Johnny Lee Clary

Johnny Lee Clary ( born June 18, 1959 in Martinez, California) is an evangelistic priest and former Ku Klux Klan leader. He joined for a re- awakening experience of Pentecostalism in, there was a preacher and priest preaches against racism and hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and the Aryan Nation. Clary was during his time with the Klan in the 1980s under the ring name Johnny Angel a well-known wrestler in the National Wrestling Federation ( NWF ).

Life

Youth

Johnny Lee Clary grew up in a racist household. His father taught him to racist language and encouraged him to treat blacks with disrespect. He also insisted that his son was only in churches with white members. His father, a devout Catholic excluded from the Ku Klux Klan, it did not bring in the Klan. It was his father who taught him the Klan closer and brought his father to shoot an African American brother.

In several interviews Clary stated that was coined his family life of violence and tragedy. His father killed himself when Clary was just eleven years old. Then Clary was passed from family to family until the age of 14 he hung around alone on the streets of East Los Angeles and soon met different gangs. At 14, he finally joined the Ku Klux Klan under David Duke.

Wrestling career

Together with his brother Terry Clary he was trained by Danny Hodge, a former NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion. Terry became "Sugar Boy", while his brother " Der Kommissar" ( named after the famous song Falco Der Kommissar ) occurred as a manager. While his brother acted as Buddy Savage, Johnny Lee Clary moved to the active wrestling business and called himself Johnny Angel. In 1986, he won the NWF / NWA Arkansas Heavyweight Title and went on for Kansas City All Star Wrestling. He then joined the NWF. There he had some appearances as a wrestler and later became manager of DC Drake and the Spanish wrestler Angel. He held from 1986 to 1988 the Arkansas Heavyweight and ended his career on July 30, 1988 in Grove, Oklahoma. In 2002 he returned to the ring and completed a match against Buddy Landel in North Carolina.

Ku Klux Klan

During his active wrestling career Clary grew up in Oklahoma to the Grand Dragon of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Already in the 1980s he began to doubt the Klan, but was put under pressure and remained in the Klan. For a time he was also the right hand of Tom Metzger ( White Aryan Resistance), which he referred to today as "one of the most brutal men who preached hatred ever ". He was even Imperial Wizard of the organization in 1989. During his ringleader of the Klan was hardly public, but Clary appeared on various talk shows for the Klan, as Oprah Winfrey and Morton Downey, Jr.

Exit

Clary left the Klan in 1990 and joined an evangelical church. A year later he began to preach. He appeared along with Wade Watts, who was previously the leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ( NAACP ) in Oklahoma. The two were still a year before bitter enemies.

Clary's transformation from a Klansman to an evangelistic preacher and activist against racism reached a wide public media, especially in the Christian scene in America and Australia. But also in the national TV reported including The Phil Donahue Show and Geraldo about Clary. In 2001 he participated in the book The Day I Met God, a collection of awakening experiences. In addition to Clary also the country singer Randy Travis is represented in the book.

Johnny Lee Clary is now an ordained minister under Jimmy Swaggart and lives in Baton Rouge, LA.

Publications

• Boys in the Hood. One Man's Journey from Hatred to Love. Pneuma Life Pub Inc 1996. ISBN 978-1562294489
• An Essay: Karen Covell, Victorya Michaels Rogers, Jim Covell: The Day I Met God: Extraordinary Stories of Life Changing Miracles. Multnomah, 2001 ISBN 1-57673-786-1