CRIME: Crackdown on the Klan

From the South, the robed riders of the Klan came over the border of North Carolina on a hot July night in 1950. A column of 30-odd cars carried the Ku Kluxers through tobacco, cotton, peanut and sweet potato fields, then drove slowly along the streets of Tabor City (pop. 2,028), a sleepy Tarheel town that likes to call itself the "yam capital of the world."

Except for a few blank shots and a wailing of sirens by the Klansmen, nothing much happened on that first ride. But the invaders soon came back again. They set up fiery crosses, and signed...