Clark Reid Martell (born December 23, 1959) is an Americanwhite supremacist and the former leader ofChicago Area SkinHeads (CASH), which was founded in 1985 by six skinheads under his leadership.[1][2] This was the first organizedneo-Naziwhite power skinhead group in the United States. The group was also called Romantic Violence (a name shared with a rock band fronted by Martell),[3] and was the first US distributor of records and tapes from the English bandSkrewdriver.
TheSouthern Poverty Law Center has described his activity in the mid-1980s as making him "a skinhead Johnny Appleseed" for recruitment to the racist skinhead movement.[4] Among the members he recruited were his successor as CASH leader - and later anti-extremism activist -Christian Picciolini.[5] Martell had formerly been a member of theAmerican Nazi Party, and in 1979 he received a four year prison sentence for the attempted firebombing of a Hispanic family's home inCicero, Illinois, serving 30 months.[3]
In June 1989, Martell was sentenced to 11 years in prison for beating up a 20-year-old woman who quit a neo-Nazi group and allegedly had black friends. He drew a swastika and the words "RACE TRAITOR" on the wall using her blood.[6][3] While in prison, he appeared in an episode ofThe Oprah Winfrey Show via phone connection, stating his views on white nationalism.[7] Martell was released from prison in 1992 after a different conviction contributing to his sentence was overturned.[3]
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