KKK versus shrimpers

[Pigeon]

Texans versus Vietnamese shrimpers in 1981

Look like the wrong men were sent to save South Vietnam

Gene Fisher was ready for the news crews pouring into Galveston Bay. “I went to my government…begged them to help the situation, do something about it, and they wouldn’t do it,” Fisher told a reporter. His tone was scolding, his arms stubbornly crossed. “So, I’m a white American. I went to the KKK. Those boats have to be taken out of the water. Destroyed.”

The situation escalated: a white shrimper named Jody Collins offered up his small ranch as a site for the first major Klan rally against the Vietnamese. Held on Valentine’s Day, 750 people hollered as the U.S.S. VIET CONG, an effigy of a Vietnamese boat, was torched, and Louis Beam, the Grand Dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan issued a 90-day deadline for the Vietnamese to leave or else face “blood, blood, blood.”

[Pigeon]

Earlier that morning, soon after the Grand Dragon had given them the go‑ahead, the boat was swarm­ing with Klansmen, some in hoods, others in army fatigues and black Ku Klux Klan—Realm of Texas T‑shirts. Nobody concealed their faces that day; they wanted to be seen. There were loads of AR‑15s on board. The Confederate flag hanging from the boat’s mast whipped in the wind as they passed “Saigon Harbor.”

As the escalation against the Vietnamese shrimpers of Galveston Bay intensified, some 60 percent of the Vietnamese put FOR SALE signs on their boats, making plans to once again flee. But Colonel Nam, with help from the Southern Poverty Law Center and Houston attorneys, decided that the community should stand its ground and fight back against the Klan, its private militia, and their white allies in the fishing community. The lawsuit, seeking an emergency injunction, led to a historic decision affirming the refugees’ right to fish without fear of violence… but the waters they worked were quickly being poisoned by the sprawling petrochemical industry along the Texas gulf coast. Unless someone could curb the toxic discharges into the bays, there was little hope for shrimpers and crabbers.