New details emerge on Louisiana Klan killing, racist backlash against Obama

The identity of the woman murdered last week during a Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual in rural Louisiana has been revealed.

Cynthia C. Lynch, 43, of Tulsa, Okla. met members of the Sons of Dixie Klan group over the Internet, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. Lynch planned to return to Oklahoma to recruit others to the organization.

She was allegedly shot by group leader Raymond "Chuck" Foster during an argument that broke out during the initiation. Foster has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder, and seven other members of the group -- including Foster's son -- are being held as accessories.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that Foster previously served as the Imperial Wizard of the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a faction formed in 2001 in Watson, La. That group reportedly disbanded in 2005.

The Sons of Dixie wanted to rebuild the KKK in Louisiana's Washington Parish, which has a long history of terrorism against blacks. At one time, the parish was believed to have more Klan members per capita than any other U.S. parish or county. Its city of Bogalusa was once known as "Klan Capital, USA," according to Tulane University professor and KKK expert Lance Hill.

But racist terror isn't strictly a thing of the past in Washington Parish: An African-American woman who put up a yard sign for Barack Obama recently found "KKK" spray-painted on her propane tank and a junk car parked on her property. Judy Robinson, 58, told the Times-Picayune that the incident "put the fear" in her heart.

The recent happenings in Washington Parish are part of a broader backlash against Barack Obama's election as the nation's first African-American president. The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center -- which just last week won a $2.5 million verdict for a Kentucky teen assaulted by Klansmen at a county fair -- has documented more than 200 hate-related incidents, setting a record for modern presidential races.

Since the election, two white nationalists groups -- Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens -- report their web servers have crashed due to heavy traffic, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

At the same time, the pro-secessionist League of the South says its web hits have jumped six-fold and its phones are ringing off the hook. As Michael Tuggle, a blogger for the group, told the newspaper:

"To a lot of people, the idea of secession doesn't seem so crazy anymore," says Tuggle. "People are talking about how left out they feel, ... and they feel that something strange and radical has taken over our country."

(Photo of Cynthia C. Lynch from The Oklahoman)