A Pulitzer Prize finalist, one of Louisiana’s best and brightest, was honored this week in Baton Rouge at the Old State Capitol. His name was Stanley Nelson, and he was a journalistic giant in rooting out the Ku Klux Klan activity in Louisiana.
Here is what best-selling author Greg Iles had to say about his friend Stanley Nelson, who he patterned one of his books after. “The South lost a quiet crusader. Not a fictional superhero from the cineplex, but a genuine hero, a knight-errant for truth and justice.”
After 60 years, the FBI opened widespread murder investigations into what was left of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had once held a significant presence statewide throughout the first half of the 20th century. But following the enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the FBI was given the authority to crack down on what used to be unevenly enforced state violations, and Klan activity in the Bayou State slowed to a trickle.
