Former Chattanoogan Callie Wiser’s latest documentary, “American Experience: Klansville U.S.A.,” looks at the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina in the mid-’60s. It will air Jan. 13 on PBS.As a child growing up on Signal Mountain, Callie Wiser recalls hearing rumors that there were still members of the Ku Klux Klan living in the area.
“I remember hearing that there was some Grand Wizard or something,” the Boston-based filmmaker says while home visiting relatives for the holidays.
Those memories – the idea that this horrible thing that seemed so far in the past but was, in fact, just around the corner – were part of the reason behind her latest project, “American Experience: Klansville U.S.A.”
“When I started this project, I mentioned those rumors to my mother and she said, ‘Oh yeah, that was Byron De La Beckwith.’ That shocked me. That it was so close. Of course, people just didn’t talk about it.”
In 1994, at the age of 74, Beckwith, who was living on Signal Mountain at the time of his arrest and eventual trial in Mississippi, was convicted of assassinating civil rights leader Medgar Evers in 1963 in Mississippi. His two previous trials in 1964 had resulted in hung juries. He died in a Jackson, Miss., hospital in 2001 after being transferred there from prison.