Karl R. Allen

Karl Rogers Allen Jr. (April 23, 1931 – March 5, 2015) was an American neo-Nazi who was the deputy commander of the American Nazi Party and later the founder of the neo-Nazi group the White Party of America. He worked in developing Florida's economy and was later a manager for bringing nuclear energy to the state; he disliked this job and resigned entirely after they disregarded his recommendations against nuclear energy. He then worked in construction. After becoming a neo-Nazi, Allen abruptly left his job in 1961 and joined George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party.

Other members of the American Nazi Party initially thought he was a spy, but he rose quickly to being the party's second in command. He demonstrated for the party's anti-civil rights demonstrations and wrote for the party's periodicals. In 1963, Allen was arrested for giving a speech at a counter-protest to the March on Washington. In December 1963, he split from the American Nazi Party due to a personal dispute with Rockwell and created the White Party of America. While it sometimes had more members than the ANP, it attracted far less media attention. He was active in promoting the primary and presidential campaigns for George Wallace in 1964 and 1968. Later in life, he managed bookstores and hotels in Washington, D.C., and Tallahassee, Florida, and was the owner of the Black Cat News Exchange bookstore and newsstand in Tallahassee.

Early life

Karl Rogers Allen Jr. was born April 23, 1931, in Tallahassee, Florida. He was the son of Carl R. Allen and Cody Harris Allen . He had two siblings. Allen graduated from Tallahassee's Leon High School in 1949. During his teenage years and World War II, he was not entirely against Nazi Germany. He developed an interest in architectural drafting.

He enrolled at Florida State University in 1949. That year, he enrolled in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps in his freshman year. During his time at FSU, he was a draftsman for the Florida Park Service for a two-year period. He entered the United States Army in 1952, pausing his studies at FSU. He was given a commission from the Infantry School Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning. He served in the Korean War, and was commissioned as a lieutenant. In 1953, he was assigned to Camp Rucker. After his service in the army, he received a bachelor's degree in political science from Florida State University in 1956.

He then went on to receive a Master of Business Administration degree from the Harvard Business School in 1958. One of the first things he worked on was bringing Walt Disney to Florida. In June 1960 he was named a state atomic-energy coordinator of Florida to help bring nuclear power to the state, being the manager of the Nuclear Development Department of the commission's Industrial Service Division. He disliked this project, and recommended against bringing nuclear to Florida, which was ignored. He then resigned. Afterwards he worked in construction with his brother.

White supremacy Allen became radicalized into neo-Nazism after he heard a right-wing speaker and saw what the man said as making everything "[make] sense". Allen later said that after he heard this speaker, he set out to look into the issue himself and came to the conclusion that Nazism and Adolf Hitler were right. In 1961, the American Nazi Party was then making the news due to their high-profile "Hate Bus" campaign; this caught the attention of Allen, who read about them. He drove to their headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, where he picked up some of the party's hate literature but did not immediately join. In August 1961, Allen abruptly disappeared from his job, leaving when it changed administrations. He hitchhiked to Arlington to join the American Nazi Party. Come March, fellow ANP member Bernard Davids and Allen demonstrated against Congress of Racial Equality protestors. Allen dragged a homemade Soviet flag on the ground, which led to both men being arrested for disorderly conduct; the conviction was appealed and overturned the next year. The next month, he and Rockwell attended the senate testimony of Edwin Walker, who accused government officials of being part of a government conspiracy. They were allowed to sit, but the next day both were removed from the chamber when Rockwell wore a swastika emblem.

In May 1962, the state attorney seized an ANP letter with Allen's name on it. The letter was written to an ANP sympathizer, Donald W. Branch. Allen had met with Branch and had sent him the ANP's literature; the letter was seized after Branch was arrested for plotting to assassinate Florida's Attorney General Richard Gerstein and accused of bombing the home of a newspaper editor. This resulted in the Florida authorities finding out where he was after he had been reported as a missing person. To the largely black audience, Allen said he was the deputy commander of the American Nazi Party. He was almost dragged off stage and the audience called for him to stop, but King repeatedly insisted that Allen be allowed to speak. This was praised by Rockwell. Rockwell initially planned to have Allen stay there for some time to harass King "by any means legal", but this plan was derailed by the Kennedy assassination. Afterwards, Allen left Danville. They occasionally published a group newsletter, The White Letter. His aim with the White Party, which he called a "racial political party" was to be less internationalized than the ANP, focus more on nationalism, and be more "politically realistic". At this time Allen was a self-avowed white supremacist and declared his intention to have all black Americans deported to Africa, solve the "Jewish Question" by geographic isolation, and to work against real estate figures trying to racially integrate neighborhoods; He aimed for the party to run its own candidates.

The White Party of America party moved to Alexandria, Virginia. In 1964, Allen worked on George Wallace's 1964 primary campaign, and that year he and other White Party members campaigned for him. One commentator alleged that the 1964 campaign was clearly sanctioned by Wallace. The headquarters was decorated with Confederate flags and right-wing literature. Allen said they were encouraging Wallace to run on a third-party ticket.

In May 1968, Allen appeared as a guest on The Joe Pyne Show.

Later life and death Afterwards, Allen operated hotels and bookstores in D.C. for several decades and did "freelance auditing" for hotels. In 1992, Allen bought the DuBey's Store from Bill Dubey and renamed it Black Cat News Exchange (also just called Black Cat News) as a newsstand and book store in Tallahassee, which he managed. The name was taken from a 1960s newsstand called Ben's Black Cat, which DuBey's had succeeded.

In 1995, the store's annual revenue was , mostly from book sales. Saying he was "old and tired and wanting to go on", he stopped selling books at the store and shortened the open hours in 1997. He said he would retire to work on books, some of which he had been working on for several decades, on Oswald Spengler's philosophy of history.

In 1994, he gave an interview about his experiences in the American Nazi Party to author William H. Schmaltz for his book Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. In 1999, the same year that book and another, American Fuehrer by Frederick J. Simonelli, released, Allen recounted his experiences disrupting the King rally to the Danville Register & Bee. Allen agreed with some points the authors made, but disagreed especially on Rockwell's influence on the then-contemporary far-right. Allen claimed that in contrast to 1990s neo-Nazis, Rockwell's group had been strictly law-abiding and "above-board".

Allen died March 5, 2015, in Tallahassee at the age of 83. After his death, Nazi-related materials owned by him were purchased from fellow former ANP member Bernard Davids to form a collection to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library Archival Collections at the University of Kansas.