A former KKK member is running for mayor of Biloxi, MS. He still believes in segregation
A former member of the Ku Klux Klan is running for mayor of Biloxi.
Jordan N. Gollub has qualified to run as a Republican. The only other candidate to qualify so far is incumbent Mayor A.M. “FoFo” Gilich, with a qualifying deadline of Jan. 31 and elections set for spring.
If elected, Gollub said that he hopes to return the old Mississippi state flag with Confederate battle emblem to Biloxi through city proclamation, much as President Donald Trump has done with an executive order to end birthright citizenship.
He also wants to rename Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard downtown because, he said, King was “no good” and not from Mississippi. He said he’s also not a big fan of Biloxi’s casinos because they are “ugly looking.”
Gollub said he decided to run after two “big, young Black guys” on a private security team prevented him from taking a direct route to the post office during a 2022 Blues Festival downtown. He said city police, not private security, should have been working the traffic detail and he believes that he might have been singled out because he is white.
“I thought they were harassing me,” Gollub said. “It may or may not have been racially motivated.”
The Police Department said private security can’t shut down city streets and, if they did, the department would have corrected the situation if it came to their attention.
The Ku Klux Klan years
Gollub has run for office before. He ran twice for mayor of Poplarville, where he previously lived, but doesn’t remember the dates. In 1996 as an independent candidate for the House of Representatives, receiving about one-quarter of one percent of the general election vote as an independent candidate in what was then the 5th District.
Gollub, 66, was also an active Klansman in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, news accounts say. He doesn’t try to hide his past, which is searchable online. Instead, he says that he no longer identifies as a klansman but supports some white supremacist beliefs, including segregation. He also thinks interracial marriages should be banned.
“I don’t think America was ever meant to be a melting pot,” he told the Sun Herald. “I don’t think the answer is forced integration everywhere.
“I am for separation of the races in most cases.”
Gollub was raised Jewish in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he said, but converted to Christianity in college.
Gollub said he worked from 1981-1984 as an associate editor of a klan newspaper under Bill Wilkinson, who had split with David Duke in Louisiana and formed his own group, Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Gollub said that he used the name John Bell Hood, a Confederate general, because his own last name sounded too ethnic.
He was found out, anyway, and booted from the organization because he was Jewish, garnering national headlines in 1989. In a 2002 report, The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, reported, “Gollub has spent the last years trying to get a new Klan group going, with most of his efforts ending in disappointment.”
Settling in Biloxi
The Associated Press reported in 1999 that Gollub was substitute teaching in Mississippi schools, and had been for two years, while serving as grand dragon of a KKK group based in Carthage and organizing poorly attended marches. In the article, he was quoted as saying that his private life was nobody’s business.
He was still trying to organize KKK marches in 2002, according to a Sun Herald article about a proposed Biloxi march. He has since switched his loyalties from the KKK to the First Amendment, saying Conservative Christians such as Trump supporter Charlie Kirk are more successful with their messages.
Gollub said he supported Trump as president, and agrees with many of his positions. But, he added, “I don’t like his whole cult personality. It’s like Trump can do anything and they would follow him.”
Gollub lives in east Biloxi, in a predominantly Black neighborhood. He said that was not his choice, but a home owned by his family’s trust was available. He’s had health problems and is retired.
“I’m for treating everybody fair,” he said, “but I’m not for people running over my heritage or my beliefs.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
