Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Beulah Mae Donald

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

In 1981 a Mobile mother of six was forced into the role of civil rights activist when the Klan murdered her son and she was moved to fight back.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and this is short stuff. So here we go. Yeah, short stuff, a terrible, awful, sad story with a bit of a silver lining on it. Have you have you heard of Bula May Donald?

I had not. I hadn't either, actually. I found this article on how stuff works by John Donovan. And it was very eye-opening. Bula May Donald was a woman who lived in Alabama, who is well known for having taken on the Klan and won. She basically sued the Klan and ended up disassembling at least a significant portion of the Klan operating in the South at the time. Right. And this was not in the 1950s or 60s. This was in the 1980s. And it's a very shocking story. So trigger warnings abound. Yeah, for sure. But she got the news when her son Michael did not come home. He was, I believe, the youngest of seven kids. And the next morning got a call that said, hey, they found your son's wallet. And she thought that might be good news

that may he may be out there somewhere. But they said, no, he was killed. And he was murdered at the age of 19, beaten with a tree limb, his throat cut, and had a noose tied around his neck. And after he died, his body was pulled up into a tree and hanged there just a few blocks from his house. Yeah. The first lynching in the United States, I believe, for about 20 years. Yeah. I mean, that qualifies as a lynching. And this is 1981, right? So America's moved on from lynchings. And this just shocked the conscience of the entire country, like it made national news. It was a really big deal. And Bula May followed in the footsteps of Mamie Till and had the casket kept open for the world to see and really drive home. Like, this just happened. Like,

this really happened. It's 1981. And very quickly, the police zeroed in on the Ku Klux Klan. And the Klan at the time was nothing like they were, you know, 20 years before, but they were still active. And in Alabama, there was a particularly violent chapter of the Klan, the United Clans of America. And it just so happened that across the street from where Michael Donald's body was hanging, members of the United Clans of America were watching the police take the body down. And then later on that night, a cross was burned into the courthouse lawn in Mobile County. This is all, this all happened in Mobile, Alabama. So they knew it was the Klan. And yet the police were not exactly super efficient in bringing the Klan to justice

in Alabama at this time. Yeah, I think that's probably the kindest way you can say that. It took two years to get any kind of criminal justice. I believe that if it had not been for Bula May, Donald causing such a ruckus, it probably would have been swept under the rug and gone away without any kind of convictions. Absolutely. But she kept stirring the pot and kept advocating for more police work. The police at one point had suggested that her son's death was the result of a drug deal gone bad. Yeah, because that's what happens at the end of drug deals that go bad, right? So that of course further incensed her. And that incensed more people in the country to get on board. And once you've got Jesse Jackson and the Bullhorn squad

going, then you better take some action because it's just not going to go away like you wanted to. No, and it was the police mirroring her son's name that that was, she said, what drove her this whole time? Absolutely. Even beyond the murder, it was that they characterized her son as a drug dealer or drug user even. She invited the police to come search his room. They searched his room. They found nothing. And that just set her off on this path. She also had a friend and a newly appointed or elected, I can't remember, district attorney who got the FBI involved. And once the FBI finally got involved and the local police were kind of pushed to the background, two men were arrested. A guy named Henry Hayes and another guy named James Tiger Knowles, 26 and 17, respectively.

And they were convicted. They were tried and convicted of killing Michael Donald. And the whole thing, it turned out, was created or spurred on by the Klan's anger at a local jury to have failed to convict a black man for the murder of a white policeman. So they decided to even things by finding a random hapless 19 year old man who happened to be walking down the street at the wrong time. It was strictly a case of the wrong place at the wrong time. That's what led to the murder of Michael Donald. That's right. He believed Hayes was sentenced to death and also sentenced to life in prison. And we're going to take a break because that is not the end of this story. It gets better from here. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful

folks in the United States told you, Hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart podcast and School of Humans,

this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money you took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life.

Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so we promised a silver lining. And, you know, of course, when something like this happens, it's a tragedy that can't be undone. But Bula May was not finished with the Klan and decided, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to sue him. I'm going to take them to civil trial. I don't think this had ever been done. This was in 1985. Other plaintiffs jumped on board and they sought compensation for what they said was basically a right to live free

and free from being intimidated and harassed and physically harmed and killed because the Klan is still in operation because we're black citizens of the United States. And I'm sure at first they probably thought like this lawsuit is going nowhere. But that was not the case. No, and the lawsuit was helped out by a number of people, including the Southern Poverty Law Centers founder Morris D's. And in that civil suit, like you were saying, they basically alleged that the Klan, as an organization, was trying to deprive black citizens throughout Alabama from some of their basic constitutional rights by intimidating them, by murdering black people to use as an intimidation tactic. And in doing that, by depriving them of their rights,

they had like actually a really strong lawsuit. The thing that made it unusual, well, one, they were suing the Klan, but two, they were coming at the Klan as an organization. So in the same way that like if you work at McDonald's and you don't like the looks of one of your customers and you throw hot fry grease in their face, it's not just on you. McDonald's is culpable too. They hired you. You're a representative of their corporation. Like they're on the hook too. That's how they were trying to sue the Klan. These weren't just Klan members. They were definitely Klan members that did this, but the Klan as a whole was being sued because the organization encouraged this kind of behavior, if not that particular act specifically.

Yeah. And so Hayes and Knowles were obviously convicted for the crime named in the suit, but more people were dragged into this. Hayes' father, Benny Jack Hayes, he was an official, pretty high ranking one in the Klan, a man by the name of Frank Cox, and another Klan member who supposedly supplied the rope used for the hanging. That was Frank Cox. Yeah. Oh, that was Cox. Okay. So in 1987, in February of that year, a jury, an all-white jury, mind you, in the U.S. District Court, the Southern District of Alabama awarded Bula May Donald and the other plaintiff seven million bucks, which is about 15 to 17 million dollars today. And that was a real settlement. Like she basically was handed the keys to their headquarters and she sold it for money.

Yeah. The Klan did not have 16 million in today's dollars to hand out to anybody. Again, they were on the wane. So this bankrupted the Klan. Bula May Donald's lawsuit bankrupted the United Klan's, again, this really violent group. And this group in particular was, they were responsible for the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. They murdered Viola Luzo, the civil rights activist at Selma. They beat freedom riders in Birmingham. This group really excelled at being pieces of human garbage. And she disassembled their group. She bankrupted them. But even better, Chuck, even better than that, because of evidence that was presented at the civil trial, Jack Hayes and Frank Cox were also indicted as well, along with Knowles and the

younger Henry Hayes, who had already been convicted. That's right. And it did not end well for any of them. Henry Hayes, who actually committed the murder, died by way of electric chair in 1997, even though Bula May, who was a devout, I believe, Baptist, was against the death penalty and was not in favor of the man who killed her son dying in the electric chair. He was 42 years old. I think it was the very first execution of a white person for crimes against a black person in more than 80 years in the state of Alabama. Yep. Benny Jack Hayes, the father, he was indicted too, but he died before his trial was completed. He was never sentenced. But Frank Cox, the guy who supplied the rope, he was found guilty and sentenced to 99 years in prison. So all these guys who

basically decided to do this got real justice in Alabama. Again, it's 1981, but it's still 1981 in Alabama. An all-white jury found in favor of Bula May and her lawsuit and then went after these other guys too. It was about as beautiful an outcome as you could hope for from some despicable act like this. Yeah, absolutely. Knowles, if you're wondering the other young man, I believe, like you said, he was 17 at the time of the murder, was very seemingly remorseful at the civil trial, apologized in tears to Bula May, testified against the other guys, but he still went to prison for quite a long time. He was just released in 2010. Yeah, I think around 25 years in prison is what he did. Yeah. And Bula May threw out, like even at their criminal trials,

she said that she forgave both of them. She forgave them all. It was, again, the thing that drove her was clearing her son's name. This was not a drug deal. This was the Klan that did this and her son, it was totally innocent. And as a matter of fact, Herndon Avenue, where Michael's body was found hanging from a tree, was renamed in his honor. Nice. Yeah. And if you want to know more about it, CNN did a four-part series called The People versus the Klan, The Untold Story of Bula May Donald, which seems worth checking out. Yeah. And Bula May herself passed away at 67, sadly, only about a year and a half after the verdict. Yeah. But she was alive during the verdict, and I think that was a big deal. Yeah, for sure. So I think that's it. That's the story

of Bula May Donald taking on the Klan, and everybody's short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.