Early Life
He was born James Clayton Vaughn in Mobile, Alabama, to a poor family. He suffered severe physical abuse as a child. As early as high school, he had become interested first in evangelical Christianity, and Nazism, and later held memberships in both the National Socialist White People's Party and the Ku Klux Klan.
In 1976 at the age of 26, he changed his name to Joseph Paul Franklin. He selected Joseph Paul in honor of Paul Joseph Goebbels and Franklin after Benjamin Franklin.
Read more about this topic: Joseph Paul Franklin
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“He had long before indulged most unfavourable sentiments of our fellow-subjects in America. For, as early as 1769,... he had said of them, “Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)