Racism and Civil Rights

From the mid 1970s thru mid 1980s I had received death calls and notes from hate groups, so I wasn’t shocked when Sheriff Knoch asked me to come to his office, and informed me a white supremacist group in N. Carolina had asked a skinhead group of Cincinnati TO KILL ME at one of my 1987 anti-racist speeches!

After insisting I take this threat seriously, having been passed on to the Sheriff’s Department by an informant who’d infiltrated Cincinnati skinheads, Sheriff Knoch gave me the two pieces of body armor! “How you feel about this threat, Jim?” the Sheriff asked. I had answered “I have always responded in my heart to all such threats… IF HATE GROUPS HATE YOU, YOU ARE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT!

Later when helping Sheriff Knoch compile his book on the history of Auglaize County Sheriffs, he had said to me “I finally figured out you anti-racist speeches and articles were an irresistible urge to do the right thing!”