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MOUNT HOLLY (MCT) — Even in later years, when the KKK could barely muster enough Klansmen to hold a march, Virgil Griffin was defiant.

In interviews over the years, he remained stubbornly unrepentant for cross burnings, his white supremacist views — and his part in a 1979 "Death to the Klan" rally in Greensboro where five Communist labor organizers were fatally shot.

Four years ago, he told a group studying the shootings that he never would have gone to that rally had he not been goaded.

"They told us to 'come out from under our rocks.' I don't hide under no rock for nobody," said Griffin, imperial wizard of the Mount Holly-based Cleveland Knights of the KKK.

Wednesday, Virgil Lee Griffin Sr. of Mount Holly died at Gaston Memorial Hospital, surrounded by family. He was 64.

He had been ill, but his obituary didn't say what killed him. Yet by the late 1990s, he'd had two heart attacks, bypass surgery and a ruptured disc in his neck.

The Klan brought him notoriety. He could have been a nobody pumping gas in Mount Holly had he and friends not formed their own Klan klavern and given themselves grandiose titles like imperial wizard and cyclops.

Few groups inspired as much disgust as the Klan, with its history of hatred toward blacks, Jews, Catholics, immigrants and Communists.

There's not much cross burning these days, but memories of Klan activities are still fresh in the Carolinas.

By the 1990s, the Klan that Griffin had been a part of since his 20s had seen its numbers dwindle. Still, he and other Klan officials were in the midst of rebuilding, exploiting fears over illegal immigrants — their new punching bags, according to agencies that track hate groups.

"People are tired of this mess," Griffin told the Observer in 2007. "The illegal immigrants are taking this country over."

The message was the same in the 1960s and '70s; the targets different. In 1965, Griffin and another man were convicted of posing as detectives investigating a racial incident at a school. In 1980, Griffin was charged in a cross burning in Lincoln County.

But it was the November 1979 rally in Greensboro held by members of the Communist Workers Party where Griffin won his biggest headlines.

The shootings came months after growing tension.The activists had worked for years organizing labor at N.C. textile plants. Three of the dead were doctors who'd taken mill jobs to organize workers.

Their activities sparked remnants of the Klan — out of sight for much of the 1970s — to rise up. Weeks before the rally, the activists admitted to making mistakes. In July, they interrupted a showing of the pro-Klan film "Birth of a Nation," and burned a Confederate flag at a rally in China Grove in Rowan County.

Klansmen vowed revenge.

In October, the activists began to bait the Klan with posters. Griffin said they couldn't back down. He said he told his members to go without robes and guns.

"We had just planned to fly our American flags across the street to show them we love our country," he said.

On the morning of the shootings, Griffin's Klansmen and American Nazis, in a nine-vehicle caravan, veered from the destination and drove through the rally. They hadn't planned to stop, Griffin said. But demonstrators began to beat on their cars with sticks and clubs.

"Someone fired a shot — and all hell broke loose," Griffin said. "We had every right to be drive down that street with nobody touching the cars. I didn't come to shoot or kill nobody."

After a three-month trial, Griffin and other Klansmen were acquitted.

At a forum in 2005, Griffin was asked why no Klansmen were killed in the crossfire: "My guys were deer hunters," he said. "They hunt for food. Maybe God guided the bullets."