Judge Tim Philpot and the KKK
Sadly, it’s not
too long ago that affiliation with white supremacist groups such as the KKK
was a political advantage in some circles. In February 1982 Lexington CBMC ,
the business outreach group then chaired by Judge Tim Philpot invited a convicted narcotic trafficker,
machine gun peddler and disgraced former attorney Gene Neill to give a
motivational speech about his prison-inspired religious awakening. When it was
brought to Tim’s attention that Mr. Neill was also an active and outspoken
member of the “Invisible Empire, Ku Klux Klan”, who contributed frequently to
the monthly newsletter The Klansman (through which he also sold recorded
cassettes of hateful speeches), Tim denied prior knowledge of Mr. Neill’s Ku
Klux Klan membership. Nevertheless, the very nature of Mr. Neill’s openly
expressed views should have been a red flag to those who did not share these
opinions. Three months before, when visiting American troops in Germany, Mr.
Neill had gone on record extolling Germans as
“ a handsome race of intelligent and diligent
White people.” He praised their city of Frankfurt as one where “there are no
slothful and degenerate Blacks and Mexicans and Perto Ricans (sic) lurking in
the shadows everywhere with their wine and heroin and knives”
Judge Philpot’s
association with, and tepid disavowal of an unmitigated racist, combined with
his own racial prejudices as revealed in the heat of legal argument and his
extrajudicial writings, would lead many people to conclude that he is privately
sympathetic to such views.
(See clippings from
the Danville Advocate Messenger and The Tennessean March 8. 1982)
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