Thomas Albert Tarrants III (b. 1947) is White nationalist terrorist and a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who participated in antisemitic terrorist attacks in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1968. Tarrants participated in the bombing of the Congregation Beth Israel in 1968. He intended to bomb the house of local Jewish activist Meyer Davidson, but was arrested in a sting operation after a gunfight in which his accomplice Kathy Ainsworth was killed.
Early life edit
During his youth years in Mobile, Alabama, Tarrants claimed to have known Jews in his daily life, even having a crush on a Jewish girl. His grandmother worked at a jewelry store owned by Jews. He became a loner in his teen years, developing a hatred for his father, and an affinity for firearms.[1]
Radicalization edit
The deepening of the Cold War in the 1950s brought about a stark rise in anti-communism sentiment in the United States, epitomized by McCarthyism. Tarrants believed that the Jews were behind an international Communist conspiracy, that focused Tarrants' rage. He devoured propaganda literature about an alleged Jewish plot to control the world, such as "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." He listened to tapes by Wesley Swift, a Klan expositor who gave rise to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation. At age 16, he dropped out of high school and joined the antisemitic and racist National States' Rights Party that was opposed to racial integration in the American South.
He devoured propaganda literature about an alleged Jewish plot to control the world, such as "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." He listened to tapes by Wesley Swift, a Klan expositor who gave rise to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation
purred on by those connections, he says, he set out on several drives through Mobile's black neighborhoods, shooting into people's homes. "Our hope and dream was that a race war would come," he says.
He hung out with members of a secret paramilitary troop, the Minutemen. He became versed in guerrilla warfare.
Joining the KKK edit
He described himself as "the chief terrorist" for Sam Bowers, co-founded and Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, known for his involvement in the 1964 murders of Freedom Summer civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Bombings of Jewish targets edit
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/04/08/archives/inquiry-on-fbi-in-klan-death-urged.html
https://www.isjl.org/mississippi-meridian-encyclopedia.html https://www.clarionledger.com/story/journeytojustice/2014/07/09/sam-bowers-mississippi-burning-christian-identity/12394409/
Attempted bombing of Meyer Davidson edit
On June 30, Tarrants traveled with Ainsworth to Meridian to bomb the Twenty-Ninth Avenue home of Meyer Davidson, a prominent member of the Jewish community. The pair were ideally-suited for the task. Tarrants did not participate in public events with the KKK, and his affiliation with the organization was relatively unknown. Ainsworth was a married schoolteacher.[2]
However, the FBI and police chief Roy Gunn convinced Raymond and Alton Wayne Roberts, local Klan members, to gather information about the Klan's operations. Alton was free on bond after being convicted in connection with the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in 1964. Leaders of the Jewish communities in Jackson and Meridian had raised money to pay the two informants, who tipped off the FBI about the attack before it happened.
Fifteen police officers were hidden around Davidson's house shortly after midnight when a car stopped about 50 feet (15 m) away from the house. Tarrants exited the vehicle with a box, later found to include 29 sticks of dynamite, and approached Davidson's carport. When police ordered him to stop, he dropped the box and fled to his vehicle. Officers then chased him for about 15 blocks before ramming the back of his vehicle, ending the chase. Tarrants opened fire on the policemen with a German-made 9mm submachine gun, striking officer J.M. Hatcher four times in the chest (though critically injured, the officer survived). Tarrants fled through the neighborhood continuing to fire at the policemen. Robert Burton, a resident of the neighborhood, opened his door to see what was going on and was struck by stray bullets. Police eventually found Tarrants in a pool of his own blood in a local resident's backyard. Kathy Ainsworth, a 26-year-old fifth grade school teacher from Jackson who had helped with the bombing of Jackson's synagogue a few months earlier,[11] was found dead in the car with a loaded pistol in her purse.[16] The car's owner was identified to be Danny Joe Hawkins, who had helped bomb Beth Israel; he was arrested on robbery charges a few weeks later.[14] Tarrants survived his wounds and was sentenced to a thirty-year term in Parchman prison. He was paroled eight years into his term to enter the University of Mississippi after a religious conversion, and in 1992 he was training missionaries in North Carolina.[11
According to Nelson, the event turned the tide in the war against the Klan in Mississippi.[2]
In 1970, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to kill Jack Nelson's story about the event, revealing the FBI's role, which appeared on the Los Angeles Times front page, by smearing Nelson, falsely, as an alcoholic.
Later life edit
In prison, Tarrants renounced his Klan ties and became a devout Christian.[2] After his release, Tarrants became the leader of the C.S. Lewis Institute, a nondenominational Christian organization.
Bibliography edit
The Conversion of a Klansman: The Story of a Former Ku Klux Klan Terrorist
References edit
- ^ Hoffman, Roy (2008-01-07). "'I deserved to die'". Press-Register. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
- ^ a b c Lamb, Gregory (1993-02-09). "The Klan's Attacks on Jews". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 10 July 2023.
https://www.nytimes.com/1970/06/02/archives/mississippi-bomber-loses-court-appeal.html: as arrested on June 30, 1968, while attempting to place 29 sticks of dynamite and a timing device at the home of Meyer Davidson.
In a gun battle that ensued, Tarrants was wounded and a woman companion, Mrs. Kathy Ainsworth, 26, was killed. Tar rants was convicted in Novem ber, 1968, and sentenced to 30 years in the state penitentiary
Tarrants was spotted by two detectives planting a box containing 29 sticks of dynamite and a 30-minute timing device at the fashionable home of Meyer Davidson. Detectives were staked out because of a wave of anti-Semitic terror attacks by night riders in and around Meridian. In Tarrants’ possession was a handwritten diary in which he declared that since March 23, 1968 he had been actively engaged in an underground guerrilla war against the “Communist -Jewish conspiracy” using any means necessary.
accused of bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian in 1967 and 1968 (according to the man who was convicted of some of the bombings, Thomas A. Tarrants III).
For his role in the attempted bombing of the Davidson home, Tarrants was sentenced to 30 years in Mississippi state prison. District Attorney George Warner had asked the court to impose the death penalty. https://www.jta.org/archive/sentence-kkk-member-22-to-prison-for-attempt-to-dynamite-jewish-home-in-miss