Michigan Klan Member to Speak at Kalamazoo White Supremacist Event

When racist radio show host Hal Turner hosts his so-called "rally" in Kalamazoo on August 4, joining him on the list of speakers will be Midland County resident Randy Gray. Gray, on whom the Southern Poverty Law Center said it had no information in a recent article in Between the Lines, is a Ku Klux Klan organizer with the Knight's Party. As Media Mouse has with Hal Turner and the Michigan-based Christian Identity pastor James Wickstrom, Media Mouse did some research into Randy Gray's background and his involvement with the organized white supremacist movement.

Randy Gray is referenced in our Far Right in West Michigan Database due to a speech he delivered at the fiftieth anniversary of the Knight's Party faction of the Ku Klux Klan. Gray spoke on the use of public access television as a recruiting and organizing tool for the white supremacist movement. Since 2005, Gray has filed the paperwork necessary to air the program "This is the Klan" on Midland Community Television. The program, hosted by Thomas Robb and Rachel Pendergraft, is a thirty minute program designed primarily for viewing on the Internet. Additionally, Gray maintains a website listing upcoming programs of interest to the racist movement. On that page the program "Yahweh's Truth" by Michigan racist James Wickstrom is also listed.

Gray has attended various racist events with and without the Ku Klux Klan in recent years as well. He is quoted in a May 2004 article in the Tennessean in which the Ku Klux Klan planned a rally against a "Gay Day" event at the "Dollywood" theme park. Gray is quoted in the article stating that he organized the protest because the "Gay Day" event is "totally opposite of what theme parks are for," expressing concern that somehow the theme park was no longer for "families." That article also says that Gray has organized Klan rallies and protested city council meetings in Newport, Tennessee. Gray was twice (1, 2) kicked out of city council meetings for protesting the city's permitting process in relation to a Klan protest against the Martin Luther King holiday.

In May of this year, Randy Gray organized a Midland, Michigan "Gas Out" protest (1, 2). In the footage available online Gray did not identify as a klansman, although it did appear linked on a white supremacist news site. The protests that Gray organized in relation to the "gas out" and the "Gay Day" at Dollywood show the degree to which white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan frequently try to steer other conservative movements in a racist direction. This tactic has recently been seen with the white supremacist movement's focus on the murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom. The racist right has taken the murders and shifted made them a "racial" issue, despite police assertions that the murders had nothing to do with race and comments from Christian's parents that race was not a motivating factor.

Despite this, the case has been taken up by a number of white supremacist groups and is being used as a means of instilling fear of African-Americans in white people. The rhetoric by the racist movement has claimed that the case is an example of "rampant" "black on white crime" that could mean "genocide" for the white race.

Gray has taken an active role in promoting this view, both speaking at and promoting a rally held in June in Knoxville, Tennessee organized and attended by various white supremacist groups. In a video posted on YouTube to promote the rally, Gray made several racist statements. Gray asserted that America is "becoming a third world cesspool" and arguing that "it is time to wake up white people" to his view. Gray said that the video:

...is an invitation to all of our white brothers and sisters in the United States or in the world, this is an invitation to you to come to Knoxville, TN June 16 from 1 to 3 at the court house and the reason why we are doing this is because we are protesting the black on white crimes that are happening to our people in the United States of America and the world and the media cover-up.

Gray attempted to use fear of allegedly rampant crime epidemic to promote racist conclusions. In the video, Gray holds up a copy of a booklet called "The Color of Crime" by the "New Century Foundation" that purports to prove that African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than white people. However, Gray fails to tell the viewer that the New Century Foundation publishes American Renaissance, a racist publication that has historically functioned as a vehicle for "intellectual" racists and white supremacists to argue and attempt to prove the alleged genetic and moral inferiority of people of color. Gray argues that:

It's time that people wake up and realize diversity and multiculturalism is a plague on our society. It's been a plague ever since it started in this country.

Finally, like the other white supremacists joining Gray at Hal Turner's upcoming, Gray has not been afraid to argue that violence may perhaps be needed to "protect" the white race:

You really need to, if you don't already, have a concealed weapon, you need to get one. You need to get the license, you need to get the gun, and our people need to quit becoming the victims and we need to protect our families even if that means having to defend them and having to kill somebody else for self-defense. If that's what is going to take, then so be it, cause we're becoming the victims when we're unarmed.

MediaMouse