There exists just to the east of Greensboro a tiny community called Richardson Village. If you're traveling east on Wendover Avenue Richardson Village is the tiny group of houses next to the last gas station/convenience store before you come to the intersection of Mount Hope Church Road. Richardson Village was named for Mr Richardson who owned every square inch of the community there and rented the homes mostly to families who were new to Greensboro. Mr Richardson is survived by his daughter, Clonnie Jean Overby who owns Overby's Septic Tank Service located just east of what remains of Richardson Village today as most of the village has been converted to commercial, perhaps light industrial properties.
As children, my brothers and I used to visit my cousins who lived in Richardson Village for the first few years they lived in Greensboro. Lots of my cousins passed through Richardson Village as more and more of my family made their way from the mountains of North Carolina to the Piedmont to escape the hard economic times that began in the late 1800s and in some ways never ended for mountain folk. As soon as the economy picks up here in Greensboro the mountain to Piedmont migration will most likely resume.
One of our favorite activities in Richardson Village was sitting on the porch and laughing at the ghosts-- the Ku Klux Klan members who met each week in the building across the street they rented from Mr Richardson. We recognized the pick-up trucks belonging to the farmers from nearby Mcleansville but the cars we didn't recognize were the Lincolns, Mercurys and Cadilacs driven by the men with the fancy garb (Grand Dragons and such) who came from the west, from the direction of Greensboro. In those days, Greensboro required a Greensboro City Tag on the front bumper, Guilford County had no such tag.
Fast forward a few years and I was a member of a motorcycle gang and living with a room mate who proudly referred to himself as a half-breed Native American who also rode with the gang and hated blacks to no end. After a big night of drinking he came in with a card and some papers in his hand and announced that he had joined the KKK. Then he promptly passed out and fell to the floor. I rolled him over on his stomach just in case he started puking his guts out and decided to deal with him the next day.
After he started moving sometime the next afternoon I began reading his KKK literature aloud. When I got to the part about the KKK being dedicated to wiping out all the Jews, Catholics, Niggers, half breeds, other non whites and non Protestants he took the paper from my hand and started reading for himself. Then he burned the papers and his membership card along with some of the carpet on our living room floor before taking some of the hair of the dog that bit him, mumbled something about, "Those bastards won't get no more of my money," and went back to sleep. Thirty some years later I still tease him when I see him which is rare as he no longer lives nearby. I'll admit, he's still not especially fond of blacks but time and experience have calmed and wizened him somewhat. And don't you dare say anything bad about that half black granddaughter of his or you'll be running from magnum shotgun blasts.
My next experience was the day of the infamous Greensboro Klan-Nazi Shootings when some lady from the CWP attempted to rent my pick-up truck to haul some sort of PA system to be used for the protest. I was no fan of the Klan but even motorcycle gang members in Greensboro had already heard of the CWP attack on the Klan in China Grove a few months before and to think that Mayor Jim Melvin and the Greensboro Police Department didn't know the KKK would retaliate in force was ludicrous. Everybody in every street corner bar in Greensboro knew it was coming-- that's why we turned on our televisions to watch the events unfold. We might have been trying to pass our selves off as bad asses but in 1979 the KKK was still the real deal and even biker gangs steered clear of them. I told the nice lady in no uncertain terms that she was out of her bleeping gourd.
The lowlife Jeff Martin has accused a number of local bloggers of being racist and of possibly having ties with the KKK. Maybe some are. Maybe not. The truth is, the rank and file KKK have long been a tool of the political elite, used to do their dirty work and left to die or rot away in prisons when things go wrong while the big money guys walk away in search of some other drunken fool filled with hatred and ready to do their dirty work. A lesson I figured out as a child while watching the pick-ups from McLeansville and the fancy cars from Greensboro.
