ALABAMA: Drop that Mask

The State of Alabama last week set out to prove that the cross-burning, sheeted hoodlums of the Ku Klux Klan, though they might get the headlines, did not speak for Alabama. By an 84-to-4 vote, the state legislature made it a misdemeanor ($500 fine, or a year in jail) to appear in public wearing a mask. The bill, quickly signed and put into effect by Governor Jim Folsom, was the first anti-masking law enacted in the deep South since reconstruction days.