Vietnamese Fishermen and the Klan: Bayou la Batre, 1979

After the fall of Saigon in April of nineteen seventy-five, tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees resettled across the Gulf Coast states. By the late nineteen seventies, a substantial Vietnamese fishing community had established itself along the Texas Gulf Coast, working the same shrimp and crab grounds out of Seadrift, Texas, that other commercial fishermen had worked for generations.

In nineteen seventy-nine and nineteen eighty, members of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan began a campaign to drive the Vietnamese fishermen out. They burned boats. They ran armed patrols on the water and along the docks. They made clear that the violence would continue and escalate if the Vietnamese did not leave.

The Southern Poverty Law Center brought suit. The case was called Vietnamese Fishermen's Association versus Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Morris Dees filed the complaint on April sixteenth, nineteen eighty-one. A preliminary injunction was issued May fourteenth, nineteen eighty-one, forbidding Klan interference with the Vietnamese fishermen's operations. The full case was decided in nineteen eighty-two: citation five hundred forty-three Federal Supplement one ninety-eight, Southern District of Texas. Judge Gabrielle McDonald issued the permanent injunction. The Klan's Texas Emergency Reserve, a paramilitary militia associated with the Klan, was ordered to cease operations against the Vietnamese community.

The Vietnamese fishing community of Seadrift survived. It kept working the same waters in the years after, through later setbacks, with limited outside assistance. The industry it built is still operating.

A community that had crossed the Pacific to escape one war, built a livelihood from scratch in the Gulf, fought off a campaign of racial terror in court, survived a hurricane, and kept working. That is the full arc of the story.