The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan has deposed its grand dragon in Mississippi because he was born a Jew, according to KKK officials.
Jordan Gollub, from a Philadelphia Jewish family, was removed from the Christian Knights by Virgil Griffin of Mount Holly, N.C., national head of the white supremacist group.
“I just felt it was best to get a new grand dragon for Mississippi,” Griffin told the Associated Press. He said Gollub’s removal “mostly concerned his Jewish background.”
Gollub now says he will form his own Klan.
This is not the first time Gollub has been ousted.
Gollub resigned from the Christian Knights in 1985, when he was a grand dragon in Virginia, following a feud with Griffin that came on the heels of reports of his Jewish birth.
It was reported that at the time, Griffin had allowed Gollub to stay on because of the good job he was doing. Gollub resigned in December 1985, griping about the Klan’s lack of organization.
But Gollub was reinstated, as recently as December 1988, for unknown reasons.
Pat Clark, director of Klanwatch of Montgomery, Ala., thinks Gollub’s reinstatement might have had to do with his talents as a recruiter and rally organizer.
David Lowe, associate director of the fact-finding department of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, ascribes Gollub’s removal to a radicalization of the Klan.
“It’s a sign of the growing Nazification of the Klan that those of Jewish background, regardless of what they profess, are not considered pure enough,” he said.
Gollub, presently a resident of Poplarville, Miss., considers himself a Christian, although he admits his parents are Jewish. A New York Post account in 1985 described him as being the son of a prominent Philadelphia physician.
“I was never Jewish. My parents are Jewish. I have never had any Jewish religious background,” Gollub told the Post in 1985.
Gollub, about 30 years old, gained experience as a Klan organizer with Bill Wilkinson, a former colleague of David Duke, the Klan leader recently elected to the Louisiana state legislature.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
