Terror in the night

Pulitzer Prize winner Jack Nelson, familiar to millions from TV's Washington Week in Review, is one of America's toughest reporters. For over forty years, he has covered it all, seen it all - and told the truth. One story stands out for him above all others. Now in the tour de force of his long career, Nelson shows us the civil rights movement's last unreported front - the Ku Klux Klan's war against Southern Jews. Piece by piece, Nelson re-creates this bitter campaign. And assembles the secrets surrounding what is perhaps its most disturbing episode: a top secret plan to trap the Klan's most elusive bomber. In 1967, Nelson was a young reporter covering his home state of Mississippi. Around him, the South was exploding. As citizens absorbed the news of the brutal slayings of three Northern civil rights workers, the Klan set its sights on a new target - Southern Jews. Quietly, the Klan's top bomber slipped across state lines. In the fall. Of 1967, the battle began as a crude explosive device ripped through the walls of the newly completed Temple Beth Israel in Jackson. A few months later, the home of the temple's rabbi was reduced to ruins by a second bomb. Reports of hit lists and new targets spread through the South. When the third bomb exploded on May 27, in a synagogue in the small town of Meridian, Mississippi, the Jewish community cried out for action. When the FBI discovered a Klan plot to bomb. Another synagogue, this time with women and children inside, the rage grew uncontrollable. A plan that some thought too dangerous, too risky, too radical was put into action by FBI men and local police, bankrolled by the Jewish community. Nelson shows us how this plan played out, despite a last-minute near disaster. We meet unforgettable characters, including the Hawkinses, the Klan's fiercest family; the police and the agents; and Kathy Ainsworth, the quiet. Schoolteacher whose secret life included midnight bombings and a lover whom few Klan members knew by name, a man whose bombs had ignited terror throughout Mississippi. Terror in the Night is exciting reading and truly extraordinary journalism.