Elwin Wilson Dead: Former KKK Supporter Who Apologized For Racist Past Dies

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By MARTHA WAGGONER, Huffingtonpost.com

John Lewis, D-Ga, left, gives Elwin Wilson of Rock Hill, S.C., a copy of Lewis' book in the congressman's Washington, D.C. office, while taping an interview for ABC's "Good Morning America."

John Lewis, D-Ga, left, gives Elwin Wilson of Rock Hill, S.C., a copy of Lewis’ book in the congressman’s Washington, D.C. office, while taping an interview for ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Elwin Wilson, the former Ku Klux Klan supporter who publicly apologized for years of violent racism, including the beating of a black Freedom Rider who went on to become a Georgia congressman, has died. He was 76.

Wilson died Thursday at a hospital in South Carolina after a bout with the flu and years of heart and lung problems, said his wife, Judy Wilson.

She told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Sunday that he was relieved he lived long enough to try to make amends for years of racial hatred. He detailed his deeds at length when he called The Herald of Rock Hill to apologize shortly after President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009…

Among his actions were cross burnings; hanging a black doll in a noose at the end of his driveway; flinging cantaloupes at black men walking down Main Street; hurling a jack handle at a black boy jiggling the soda machine in his father’s service station; and the brutal beating of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at a Rock Hill bus station in 1961.

“His story is a powerful story; his story must not be forgotten,” Lewis told The Herald in a telephone interview Saturday. “His story and the way he arrived at his position must be understood, must be told.”

Wilson also apologized in several other public venues, including during a meeting with Lewis at the congressman’s Capitol Hill office…

“He was the first private citizen,” Lewis said. “He was the very, very first to come and apologize to me … for a private citizen to come along and say, `I’m the one that attacked you; I’m the one who beat you.’ It was very meaningful.”

 

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