Fulton County GaArchives Photo Person.....Green, Samuel Dr. August 19, 1949
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Lee Price tanutuva@rochester.rr.com February 13, 2015, 6:00 am

Source:             Miami News, Friday, August 19, 1949
Name:               Samuel Dr. Green

Date Of Photograph: August 19, 1949
Photo can be seen at:
http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/fulton/photos/green18031gph.jpg
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Dr. Samuel Green, Klan Leader, Dies; Successor Will Be Named Next Week 
ATLANTA, Aug. 19—(AP)—A heart attack last night killed Imperial Wizard Samuel 
Green, the fanatical ruler of the Ku Klux Klan. There was no doubt, however, 
that the Klan would carry on though minus the energetic leadership of the thin, 
59-year-old physician with the Hitler-like mustache.  A leading Ku Kluxer here 
said the board of directors probably would meet next week to name a successor 
to the rasp-voiced little man who breathed a spirit of resurgency into 
the "invisible empire." Though Dr. Green had been a Klansman for 31 years, his 
family asked that the fact be omitted from his obituary.  At the time of his 
death, Dr. Green's passion for preaching "White supremacy" had made him a 
target for aroused newspaper editors and public officials.
 
DR. SAMUEL GREEN Heart Attack Fatal 
They feared the Klan might ride to power again on prejudice as it did in the 
decade of the 1920's and become once more a powerful political factor in the 
south.  Angrily and bitterly, Dr. Green declared he was being “persecuted”.  As 
a pattern of violence spread over the south in which masked men figured in 
cross burnings, beatings and threats, Dr. Green relied more and more upon a 
stock denial. All these acts he ascribed without fail to "Bolshevik" groups 
over which he had no control. He promised that any Klansman found guilty of 
violating the law would be banished. To offset growing public indignation, he 
ordered the Klan unmasked just 10 days his death. Simultaneously with the 
unmasking order he revoked the charters of three Klaverns near Chattanooga, 
Tenn. 
His action in this case came only after the Blue Hills of Georgia had seen the 
beating of 22 individuals, mostly by masked bands.  The blow that hurt Green 
the most, however, was the declaration by U.S. Attorney General Tom Clark that 
the Klan was subversive.
Green had always maintained that part of the Klan oath was to uphold the 
Constitution. To prove his patriotism, Green often pointed to a letter of 
commendation signed by the late President Roosevelt thanking him for serving on 
the Selective Service Board.  Prior to the end of World War II little is known 
of Dr. Green's' Klan activities. Though oldtimers in the Klan say he was an 
official when they joined in 1920, his specific activities are cloaked in 
obscurity. Little was heard of him publicly during the Klan's rise to, power 
which was ended under the combined attack of the state and federal government 
in the early 1930s. It was not until after the late war that the Klan began to 
emerge again as a factor in southern life under the leadership of Dr. Green.  
For his activities in reorganizing and revitalizing the Klan he recently was 
made "Imperial Wizard.' Formerly he was called the “Grand Dragon." 
Time and again he denied that that the Klan was a “hate” group.  He argued that 
it was needed to fight Communism and "keep Negroes in their place."  Green was 
a native of Atlanta. He attended Emory-at-Oxford, Ga., and the Eclectic Medical 
College at Cincinnati Ohio. He is survived by his widow, two sons, Samuel, 
Jr.,  and Alfred, J. and a daughter, Virginia. Funeral services were set 
tentatively for 2:30 p.m. Saturday.


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