THE JOE FAMILY WAS GATHERED at Arthur and Queen Ester Joe’s home in Newbern, Alabama, on a summer evening in the early 1970s when the children asked about the white figures standing outside. Queen Ester told them not to worry as she rushed them to the back of the house. Draped in white robes, like a nightmare ripped from a Southern dreamscape, Ku Klux Klan members stood idly by the mailbox, says the couple’s grandson Christopher Joe, who heard the story from a cousin who was there that day.
It wasn’t the first attempt to scare the Joe family off of their 200-acre farm, and it wouldn’t be
