by Tom Tarrants, as told on the Story Partners Podcast
**This story is intended for adult audiences and contains descriptions of racism, domestic terrorism, and violence. Reader discretion is advised.**
There was no doubt whatsoever in my mind. Preserving the purity of the white race was of the highest importance.
“Respectable” Faith
In my youth, I attended church very frequently. My mother thought it was really important for us to be there every Sunday. We attended a large Southern Baptist church. Everybody went to church—at least it seemed that way. That’s what respectable people did. Unfortunately, at least at that time, it had absolutely no impact on me. But in the midst of all of that, there was a smaller core of real Christians, people who were genuinely trying to follow Jesus.
By the time I reached 13 years old, I had heard enough preaching and teaching to know that there was a place called hell, and I didn’t want to go there. I came to the point where I thought I needed to make a profession of faith so that I wouldn’t go to hell when I died. I did that, and I was promptly baptized and proclaimed a Christian.
But there was absolutely no change in my life. I was not “born again,” as Jesus said to Nicodemus; I had no new birth. I did have a great sigh of relief because I didn’t have to worry about going to hell anymore. Then I continued to live my life as I chose, and things actually got worse in terms of the way I lived.
Southern Segregation
We had a maid in our home named Mary. She was just a wonderful person; we loved her like a member of the family. That was true for a lot of white people in the South. They had relationships with Black people that they loved and really had warm relationships with. But the white person was always in charge, and the Black person was subservient in some way. It was just the way life was.
I didn’t think of Mary as being subhuman, but I would probably have said that Black people generally were subhuman. Not that I was taught that or trained to be a racist, but it was something I absorbed in the culture. You get your ideology, and then when you’re dealing with individual cases—people you know—it gets murky.
I heard rumors that a Black individual was planning to come to the church on Sunday, and I was furious. I called the church and registered a loud complaint. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. I felt they should stay in their own church.
The Civil Rights Conflict in Alabama
It was the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in its more active form. Things had been changing to a limited extent since the mid-50s and the Brown v. Board of Education case. Things began to really go downhill in the early 60s when race became such a big issue. Federal court orders for the desegregation of public schools in Alabama were the problem. The governor of Alabama, George Wallace, became very agitated and publicly opposed it. It created quite a disturbance.
When two Black girls tried to enter the University of Alabama, George Wallace stood in the doorway and blocked their access for registration. The governor had a commanding general of the National Guard at his side. There was a confrontation with Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who ordered him to step aside. President Kennedy then federalized the National Guard. It was a very dramatic moment. Once the National Guard was federalized, they were removed from the governor’s control, and the girls were able to be admitted.
It was all televised and became a big media event. That stirred up anger and hostility all over the state to an even higher level. I was against the federal government and in opposition to desegregation.
Joining the White Knights
I was in my junior year of high school when things became much more intense. The federal courts mandated the desegregation of my high school, which was the largest in the city. On the first day of class, the school was surrounded by federalized National Guard troops. U.S. Marshals appeared on the scene, bringing two girls to start their first day. I was very agitated and angry, along with a number of other students.
Organizations were gaining notoriety and being more aggressive about segregation, the inferiority of Black people, and the “danger” of race-mixing. This wasn’t a topic of conversation for me until these things started ratcheting up and putting it on the front page. I discovered propaganda leaflets scattered around that focused on racist issues. I began to read that material and books on race, and I became inflamed in my attitudes toward Black people.
The big concern was that desegregation would lead to racial intermarriage, which would lead to a weakening of the gene pool. The common word was “pollution”—that the race was being polluted. We believed this would lead to a population that was more easily subjugated by the communists and result in the fall of white Christian civilization.
As things heated up, there was a lot of talk about the Civil Rights Movement being controlled by communists. In the early 60s, fear and hatred of communism were widespread in America. Part of that was due to the Soviets stealing nuclear secrets and developing their own bomb. There was the “domino theory”—the idea that if Vietnam fell, others would fall in its wake.
There was a real concern about the “enemy within.” J. Edgar Hoover wrote a book called Masters of Deceit about the communist threat. Today, people might see Hoover as a villain, but up until the 70s, he was a national hero. I read his book, and it triggered bells of alarm for me. I thought if the director of the FBI was saying this, it must be true.
Barry Goldwater was running for president, emphasizing the danger within. I remember him saying, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” That gave an endorsement to extremism. This was a populist movement focused on race and states’ rights. When influential leaders like George Wallace took these positions, it influenced ordinary citizens. If the governor was fighting it, I felt I could fight it too. Everybody saw themselves as patriots fighting to preserve America.
These threats—communism and desegregation—came together in my mind. I felt America was under threat and most people were blind to it. I felt I was a “Christian” patriot who had the insight to take action. I became more and more indoctrinated, and eventually, radicalized. I was absolutely certain that preserving the purity of the white race was of the highest importance.
In these extremist circles, a common belief was that Jews were secretly behind the communists and controlled the media. I read The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which claimed Jewish leaders were talking about taking over the world. We didn’t believe independent media; we believed the publications put out by the Klan and other far-right groups.
I eventually moved to Mississippi to join the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. According to the FBI, this was the most violent right-wing terrorist organization in America. They had been involved in the deaths of civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi. I kept my family in the dark because they did not approve of this extreme thinking.
The Meridian Bombing
One night, another member and I went to bomb the home of a Jewish businessman in Meridian, Mississippi, named Meyer Davidson. He had spoken out publicly against the Klan and the church bombings. He was seen as a target to send a message. Kathy Ainsworth, a schoolteacher and undercover Klan member, went with me.
We arrived at his home around one o’clock in the morning with a bomb made of 29 sticks of dynamite and a timer. I got out of the car and walked up the driveway to the carport. Halfway to the house, shots rang out. We didn’t know that a SWAT team of 26 men was staked out, hidden and heavily armed. I was stunned. I dropped the bomb on the concrete driveway. It didn’t explode, which was a miracle.
I ran back to the car and was hit in the upper right leg with a load of buckshot. Kathy Ainsworth was in the passenger seat and tried to help me get the door open. I got into the car and tried to speed away. A police car that had been concealed immediately got on my bumper, with an officer firing out the window. Kathy was hit with rifle fire in her neck and died on the seat next to me.
We were chased for about 15 blocks through a residential area. Making a turn, I skidded into a yard, and the police car crashed into the back of my car. I had a submachine gun on the seat. I got out and opened fire on the police car. One officer was hit with three rounds in his chest and one in his heart.
As my clip emptied, the other officer opened fire and hit me again. I staggered away and collapsed behind a house. Within five minutes, the SWAT team found me. They came up cautiously and opened fire with shotguns from about three feet away. I was hit twice in my right arm below the elbow, almost taking it off. When they turned their lights back on, they saw I was still breathing and one wanted to pull a pistol to finish me off.
At that precise moment, an ambulance driver came running up. Because he was there, they couldn’t finish the job. Their instructions from the chief of police had been “no survivors,” but because of the witness, they had to load me into the ambulance. I later found out that undercover FBI informants I thought were my comrades had betrayed me.
Justice Served
At the hospital, the doctor said it would be a miracle if I lived 45 minutes. Amazingly, I survived. My parents were there when I regained consciousness. I think it’s amazing they didn’t disown me; they were very loving and supportive despite the stigma.
I spent a month in the hospital and was eventually moved to a cell block where I was the only inmate. I was sentenced to 30 years in the state penitentiary. The officer I shot also survived; someone performed CPR on him, and he underwent open-heart surgery. I consider his survival a miracle as well.
The charge was attempted bombing. In Mississippi, bombing was a capital offense, but the judge sentenced me to 30 years instead of the death penalty. At that point, I felt no remorse. I felt I was a “patriot” fighting for God and country, and that the other side was wrong.
I was put in a 6×9 cell in maximum security. It was depressing to be sidelined from “the cause.” Eventually, they moved me to a prison farm, Parchman Farm, which consisted of 18,000 acres in the Mississippi Delta. I was transferred to the hospital unit where security wasn’t as tight. That is where I began to think carefully about how I might escape.
I arrived at the prison in mid-December of 1968, and I escaped in July of 1969.
Escape
I spent several months planning and recruited two other inmates who were interested in leaving. At a certain point, I made contact with friends in the Klan that I had been involved with previously. The initial escape went relatively well. It was big news; they were searching all around the prisons and couldn’t find anything.
We met the people waiting for us, and they took us to a place prepared in a densely wooded area. We set up a little camp outside of a barn in the underbrush. We had food, automatic weapons, and hand grenades. The plan was to stay there until things settled down, but the FBI found out where we were and put together a SWAT team.
There was a farm road nearby, and we took turns watching the traffic. One of the other inmates came to relieve me half an hour early from my shift. I went back to the camp, and not five minutes later, I heard an incredible burst of gunfire right where I had been standing. The FBI had been quietly coming up through the woods. They knew we were heavily armed and were not taking any chances. The man who relieved me was killed instantly. I should have been there.
The FBI special agent in charge said, “You have one chance to surrender.” Myself and the other guy surrendered. Yet again, God spared my life.
The Search for Truth
I was taken back to maximum security and locked in a six-by-nine cell. Eventually, I concluded that escape was impossible. I settled down to occupy my mind. I began to read things I had not read before in my “education” in racism and anti-Semitism. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Mein Kampf, and Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic writings.
At a certain point, I made a shift. I read a book of neo-fascist political theory that was intellectually challenging, and it triggered an interest in philosophy. I exposed myself to classical philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, and Marcus Aurelius. It is generally not considered the most direct route to Jesus, but God used it. I came away with the realization that truth exists independently of our perception or preferences, that truth is objective. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living, and that gave me the idea to examine my own.
I read a book by philosopher James Burnham titled The Suicide of the West. He focused on anti-Semitism and racism, and with the sharp mind of a philosopher, he just dismantled and demolished the core ideas of my ideology.
I was not a Christian at this point, but I saw the truth. It broke through the ideology that had blinded me. When you’re ensnared by ideology, it’s like having a fishbowl over your head; nothing can get in except what’s already there. There were always rationalizations about why you couldn’t believe the “Jewish-controlled” media, but this truth shattered the fishbowl. I realized what I had been believing was a lie. My mind was liberated from the bondage of those destructive ideas.
New Life
Still, I wasn’t a Christian. But I had a hunger for truth, and I began to feel a desire to read the Gospels. As I started reading, it was like my eyes began to be opened in a way I’d never experienced. I began to understand how it applied to me. I didn’t have a framework for it then, but I can see now that the Holy Spirit was opening my eyes.
Mind you, I had no sense that I needed to be “saved.” I thought I was one of the good guys fighting for God and country. But the more I read, the more I realized I wasn’t fine. My eyes were opened to my many sins and my self-centered life. A verse in Matthew was like a laser bomb: “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”
I realized I had been selling my soul to an idol, this ideology. I began to see my guilt. I realized the profession of faith I made at 13 lacked repentance. I believed the right things intellectually, but there was no change of heart. Repentance and faith are two sides of the same coin.
I got on my knees one night on that cold concrete floor and prayed a simple prayer. I confessed my sins and asked Jesus to have mercy on me and take my life. I didn’t see angels, but I felt a peace I had never known. The next morning, things were different. God was real to me. I had a hunger for Scripture, a desire to pray, and a desire to live for God.
I began to experience the process Paul talks about in Romans 12:2: “Don’t be conformed any longer to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds.” I no longer hated Black people or Jews; that hatred had been broken earlier. But there is a difference between not hating and loving. John’s Gospel says, “If you don’t love your brother whom you have seen, how can you love God whom you haven’t seen?” God made it clear I was called to love. I even realized that Communists weren’t the “enemy,” but victims of the enemy, which is the devil. I tried to reach out to the Jewish businessman, Mr. Davidson, to ask for his forgiveness, but he was not willing.
Total Renovation
God is in the business of a total renovation. I later discovered that the wife of one of the FBI agents who put me in prison had been praying weekly with her prayer group for my conversion for two years.
I spent three years in maximum security and was then transferred to work as a clerk for the prison chaplains. They had seen the change in my life. Eventually, I was brought before a new warden. He looked at my file and said, “I’ve been in this business 16 years and only seen one man get religion and keep it. I wouldn’t release you on the strength of your religion… but it’s obvious your life has changed. I want to give you a chance. You can leave next week.”
I was in prison for eight years. I went in spiritually dead and came out spiritually alive.
God loves us too much to leave us in the mess of our lives. He loves the people I hated and wants them to be part of His kingdom. Over the years, I have had many Black brothers and sisters and Jewish friends who know Jesus as the Messiah. When you get to know people as individuals, it’s a very different story than working from stereotypes.
As St. Augustine prayed, “Lord, let me know myself and let me know You.” We are far worse than we ever imagined, but God’s grace is far greater than we could possibly conceive.
