3-5-2021
The Time Mr. Rogers Sued The KKK.
After he learned that the Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was impersonating him in order to spread racist messages to kids,
Mr. Rogers took them on — and won.
After the KKK mimicked his voice to create a hate hotline,
Mr. Rogers took them to court.
Fred Rogers was the beloved creator and host of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, a late ’60s television program for kids that ran a stunning 31 seasons.
His soft-spoken demeanor, cardigan-and-socks attire, and lessons in compassion turned him into the nation’s father figure.
Despite his fuzzy-warm image, however, Mr. Rogers was far from a pushover.
In 1990, Mr. Rogers sued the Ku Klux Klan after the white supremacist organization used his voice and the effects of his show to spread racist ideologies on one of their hotlines.
This is the little-known story of the time Mr. Rogers took on the KKK — and won.
Over the course of the show’s 33 years, which made it one of the longest-running television shows in United States history, Mr. Rogers, his band of puppet friends, and human experts taught children how to deal with issues ranging from recycling to racism.
One of the most memorable episodes he did was in 1969, when Mr. Rogers and his guest star Officer Clemmons, played by Black actor François Clemmons, soaked their feet together in a kiddie pool.
It was a simple gesture, but at the height of the 1960s civil rights movement and only a year after Martin Luther King, Jr’s assassination, it sent a clear message of tolerance to children the nation over.
“Around the country, they didn’t want Black people
to come and swim in their swimming pools, and Fred said that is absolutely ridiculous,” Clemmons recalled in the 2018 documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor? “My being on the program was a statement for Fred.”
With Mr. Rogers’ strong views on racial equality, it’s no surprise that he didn’t hesitate to go up against the Ku Klux Klan when they started mixing racism with his beloved show.
Mr. Rogers Takes On The Ku Klux Klan
The year after MLK’s assassination, Mr. Rogers soaked his feet in a kiddie pool with his Black guest star, François Clemmons.
In 1990, the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan distributed a phone number to children that was linked to a recorded message impersonating Mr. Rogers’ voice.
The messages varied, but they were all equally bigoted. In one message, the impersonator points out a Black child on the playground and then calls him a racial slur and “drug pusher.”
The recording ended with the Klan lynching the child.
Another message, also recorded in Mr. Rogers’ fake voice, went after the gay community and declared that “AIDS was divine retribution.”
After the hateful hotline came to light, community groups and leaders in the city of Independence, Missouri, banded together to get to the bottom of it. They discovered that the same number had previously been used to promote the racist agenda of the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
Almost immediately, Mr. Rogers filed a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan and three individuals — Adam Troy Mercer, Edward E. Stephens IV, and Michael Brooks — in response to the discovery.
The messages were “of racism, white supremacy and bigotry — the antithesis of everything Rogers and Family Communications Inc. stand for,” said Cynthia E. Kernick, Mr. Rogers’ lawyer.
Rogers’ team also argued that the content of the messages, which were full of effects from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, infringed on the show’s copyright.
A federal judge ruled that the KKK must stop using the messages and ordered a temporary restraining order on the recordings a day after the suit was filed.
As a result, the three men agreed to stop playing the hateful messages on the hotline and to destroy the recordings.
The lawsuit between Mr. Rogers and the KKK was certainly a bizarre episode in the show’s history.
But the way in which Rogers dealt with the problem reflected his true inner values of equality and, of course, being a kind neighbor.
After the lawsuit, Mr. Rogers continued to educate children on tough life lessons for another decade, producing heavy yet compassionate episodes that Time referred to as “the darkest work of popular culture made for preschoolers since perhaps the Brothers Grimm.” The last episode of his beloved show aired in August 2001.
Three years after the show’s end, Mr. Rogers died of stomach cancer at 74 years old.
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