Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the Jews

Ku Klux Klansmen, claiming that Jews were the driving force behind the civil rights movement, bombed two synagogues and a rabbi's house in Jackson and in Meridian, Miss., in 1967-68. A Klan hit list targeted Jewish business leaders for assassination. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Washington bureau chief who covered the South in the civil rights era, discovered evidence that the FBI and the Meridian police, using funds supplied by the Jewish community, paid informants to set a trap that left Klan hit man Thomas Tarrants III wounded and his fanatically anti-Semitic bomb-maker girlfriend Kathy Ainsworth dead. This absorbing true-crime tale is a time capsule to the civil rights movement's heyday. Using FBI files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Nelson recreates the case and illuminates the FBI's long vendetta against him for his reportage. Photos. Jewish Book Club alternate; author tour. (Jan.)