Biography
Robert Shelton, the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America — then the largest Klan organization in the country was one of the Ku Klux Klan officials jailed for contempt of Congress after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee, which in 1965–66 turned its investigative machinery on the Klan amid the era’s wave of racist terror against the civil-rights movement. Subpoenaed to produce the Klan’s membership rolls and financial records, he invoked the Fifth Amendment and refused; in 1966 the House cited seven Klan leaders for contempt. Unlike the left-wing witnesses HUAC had jailed in the 1940s, these were officers of a violent white-supremacist organization — but the committee’s use of the contempt power against them followed the same pattern, and the convictions were upheld, sending several Klan leaders to federal prison in 1969. He was found guilty and sentenced to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine; after exhausting his appeals he served nine months at a federal prison in Texarkana, Texas, in 1969.
