The Fort Bragg Murders

Also on the East Coast, the NA has attempted to attract members among U.S. Army personnel at Fort Bragg, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. A member of the elite 82nd Airborne Division, Robert Hunt, reportedly worked as a recruiter for the National Alliance while stationed at Fort Bragg. In April 1995, according to the NA, Hunt rented a billboard outside Fort Bragg and used it to post an advertisement and local phone number for the group.

In December 1995, a Black couple was gunned down near the Army base in what prosecutors called a racially motivated killing. James Burmeister and Malcolm Wright, members of the 82nd Airborne Division, were ultimately convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. (A third soldier, Randy Meadows, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and accessory charges.) Burmeister and Wright were active neo-Nazi Skinheads, and reportedly read National Alliance propaganda.

Racist Shooting in Mississippi

Another racial incident that can be linked to National Alliance propaganda occurred in April 1996, when Larry Wayne Shoemake killed one African American and injured seven others in Jackson, Mississippi. Police say Shoemake piled a small arsenal of weapons into an abandoned restaurant in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and from his hideout began shooting wildly into the street in a murderous rampage. As an ambulance tried to rescue a dying victim, Shoemake continued firing his rifle, preventing emergency workers from remaining on the scene. Shoemake ultimately took his own life.

In a police search of Shoemake's home, authorities found a Nazi flag draped over his bed, a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and literature from the National Alliance. According to his ex-wife, Shoemake first encountered NA propaganda in the mid-1980s, when he borrowed The Turner Diaries from a friend. She said her husband wasn't the same after he read Pierce's novel. "It was like an eye-opener for him," his wife said. "There was a distinct difference in him." Shoemake also began subscribing to Pierce's monthly publications.

Separation or Annihilation

The October 1995 issue of Free Speech, a monthly newsletter sent to financial supporters of the NA's American Dissident Voices radio program, seems to have had a particular impact on Shoemake. The issue featured an article called "Separation or Annihilation," which exhorted readers to choose between "racial separation" and "annihilation" of whites. It stated that "attaining racial separation and avoiding racial annihilation is worth any cost. We should be willing to give up every material thing we own to achieve it." Along the margins of the essay, Shoemake scrawled: "I say: Separation or annihilation! Who is crazy? Me or you? We will see." Shoemake repeated the NA's slogan in a final, rambling letter obtained and published by the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion-Ledger. Shoemake wrote: "Black is the problem. It's in their genes. . . . They will never forgive whites for all the supposedly terrible treatment we did to them. The bottom line is: Separation or annihilation."