In March 1959, George Lincoln Rockwell (1918–1967), an American politician and neo-Nazi, founded the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), a name selected to denote opposition to state ownership of property. In December 1959, the organization was renamed the American Nazi Party (later the National Socialist White People’s Party, NSWPP), and its headquarters was relocated to 928 North Randolph Street in Arlington, which also became Rockwell’s home.
In the 1960s, Rockwell attempted to draw attention to his cause by starting a small record label, named Hatenanny Records. The name was based on the word “hootenanny,” a term given to folk music performances.
When the Freedom Riders drove their campaign for the desegregation of bus stations in the Deep South, Rockwell secured a Volkswagen van and decorated it with slogans supporting white supremacy, dubbing it the “Hate Bus” and driving it to speaking engagements and party rallies.
Led by party founder George Lincoln Rockwell, this caravan of un-merry pranksters planned to traverse the South harassing Freedom Riders and spreading an anti-miscegenation message. The decorated exterior of their blue-and-white Volkswagen read, “Lincoln Rockwell’s Hate Bus: we do hate race mixing, we hate Jew-communism.”
But all would not go as planned for these Aryan ambassadors. Upon arriving in New Orleans on May 23, 1961, the hate bus was immediately tailed by local police intent on stopping the Nazis’ planned picket of a theater screening the 1960 Zionist epic, Exodus. All 10 of the haters were arrested and jailed for criminal mischief. Their bus was later impounded by the FBI.
Rockwell, whose party was founded with the aim to “aggravate them so bad… that they will have to notice us,” wasn’t just pissing off liberal activists and Holocaust survivors. Six years after his trip to Louisiana, Rockwell was assassinated in the parking lot of an Arlington laundromat. The gunman was John Patler, a disgruntled subordinate and the former driver of the hate bus.
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| Members of the American Nazi Party, including driver John Patler (second from left), pose with their “hate bus” in in Montgomery, Alabama, en route to New Orleans in May 1961. (Joe Scherschel/Life) |
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| (Joe Scherschel/Life) |
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| (Joe Scherschel/Life) |
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| (Joe Scherschel/Life) |
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| (Joe Scherschel/Life) |
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