Louis Beam

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Louis Ray Beam Jr. (born August 20, 1946) is an American white supremacist. After high school, he joined the United States Army and served as a helicopter door-gunner in Vietnam. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Once he returned to the United States, he became a Klansman, leading a maritime Louisiana KKK element and Klan rally in Texas against government help to Vietnamese immigrant fishermen. He was also the leader of the Texas Emergency Reserve, a militia that was disbanded by the courts in 1982 as a result of a lawsuit filed under Texas anti-militia law by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The lawsuit was brought by SPLC after the militia harassed Vietnamese fishermen during the 1981 fishing season. Beam was using Camp Puller near Houston in 1980 to train militia, including children as young as eight years old, in armed guerrilla tactics; the camp was shut down after publicity led to protests, and parents complaining that they were not aware of the children's activities...

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