SC Man Who Apologized for Racist Past Dies

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http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/sc-man-apologized-racist-past-dies-18850004

SC Man Who Apologized for Racist Past Dies
By MARTHA WAGGONER Associated Press
ROCK HILL, S.C. March 31, 2013 (AP)

Elwin Wilson, the former Ku Klux Klan supporter who publicly apologized for years of violent racism, including the beating of a black Freedom Rider who went on to become a Georgia congressman, has died. He was 76.

Wilson died Thursday at a hospital in South Carolina after a bout with the flu and years of heart and lung problems, said his wife, Judy Wilson.

She told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Sunday that he was relieved he lived long enough to try to make amends for years of racial hatred. He detailed his deeds at length when he called The Herald of Rock Hill to apologize shortly after President Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009.

Among his actions were cross burnings; hanging a black doll in a noose at the end of his driveway; flinging cantaloupes at black men walking down Main Street; hurling a jack handle at a black boy jiggling the soda machine in his father's service station; and the brutal beating of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., at a Rock Hill bus station in 1961.