Tommy Rowe

Gary Thomas Rowe Jr (born August 13, 1933 in Savannah, Georgia; died May 25, 1998 in Savannah) was a Ku Klux Klan leader and a paid informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Rowe had worked as a bouncer and as an ambulance driver. He had a reputation for being eager to get into fights, and also interested in law enforcement. He was arrested in 1956 for impersonating a police officer. He claimed that he was enticed by an FBI agent in 1960 to join the Klan as an informant, a role he later characterized as being an "undercover agent" for the Bureau.

In August of that year, Rowe succeeded Bill Holt in the office of "Klokan Chief" of the violent Eastview 13 Klavern. In May 1961 he was part of the mob of Klansmen and neo-Nazis that "greeted" Freedom Riders at the Trailways Bus Depot in downtown Birmingham, severely beating several passengers with chains and clubs during a 15-minute "window" reportedly arranged beforehand by Police Commissioner Bull Connor. Rowe's participation in the fray was documented by Birmingham Post-Herald photographer Tommy Langston.

In June 1963 Rowe was one of six Klansmen arrested at a traffic stop between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa on the day that James Hood and Vivian Malone enrolled at the University of Alabama. The Alabama Highway Patrol may have acted on an FBI tip when they pulled the car over. They found the trunk full of weapons and explosives. The men were released and their weapons returned.

Members of Rowe's Klavern were responsible for the bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church in September 1963, killing four girls. Rowe himself was considered a suspect by state investigators, but solid evidence tying him to the plot was never produced. Some fellow Klan members claimed that Rowe had failed lie detector tests when denying any knowledge of the bombing plan, but those claims could not be substantiated.

Rowe was one of four people in a car that followed Civil Rights activist Viola Liuzzo down a country road in Lowndes County and sprayed her car with bullets, killing her on March 25, 1965, a day after the Selma to Montgomery March. The four men, all members of the KKK, were quickly apprehended by the FBI. Rowe's role as an informant became known when he was the only one of the four not indicted for murder. He testified at two trials in Lowndes County that ended in a hung jury and an acquittal on state murder charges, as well as in the federal trial that convicted the three men under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. Afterward, Rowe was placed into a federal witness protection program, given a job as a U.S. Marshal in California as "Thomas Neal Moore". He later returned to Savannah.

In 1975 Rowe testified before the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church. He wore a cotton hood over his head to conceal his features. He told the committee that he and his fellow Klansmen "were promised 15 minutes with absolutely no intervention from any police officer whatsoever" during the May 1961 Freedom Riders' arrival.

Rowe published a memoir about his time in the KKK in 1976. In it he described how after the deadly bombing at 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963, the FBI kept closer tabs on his whereabouts and demanded a detailed log of his movements. Rowe was interviewed by Attorney General Bill Baxley about whether he was involved in the bombing. He submitted to a polygraph, in which his answers were judged to be deceptive, but was not charged.

In 1978, convicted bomber Robert Chambliss described Rowe in a letter from prison as "head leader in all the bombings in and around Birmingham." He explained to investigator Jack LeGrand that he based that statement on the fact that, "every time that anything was bombed, he would come back to the meetings and brag about it."

Based on new evidence from the other men involved, Rowe was named in a 1978 indictment for Liuzzo's murder, but South Carolina declined to process the extradition request.

Rowe died from a heart attack in 1998 and was buried under a headstone inscribed with his assumed name.

References

• Rowe, Gary Thomas Jr (1976) My Undercover Years with the Ku Klux Klan. New York: Bantam Books.
• Kaufman, Michael T. (October 4, 1988) "Gary T. Rowe Jr., 64, Who Informed on Klan In Civil Rights Killing, Is Dead." The New York Times
• May, Gary (2005) The Informant: The FBI, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Murder of Viola Liuzzo. Yale University Press.
• Hebert, Keith S. (April 7, 2015) "Gary Thomas Rowe, Jr" Encyclopedia of Alabama online - accessed August 28, 2017
• Taylor, Drew (September 14, 2023) "Was an FBI informant involved in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing?" CBS42.com