And it fell to Swift, from his pulpit at the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, to interpret and convey those beliefs to Christian Identity followers, a group that included some of the most well-known and violent racists in the country, several of whom had already conspired to assassinate King in multiple plots. The charismatic Swift’s influence derived from his radio ministry. Swift began his racist and anti-
Semitic sermons in the 1950s; estimates suggest that by 1967 he reached tens of thousands of listeners on the West Coast. Those who could not get Swift’s signal could hear his sermons on tape, via an informal distribution network that included his most devoted followers. And Swift ordained a number of ministers in his Church of Jesus Christ Christian; they relayed his ideas to audiences across the country while Swift preached to a mostly female audience in Hollywood.6
In his sermons, Swift used a combination of astrology, current events analysis, biblical exegesis, and even ufology to divine evidence that the End Times were approaching. A key moment came in February 1962. An alignment of astrological and real-world international events convinced Swift that the world was entering the “zero hour,” the final period before the onset of the Tribulation. Swift told his parishioners:
Zero hour has come . . . We will watch the signs as they develop and we will watch the measures as they follow in the course of this year.
Do not forget the sign of the “son of man” in the heavens. It will only end when the skies are filled with the crafts of heaven to make your experiments of rocketry look like amateur experiments, when all the hosts of heaven join you in the greatest show of power, of glory in all the earth. When your race shall be elevated to its position with the smiling face of our Father in all His majesty and glory saying—these are my children with whom I am well pleased.7
Events in Mississippi that September convinced Swift his prognostication was accurate. Black air force veteran James Meredith challenged the University of Mississippi’s racial exclusion policy by enrolling in the institution, a court-supported action that nonetheless inflamed the citizens of Mississippi and provoked white supremacists from across the country who flocked to Mississippi to protest. Governor Ross Barnett personally and physically blocked Meredith’s entry into Ole Miss with the help of state troopers, forcing President John F. Kennedy to send National Guard troops to impose the court order and protect Meredith. Havoc ensued. Protestors and college students battled the federal troops, using everything from rocks to rifles. Several participants on both sides sustained injuries; a local man and a foreign reporter died in the melee. Things only settled after JFK sent hundreds of additional troops to Oxford, Mississippi, to impose order.8
The Ole Miss race riot inspired Swift, whose fellow Christian Identity minister, Oren Potito, helped incite the crowds to violence. In the immediate aftermath Swift told his audience:
I want you to know that you are in the latter days. “And as it was in the days of Noah” [refers to] a massive program of Satan’s kingdom which is to mongrelize your race. They want to implement this program with troops. They want to back it by every conspiratorial measure that Satan can dream up. And some of these brainwashed people lifting up a standard of self-
righteousness which is Satan’s own lie—behind this shield they march to destroy . . .
. . . I am going to tell you this. [The Lord] is coming in with a long sword and a sharp sickle. And He is coming in to reap the Grapes of Wrath. And to trample the Wine Press of Judgement. I want you to know tonight, that you are a part of this battle. So don’t surrender. Don’t give in. If they are going to try to force your Race with violence, then we shall meet them in like token. Let me assure you of this. That in this occupation, have no fear. For He said:—“I shall be like a wall of fire about you.” “No weapon formed against you shall prosper.” . . .
Again, I say that we are not alone. As I said this afternoon, He said—“I shall never leave nor forsake you even until the end of the age.”9
Just as importantly, the events at Ole Miss appeared to confirm an important element of the Christian Identity worldview: that rank-and-file whites could be energized into violence against the federal government, whose leaders, as Swift indicated in his sermon, “worked” at the behest of their antichrist Jewish puppet masters. Before 1962, Christian Identity believers found little sympathy, even among aggressive racists, for their vitriolic anti-Jewish message. Raised on a very different version of Christianity from their youth, and focused on resisting integration, most Southern racists could not understand the call for genocidal violence against Jews. The Klan employed anti-
Semitic rhetoric since its second revival in the 1920s, but actual violence against Southern Jews and Jewish targets was rare in part because Southern Jews had largely assimilated into the modern American South.10 But if they could keep their anti-Semitic message to a whisper, Christian Identity ministers could find natural allies in the Jim Crow South among conventional racists looking to preserve the so-called Southern Way of Life. Reverend Potito, a Christian Identity minister, helped rile up the white crowd at Ole Miss into a violent frenzy without mentioning Jews.
Potito belonged to a group whose name deliberately obscured its extremist and Christian Identity disposition: the National States Rights Party (NSRP). The NSRP was formed in 1957 by white supremacists J. B. Stoner, a limp-legged Georgia lawyer, and his friend and fellow Georgian Ed Fields, a chiropractor. The group did run people for elected office, as their name implies, including for president and vice president of the United States in 1960 and 1964.11 But they also were among the most violent white supremacist groups in the country, earning a place on California attorney general Thomas Lynch’s list of the most dangerous terrorist groups in his state by 1965.12 The group’s periodical, The Thunderbolt, did frequently feature blatantly anti-
Semitic articles, but in public, the group chose not to feature the racist elements of its platform. Stoner’s history illustrates why.
Having openly supported the Nazis as a teenager during World War II, Stoner likely became familiar with Identity ideas as early as the late 1940s, as they filtered to Georgia from Western Canada. He soon moved to Tennessee and began to write books that echoed the Christian Identity message that Jesus was not Jewish, that Jews were imposters and literally Satan’s spawn. He also started his white supremacist career by calling for the mass extermination of Jews. Hitler, in Stoner’s view, did not go far enough. His public focus on condemning Jews, even above blacks, led the Tennessee Ku Klux Klan to expel Stoner from their ranks. Other Klan organizations shunned him, forcing Stoner and Fields to form the Christian Anti-Jewish Party in the 1950s, but that group failed to attract enough members.13
Ultimately the two men chose to form the NSRP in large part to disguise their ideological and violent intentions. Stoner attempted to awaken the white masses to his cause by orchestrating a wave of Jewish temple bombings across the country in 1957 and 1958. But this only confirmed his frustrations and those of his followers. White Citizens Councils, which included some Jewish members, condemned the bombings. President Dwight Eisenhower publicly denounced the bombings and formed a task force that helped identify the immediate perpetrators but failed to develop a case against Stoner. To Stoner’s chagrin, although Klan groups deployed anti-Semitic rhetoric, they directed their violence almost exclusively against blacks. Anti-
black violence satisfied only part of the Christian Identity agenda; it struck at the symptoms rather than the disease. For the Christian Identity End Times prophecy to be fulfilled, “everyday” whites would have to join in the holy race war against Jews and people of color. The Ole Miss riots showed this was at least possible.14
The Ole Miss riots helped galvanize racists across the country; thousands joined the KKK and similar organizations to resist federally mandated integration. Others saw the government’s intervention in the South as a sign that they should join militant antigovernment groups, like the Minutemen. This presented opportunities for Christian Identity fanatics but