page_title: John Brown Anti-Klan Committee
section_title: Protests
hierarchical_section_title: John Brown Anti-Klan Committee / Protests
caption_attribution_description: Flier distributed by John Brown Anti-Klan Committee
context_page_description: The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee was an anti-racist organization based in the United States. The group protested against the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations and published anti-racist literature. Members of the JBAKC were involved in a string of bombings of military, government, and corporate targets in the 1980s. The JBAKC viewed themselves as anti-imperialists and considered African Americans, Native Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans to be oppressed colonial peoples.
  The JBAKC was started in 1978 by a group of white anti-racist activists with ties to the Weather Underground. They named the organization after abolitionist John Brown, who advocated and engaged in violence as a means to end slavery in the U.S. According to founding member Lisa Roth, the event that triggered the formation of the group was the discovery that the KKK was actively organizing in New York State prisons. The JBAKC soon had chapters in several states, but was most active in New York City, Chicago, and San Francisco.
context_section_description: The JBAKC directly confronted white supremacists when they held rallies, and the confrontations sometimes became violent. In 1983 the group worked with the Brown Berets to disrupt a KKK march in Austin, Texas. The protesters hurled rocks and bottles at the marchers, and the ensuing fights resulted in 12 injured people and 11 arrests. The Austin police chief blamed the violence on the JBAKC and Brown Berets, but one police officer was found to have used excessive force in the arrest of a Brown Beret member. Later that year, three members were arrested for participating in a riot outside an Arlington, Virginia high school, where neo-Nazis held a demonstration to mark "White Pride Day".
  When a group of KKK members protested at a Gay Pride Parade in Chicago in 1986, they were met by counter-demonstrators from JBAKC and another anti-racist group. A crowd of around 2,500 Klan supporters chased the anti-Klan groups, leading to 17 arrests and minor injuries to eight police officers.
  In addition to confronting white supremacists, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee also took a stand against what they saw as police brutality. In 1983, 20 members of the Los Angeles chapter demonstrated outside the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department to protest the shooting of a five-year-old black boy by a white police officer from the Stanton Police Department. The protesters passed out a pamphlet headlined "Stop Killer Cops!" and claimed that the officer overreacted because he felt threatened being in a black community. A police spokesperson claimed that the child had waved a realistic toy gun at the officer.
  As part of their effort to challenge white supremacy, the group worked to clean up anti-Semitic and racist graffiti in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. The swastikas and similar graffiti were spray-painted on the 40th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when Jewish-owned businesses across Germany were vandalized. The vandalism was attributed to William G. Leinberger, a member of the neo-Nazi group Chicago Area Skin Heads.
  Despite their work opposing certain forms of anti-Semitism, not all Jewish groups supported the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee. At two California anti-Klan rallies, the JBAKC were confronted by protesters from the Jewish Defense League (JDL), who accused the group of anti-Semitism for their strong positions against Zionism. JDL spokesman Irv Rubin said of the Committee, "They hate Israel with a passion". The Anti-Defamation League also criticized the JBAKC, claiming that the organization "actually promotes racism and advocates organized violence." The JBAKC, for its part, referred to Zionism as "the enshrinement of white supremacy," accused Zionists of "work[ing] with the Klan and other white supremacist groups," and asserted that there was no inherent opposition between "Zionism and Nazism."
caption: Flier distributed by the JBAKC Los Angeles chapter in 1984
exif: {}