than any other rural city and has no significant problem with hate crimes.

Donohoue acknowledges that Janesville, like many townships in the nation, has had a few problems over the years with racially motivated crimes, but no one has been hurt. The groups seem to bark a lot, but as Donohoue points out, “There’s really no bite to it.” And in recent years, even the barking has stopped.

“After [those rallies], it stopped. We’ve had no problems. No type of KKK activities … even any little offshoots or people gathering. Nothing at all associated with the KKK,” says Donohoue.

Beloit is another Wisconsin city dealing with the hangover of its national KKK rally in 1997. During the rally, which garnered national attention, approximately 16 KKK members attended. Michael McQueeney, the self-proclaimed “Grand Dragon” of the Wisconsin KKK, organized the event. During the rally, at which the Beloit Police Department arrested nine people, McQueeney yelled to the crowd, “Pipe down, you homos … The Klan is here in Wisconsin, and the Klan is here to stay!” The Klan may be here in Wisconsin, but as McQueeney found out during the rally, they face strong opposition at every turn.

Approximately 400 people appeared at the rally to protest the organization. The protestors outnumbered the KKK members roughly 25 to one. The Beloit Police Department cut the rally short because of security problems stemming from the sheer number and vigor of the protestors. Rallies such as these illustrate how unwelcome hate rhetoric is in Wisconsin. While Wisconsin has had the misfortune of hosting hate group events that grabbed the national spotlight, far fewer hate crimes took place in the state during 2001 than the national average.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, 9,730 hate crimes took place in the U.S. in 2001. Wisconsin had 61 such incidents within its borders. For every 100,000 Wisconsin citizens, 1.13 hate crimes were committed. For every 100,000 American citizens, 3.42 hate crimes were committed. As a result, Wisconsin comes in at approximately one-third of the national average in terms of hate crimes. Although hate groups in Wisconsin have received a great deal of attention, Wisconsin houses fewer hate groups than most states.

Organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) research hate groups throughout the nation and publish their findings for the general public. For instance, the SPLC lists 11 hate groups in Wisconsin as of 2002. Nationwide, the SPLC reports 708 hate groups in 2002. Each state averaged 14, with Midwest states averaging 15. Wisconsin’s hate group total of 11 was less than both of these figures. View hate group locations in Wisconsin

The SPLC concedes, however, that the report is by no means all-inclusive, and it may list hate groups that are actually no more than the extension of one person. A very inflammatory personality, such as McQueeney during the Beloit rally, can draw national attention to an organization that actually has few members. The Internet, which allows any person with a modem to publish nearly any kind of material without the burden of accountability, further complicates the issue. Also, groups such as the KKK intend to keep their membership a mystery.

According to its national office, the KKK maintains confidential membership and refuses to acknowledge the presence of any of its branches in any state or region. Many similar organizations are equally tight-lipped. As a result, gathering specific information about such groups is a daunting task. However, some alleged hate groups are eager to defend their organizations from unfair depictions in the press.

“The mainstream media is largely to blame for blowing isolated incidents way out of proportion or categorized these incidents as the ‘norm,’” says a National Socialist Movement (NSM) spokesman from the Sheboygan unit who wished to remain anonymous. The NSM is nationally regarded as a hate group, and while the SPLC only lists two units in Wisconsin (Mercer, Cudahy), state members claim there are at least three others (Milwaukee, Eau Claire and Sheboygan).

“With any organization, you are going to have individuals that carry things too far, and thus, they do not and should not represent the foundational elements of the organization in question,” says the spokesman.

In addition, these groups deny their intentions are to promote violence.

“We are a political party and the NSM does not believe in bringing violence to other races for any reason other than self defense,” says Cpl. R-J Sellhausen of the Milwaukee NSM.

These groups simply may not be the issue because they are hard to locate, their membership is a mystery and their rallies draw far more protestors than supporters. In reality, most racist people do not join such groups. Rather, they walk among us, many holding important positions in society. From these perches, critics say, many such racists hurt the state and nation in ways the alleged hate groups cannot imagine.

“Hate Groups? Do you mean the guys in the sheets or the guys in the suites?” says James Danky, a librarian at the Wisconsin Historical Society and lecturer in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the UW-Madison.

Danky believes the racism encountered in everyday Wisconsin is far more important than the racism churned out by the alleged hate groups.

“It’s trying to figure out how you take people that are racist demagogues … and then to figure out how you react to things that seem benign at first, like oh, an affluent suburb deciding that they won’t allow multiple family housing,” Danky says. “Because the one looks like sort of a neutral public policy discussion whereas the other looks essentially hateful.”

Ignoring this racism is tacitly complying with it, according to Danky, and this tacit compliance is part of what drives the segregation in Milwaukee, and the lack of diversity in the majority of Wisconsin today. For example, those in Milwaukee who refuse to speak out against the city’s segregation are only making the problem worse.

“It’s just taken for granted. It’s the comfortable nature of essentially racist practices. Sure, white people live here. Black people live down there – nothing wrong with that,” Danky says.

The solution then is for every person to fight racism wherever they see it in this state, whether it be by protesting a KKK rally or correcting someone who makes an off-hand remark about someone from a different ethnic background. In Danky’s words, “You can’t let that slide.”

Part of this fight against racism, then, is protesting rallies held by racist organizations. However, it is frequently the protestors who make a KKK rally newsworthy, rather than the rally itself. This is problematic because these hate groups often crave media attention.

“If you publicize these guys, you publicize their message, and that’s just what they want,” Midwest Civil Rights Counsel David Barkey says.

Dave Zweifel, editor of the Capital Times in Madison since 1983, says the media cannot look the other way when hate groups hold rallies. “It’s very hard for a newspaper or a television station to ignore these kind of events,” Zweifel says.

Part of the reason for this, according to Zweifel, is the reaction the rallies attract from anti-hate groups. The protestors are usually more numerous and more vocal, which needs to be addressed by the media. He adds that publishing stories on hate groups may give them what they want, but the price of not doing so is far greater.

“One of the great dangers in any society is to ignore the kooks around us,” Zweifel says. “I think that if there are KKK chapters out there, we need to shed light on that, and let people know who they are, and what they stand for, so that people understand that those kind of people exist…rather than let that fester and let that covertly multiply into a major force.”

Zweifel points out that the Capital Times runs many stories on civil rights organizations that directly oppose the hate groups, and the newspaper covers any events held by such organizations to illustrate their importance. Zweifel also noted that if a story on a hate group rally and a story on racial housing segregation came across his desk on the same day, he wouldn’t hesitate to run with the latter because everyday bigotry is more important.

“I think there’s no question that there is this subtle racism wherever we go, and you know, there have been a lot of efforts to try to change that, change attitudes, but there is still a heck of a long way to go.”

For more information, visit the following sites:

Southern Poverty Law Center: This site tracks hate groups throughout the nation.

National Socialist Movement: This is an alleged site of a hate group with at least two subgroups in Wisconsin.

National Knights: This is the national Web site for the Ku Klux Klan.