Robert Shelton

Robert Marvin Shelton (June 12, 1929 – March 17, 2003) was an American salesman and printer who became notorious for being the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America (UKA), a Ku Klux Klan group, active from the early 1960s until 1987.

Career and KKK activities

Shelton was a factory worker and a car-tire salesman. He also owned a printing business, with an office on Union Boulevard. By 1965, Shelton's organization had outgrown the other KKK factions to become the largest in the United States, according to the FBI. In 1966, Shelton was sentenced to one year in prison and fined $1,000 for contempt of the United States Congress, "for refusing to turn over membership lists to the House Committee on Un-American Activities." In 1969, after losing his appeals, he reported to prison to serve his sentence.

In 1984, James Knowles, a UKA member of the UKA's Klavern 900 in Mobile, was convicted of the 1981 murder of Michael Donald. At trial, Knowles said he and Henry Hays killed Donald "in order to show Klan strength in Alabama." Unable to come up with the $7 million awarded by a jury, the UKA was forced to turn over its national headquarters to Donald's mother, who then sold it. During the civil trial Knowles said he was "carrying out the orders" of Bennie Jack Hays, Henry Hays' father and a long-time Shelton lieutenant.

Death Shelton died of a heart attack on March 17, 2003, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.