Stoner, Jesse Benjamin, 1924-2005

Jesse Benjamin Stoner, Jr. was born in 1924 in north Georgia. As a strong proponent of white supremacy and racial segregation during the civil rights era, Stoner revived a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga, Tennessee when he was eighteen. He later founded several anti-Semitic political parties, ran for high political offices in Georgia as an avowed white supremacist, and served on the legal team for James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the 1968 assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King. In 1977, Stoner was indicted, and was later convicted and imprisoned, for the 1958 bombing of an African American church in Birmingham, Alabama. He died on April 23, 2005 at Lafayette, Georgia.

Jesse Benjamin "J.B." Stoner was born April 13, 1924 in Walker County, Georgia near Chattanooga, Tennessee. At the age of eighteen he re-chartered a dormant chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Chattanooga. He went on to found the Stoner's Christian Anti-Jewish Party and produced several anti-Semetic publications. Also, he served as national chairman in the white-supremacist group National States' Rights Party. In 1952, after oving to Atlanta, he earned a law degree from Atlanta Law School. Stoner ran for governor of Georgia in 1970. Future U.S. President Jimmy Carter won the primary. In 1972, Stoner ran for the United States Senate. During his campaign the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) ruled that television stations had to play his advertisements, despite their offensive language, due to the fairness doctrine. In 1974, he ran for lieutenant governor of Georgia and received 73,000 votes. In 1977, Stoner was indicted for the 1958 bombing of an empty church in Birmingham, Alabama, and was convicted in 1980. Stoner appealed the ruling for three years, until his appeals ran out, and he became a fugitive for several months. In 1984, he was permanently removed from the roster of lawyers who may appear before the United States Supreme Court. After his release from prison in 1986, Stoner attempted a final effort to assume public office as lieutenant governor in 1990. Until his death at eighty-one, Stoner lived in northwest Georgia. He died in 2005 in Lafayette, Georgia from complications due to pneumonia.