The 1967 bombing of the Beth Israel Congregation was far from a solitary act. The attack on Mississippi’s oldest synagogue came as part of a reign of terror by the nation’s most notorious Ku Klux Klan.
The newest attack on the house of worship, which happened this month, shows that “history repeats itself,” said Lindsay Baach Friedmann, South Central regional director for the Anti-Defamation League. “The question is not whether we are teaching the next generation, but what are we teaching them?”
The FBI has charged Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, of Madison, with burning the synagogue in the predawn hours of Jan. 10. According to federal court documents, Pittman referred to it as “the synagogue of Satan” — a term used by followers of Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that teaches that Adam and Eve were white, that non-whites are “mud people” and that Jews are the offspring of Satan.
What makes the latest attack scary is “there are a lot more of him out there,” said Rabbi Valerie Cohen, who served Beth Israel from 2003 to 2014.
During the Civil Rights era, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan became the most violent white supremacist organization in the U.S., responsible for at least 10 killings in Mississippi. They were also responsible for dozens of church bombings as well as the bombings of the homes of civil rights and Jewish leaders.
The Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson was heavily damaged in a 1967 firebombing by Ku Klux Klan members. This photo is from the WLBT Newsfilm Collection. Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History/WLBTThe White Knights rose to the fore after the University of Mississippi enrolled its first Black student in 1962. By 1964, the Klan group boasted more than 90,000 members.
When news came in early 1964 that civil rights workers planned to “invade” Mississippi that summer, Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers told his Klansmen, “The events which will occur in Mississippi this summer may well determine the fate of Christianity for centuries to come.”
He urged them to get their guns ready.
“When the black waves hit our communities, we must remain calm and think in terms of our individual enemies rather than our mass enemy,” he told them. “We must roll with the mass punch which they will deliver in the streets during the day, and we must counterattack the individual leaders at night.”
Then he advised them, “Any personal attacks on the enemy should be carefully planned to include only the leaders and prime white collaborators of the enemy forces.”
On the first day of summer 1964, Klansmen killed three young civil rights workers, who were investigating the Klan’s burning of a Black church in Neshoba County. A deputy jailed Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman and released them into the hands of waiting Klansmen, who shot them to death and hid their bodies in an earthen dam.
Forty-four days later, FBI agents discovered the buried bodies. By killing the trio, the White Knights meant to send a message not just to those in the movement, but across the nation, about who held power in Mississippi, who could do as they pleased and who needed to live in fear.
The Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson was heavily damaged in a 1967 firebombing by Ku Klux Klan members. This photo is from the WLBT Newsfilm Collection. Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History/WLBTBetween June and October 1964, Mississippi saw the bombings of at least 48 Black churches, homes and “freedom houses,” according to records kept by the Council of Federated Organizations, an umbrella group for civil rights organizations.
That same year, the White Knights began to regard Jews as their major enemies, just as the Klan had done in the 1920s. Klansmen embraced the views of Christian Identity, which teaches that white people are the true Israelites and that Jews are imposters.
On Sept. 18, 1967, the White Knights bombed the Beth Israel synagogue, the opening salvo of the White Knights’ campaign against the Jews.
A month later, the White Knights suffered their biggest setback when a U.S. District Court jury convicted seven, including Bowers, on federal conspiracy charges for the 1964 killings of the three civil rights workers. They received prison time up to 10 years, but they initially remained free on appeal bonds.
The violence continued.
On Nov. 15, 1967, the White Knights bombed the home of the Rev. Allen Johnson, a Black Methodist member and NAACP leader in Laurel, where Bowers lived. Four nights later, a bomb ripped through the home of civil rights activist Bob Kochtitzky in Jackson.
Two days before Thanksgiving, the White Knights bombed the home of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, leader of the Beth Israel congregation in Jackson.
Rabbi Perry Nussbaum speaks to reporters in 1967 after Ku Klux Klan members firebombed the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson. This photo is from the WLBT Newsfilm Collection. Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History/WLBTMore attacks followed in 1968, including the bombings of Black churches and a synagogue in Meridian.
After Meridian police determined that Klan bomber Thomas Tarrants was behind the synagogue bombing and others, a shootout took place between him and officers. He somehow survived, but his companion, Kathy Ainsworth, was killed.
After the death, Bowers wrote to an officer involved in the shootout and questioned why he would protect the Jews, calling them “the synagogue of Satan.”
Tarrants went to prison for the bombing. While there, he underwent a religious conversion that he later wrote about in his book, “Consumed by Hate, Redeemed by Love.”
Tarrants, now president emeritus of the C.S. Lewis Institute, became friends with the Rev. John Perkins of Jackson, who was beaten in jail by law enforcement for his involvement in the civil rights movement.
The Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in Jackson was heavily damaged in a 1967 firebombing by Ku Klux Klan members. This photo is from the WLBT Newsfilm Collection. Credit: Mississippi Department of Archives and History/WLBTThe latest burning of Beth Israel “is not just an attack on a building — it is an assault on human dignity, on faith and on the sacred truth that every person is made in the image of God,” said Elizabeth Perkins, co-president of The John & Vera Mae Perkins Foundation.
“My father has always said that reconciliation is born where truth and love meet,” she said. “That belief still stands. We grieve with Beth Israel. We stand with Beth Israel. And we commit ourselves again to the long, holy work of justice, reconciliation, and peace. Hate will not have the last word. Love will.”
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