The Nation - News from Feb. 28, 1988

A Ku Klux Klan protest of the Dallas Police Department’s new affirmative action hiring plan turned into a melee when an anti-klan group charged the demonstrators. Police clubbed members of the crowd, estimated at about 200, and some protesters suffered minor injuries in the one-hour confrontation, authorities said. Eight people were arrested on minor charges. Members of the anti-KKK group held a rally and burned Confederate and Nazi flags in front of City Hall, where about a dozen klansmen had gathered to stage a news conference against the affirmative action plan, implemented earlier this year in response to critics’ charges that the department did not reflect the city’s racial makeup. As the klan marched around City Hall plaza, an elderly black woman was punched in the face by a white man, who was arrested for assault.