From A White Man Speaks Out
- "Those White men were justifiably scared half to death. They were trapped and surrounded by hundreds of screaming Blacks and Communists in the heart of a Black neighborhood. And the Communists not only attacked them with clubs, many were firing pistols at them.
Of the thirty-nine gun shots fired that day, nineteen were fired by the Communists themselves. Police ballistics tests and TV film footage proved that at the trials. The Communists not only started the fight by screaming "Death to the Klan!" at us and by beating on cars with clubs, they actually fired the first gunshots, when one of them fired at me.
Unfortunately for the Communists, they only had small caliber hand guns. The Klansmen and Nazis had high-powered rifles and shotguns. Also, many of the Klansmen and Nazis were military veterans, while the Communists were for the most part, intellectual city types, with little or no training in firearms. The Blacks simply ran, hundreds of them. This is why all the deaths and serious injuries were suffered by the Communists.
One windowless van in the convoy contained about a half-dozen Klansmen. They had sat quietly, unable to see outside the van, but could hear the "Death to the Klan!" shouting by the Communists, and their van being beaten upon by clubs, and what must have sounded like a hot Vietnam firefight. Being unarmed themselves, they were content to sit the whole thing out peacefully, until one of the Communists yanked the van's back door open and screamed "Death to the Klan!" at them. Then, with the instinct of cornered tigers, they poured out of the van and began fighting the Communist mob hand-to-hand. Several took clubs away from the Communists and began beating on them. Film footage of this club and fistfight was televised later over the whole country."