James "Tiger" Knowles, Jr.
"The Last Lynching in America"

One of the most heinous racial crimes that ever took place in the United States occurred on October 17, 1981.  That week, a jury had been struggling to reach a verdict in the case of a black man accused of murdering a white policeman. The killing had occurred in Birmingham, Alabama, but the trial had been moved to Mobile, Alabama.  To Francis Hays - the second-highest Klan official in Alabama - and his fellow members of Unit 900 of the United Klans, the presence of blacks on the jury meant that a guilty man would go free.  According to Klansmen who attended the unit's weekly meeting, Hays had preached that Wednesday, saying, ''If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man.''

A young black male (Michael Donald) was abducted in downtown Mobile, Alabama and taken to a site across Mobile Bay where he was beaten and murdered.  The murder was the revenge for the mistrial of a black man accused of killing a white Birmingham, Alabama police officer.  Two Ku Klux Klan members, Francis Hays and James “Tiger” Knowles, were apprehended and charged with the murder.  A third individual, Benjamin Cox, was also charged as an accomplice.  The three were tried and convicted and Hays was ultimately executed at Holman Prison in 2000; Knowles is serving a life sentence and the third co-defendant (Cox) is serving a 99 year prison sentence.

On that Friday night, after the jurors announced they couldn't reach a verdict, the Klansmen got together in a house Bennie Hays owned on Herndon Avenue. According to later testimony from James (Tiger) Knowles, then 17 years old, Tiger produced a borrowed pistol.  Henry Francis Hays, Bennie's 26-year-old son, took out a rope.  Then the two got in Henry's car and went hunting for a black man.

Michael Donald was alone, walking home, when Knowles and Hays spotted him. They pulled over, asked him for directions to a night club, then pointed the gun at him and ordered him to get in.  They drove to the next county. When they stopped, Michael begged them not to kill him, then tried to escape.  Henry Hays and Knowles chased him, caught him, hit him with a tree limb more than a hundred times, and, when he was no longer moving, wrapped the rope around his neck.  Henry Hays shoved his boot in Michael's face and pulled on the rope.  For good measure, they cut his throat.

It is ironic to note, however, that the three defendants were successful in having evidence tying them to the crime scene completely discredited in court.  Statistical evidence offered by the prosecution’s witness (a chemist) directed toward showing similarities in soil samples found on the victim’s clothing, the defendant’s shoes, and the crime scene was totally invalidated because inappropriate (and incorrect) statistical tests were used.  The prosecution’s witness was also shown to have little knowledge of both soil mineralogy and chemical variability associated with soils.  While excellent evidence could have been offered by the prosecution had they chosen to use either the heavy mineral and/or clay mineral “fingerprint” of the soils, the prosecution instead attempted to show “similarities” in the chemistry of the soils.  The defense witness was able to identify numerous mistakes made in interpreting the evidence and to invalidate the entire testimony offered by the prosecution’s witness.

Fortunately, the adage “there is no honor among thieves” was evidenced and two of the co-defendants, to avoid a possible death sentence, admitted their guilt and testified that Hays was the chief conspirator.   Following completion of the trial, the expert witness for the defense was contacted by the district attorney and asked whether more appropriate tests could have been offered (so as to avoid possible errors in the future).  He was able to take solace by learning that both geological and statistical evidence had been there all along.  It simply had not been reviewed by someone who possessed the proper expertise to do so.

While the felony to which Knowles confessed was a federal crime, the ensuing murder charge against Hays was prosecuted as a state crime.  He pleaded innocent. During Hays' trial, Knowles testified that the killing was planned to avenge a white police officer killed after a Birmingham bank robbery.   Knowles and Hays assumed that a predominantly black jury would not convict a black defendant in the Birmingham case.  With the approval and assistance of Hays' father Bennie, Frank Cox, Thaddeus Betancourt, and Teddy Kyzar - all members of the United Klans of America  -  Knowles and Hays planned to kill a randomly selected black person and burn a cross at the Mobile County Courthouse in a symbolic act of Klan strength.  To establish alibis, the group threw a party the night the Birmingham case went to the jury.  When news of a hung jury was announced on television, Knowles and Hayes slipped away and abducted Donald, whom they found walking alone on a dark street.

In June of 1983, Knowles confessed to F.B.I. agent Bodman. After pleading guilty to violating Michael Donald's civil rights, he was placed in the Federal witness protection program - a fairly standard accommodation for Klan informers - and sentenced to life in prison.  In December, when Henry Hays was tried for capital murder, Knowles appeared as a prosecution witness.  Henry Hays was convicted of murder on December 10, 1983, and sentenced by the jury to life imprisonment without parole.  Hays conviction was largely due to the strength of the testimony by Knowles. 

A jury of 11 whites and one black found Hays guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.  That didn't seem sufficient punishment to Judge Braxton Kittrell Jr., who rejected the sentence in February 1984 and directed that Henry Hays be electrocuted.  In 1986, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals set aside the death sentence.  Later that year, however, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld Judge Kittrell's decision.  ''We cannot imagine,'' the justices wrote, ''a case in which the death penalty is more justified.''

Knowles was sentenced to 10 years to life imprisonment for his part in the killing.

 Beulah Mae Donald v. United Klans of America Inc. et al: 1987 - Klansmen Plot Racial Revenge Murder

Beulah Mae Donald v. United Clans of America Inc. et

On March 21, 1981, the mutilated body of Michael Donald was found hanging from a tree in Mobile, Alabama.   Local and federal authorities were slow to conclude that the 19-year-old black student's murder was the Ku Klux Klan lynching it clearly resembled.   After two FBI investigations of the killing, however, local members of the United Klans of America (UKA) began implicating each other before a grand jury.  On June 16, 1983, James "Tiger" Knowles pleaded guilty to one count of violating Donald's civil rights, saving himself from a first-degree murder prosecution.   Knowles confessed that he and Klansman Henry Hays had abducted Donald at gunpoint.  The two Klansmen had driven the teenager to a secluded rural field where they beat and strangled him to death, cut his throat, and returned to Mobile to hang his body from a tree.