264 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / 25 halftones, 2 maps
History / United States - Southern History | Language Arts / Journalism | True Crime / Murder
In the summer of 1965, several Ku Klux Klan members riding in a pickup truck shot two Black deputies on patrol in Washington Parish, Louisiana. Deputy Oneal Moore, the driver of the patrol car and father of four daughters, died instantly. His partner, Creed Rogers, survived and radioed in a description of the vehicle. Less than an hour later, police in Mississippi spotted the truck and arrested its driver, a decorated World War II veteran named Ernest Ray McElveen. They returned McElveen to Washington Parish, where he spent eleven days in jail before authorities released him. Afterward, the FBI sent its top inspector to Bogalusa, Louisiana, to participate in the murder inquiry—the only civil rights–era FBI investigation into the killing of a Black law enforcement officer by the KKK. Despite that assistance, lack of evidence and witnesses unwilling to come forward forced Louisiana prosecutors eventually to drop all charges against McElveen. The FBI continued its investigation but could not gather enough evidence to file charges, leaving the murder of Oneal Moore unsolved.
Klan of Devils: The Murder of a Black Louisiana Deputy Sheriff is Stanley Nelson’s investigation of this case, which the FBI probed from 1965 to 2016. Nelson describes the Klan’s growth, and the emergence of Black activism in Bogalusa and Washington Parish, against the backdrop of political and social change in the 1950s and early 1960s. With the assistance of two retired FBI agents who worked the case, Nelson also explores the lives of the primary suspects, all of whom are now dead, and points to the Klansmen most likely responsible for the senseless and horrific attack.
A finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting, Stanley Nelson has had his work featured in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and on CNN and NPR. Nelson is also the author of Devils Walking: Klan Murders along the Mississippi in the 1960s.
“Cold case expert Stanley Nelson brings his sharp eye and clinical mind to one of the only murder cases in which the Ku Klux Klan targeted Black law enforcement officers for assassination. In Klan of Devils, Nelson brings 1965 Louisiana to life with a chilling power you will not forget.”—Greg Iles, author of the Natchez Burning Trilogy
“In Klan of Devils Nelson carefully unravels the notorious 1965 Klan murder of one of the first Black deputies in the American South and deftly chronicles the Klan's attempt to make white supremacy the official law of the land. A must read for anyone who wants to delve into the roots of intolerance in the United States, and the deeds of those who opposed it.”—David Ridgen, director of the award-winning documentary Mississippi Cold Case
“At a time when the nation has seen white supremacy invade our nation's Capitol, journalist Stanley Nelson tells the story of how the Ku Klux Klan got away with murder in its 1965 attack on a Louisiana parish's first two Black deputies. We in America continue to repeat our history because we don't know our history. Read Klan of Devils and learn that history.”—Jerry Mitchell, director of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting
“Replete with eloquent prose and an impressive attention to detail, Klan of Devils is a superb police procedural that fully develops the cast of characters involved in the case, weaves together diverse records into a compelling narrative, and draws tentative conclusions as to the guilty parties in the murder of Oneal Moore. (The book) offers the reader a comprehensive account of the crime itself, its subsequent investigation, and the large historical context that inspired the murder.”— Louisiana Historical Association
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