Beulah Mae Donald, who won a $7 million judgment against the Ku Klux Klan for the beating death of her son, was remembered by the attorney who handled the case as a ``brave and courageous mother.'' Mrs. Donald died of natural causes Saturday at a Mobile hospital. She was 67. ``She'll forever have a place in history as the woman who beat the Klan,'' said Morris Dees, who was the chief attorney for the black family. Mrs. Donald's son, Michael, was strangled and fatally beaten in Baldwin County and his body was found hanged from a tree in a Mobile neighborhood. Two Ku Klux Klansmen were convicted in the case. On Feb. 12, 1987, a jury awarded the family a $7 million judgment against the Klan. The United Klans of America's national headquarters building in Tuscaloosa, its only asset, was later signed over to the estate of Michael Donald and sold for an undisclosed sum. It had been appraised at between $150,000 and $200,000. ``I just think she was a brave and courageous mother whose love for her son ensured that he did not die in vain,'' said Dees, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery. Last December, Mrs. Donald was named one of Ms. Magazine's 1987 Women of the Year. Shortly after receiving the honor, Mrs. Donald said she never sought revenge. ``I wanted to know who all really killed my child,'' she said. ``I wasn't even thinking about the money. If I hadn't gotten a cent, it wouldn't have mattered. I wanted to know how and why they did it.'' He 19-year-old son was kidnapped from a Mobile street in March 1981 and taken to a rural area where he was beaten and choked. His throat was cut and his body was hanged from a tree. Klansmen Henry Francis Hays has been sentenced to die in Alabama's electric chair and James L. ``Tiger'' Knowles is serving a life sentence in a federal prison. He pleaded guilty to violating Donald's civil rights. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Hays' appeal of his capital murder conviction in February. In February, a mistrial was declared in the trial of two alleged accomplices, Bennie Jack Hays and Benjamin Franklin Cox, after the former collapsed in court. Mrs. Donald survivors include four daughters: Mary A. Houston of Jackson, Miss.; Cecelia Perry; Cynthia Mitchell; and Betty J. Wyatt, all of Mobile; and two sons, Stanley Donald of Biloxi, Miss.; and Leo Donald of Detroit, Mich. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
