President of the Ku Klax Klan Pastor Thomas Robb with his wife Muriel Robb. Photo / Supplied.

President of the Ku Klax Klan Pastor Thomas Robb with his wife Muriel Robb. Photo / Supplied.

Pastor Thomas Robb, the softly spoken 62-year-old leader of one of the largest Ku Klux Klan organisations remaining in the United States, admits that it has been a difficult past couple of weeks.

He has been bed-ridden with flu - ever since he was a child growing up in the cold climate of Detroit, Michigan, his illnesses have lingered longer than normal.

And Robb's work, which consists of unifying the "global minority of white people", has also kept him extremely busy. "Someone wrote me an email just yesterday," Robb says. "They wanted to tell me that I was the most evil person in the world."

Despite the grand scale of his mission, Robb leads his chapter of the Klan from rather modest surroundings in Zinc, a remote northern Arkansas settlement.

Like many of the countless small towns that dot America's southern states, Zinc is undersized (76 residents, according to the 2000 census) and has a largely white population. Nearly 40 per cent of its inhabitants live below the poverty line.

Zinc lies near the invisible border that divides the northern and southern states of the US, the Mason-Dixon Line, which separates Arkansas from the Midwest confines of Missouri.

What makes Zinc different is that it is home to the headquarters of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The Klan, once the most feared racist group in America, still has a small yet active membership throughout the American south and mid-west - estimates put national figures at 6000 to 8000 Klansmen.

Robb credits the internet, as well as the "average American's" concern about illegal immigration, for the sustained interest in the Klan.

"A young father who is worried about the flood of immigrants into the US can go to his computer and find us," Robb says. "We are right there for him - www.kkk.com."

The second time we speak, Robb begins by explaining some common Klan terminology and traditions. "Firstly, it's not called burning the cross, it's called lighting the cross," Robb says.

"And it's not necessarily just a symbol of the Klan - it shows the power of Jesus Christ."

Robb explains that what became widely popularised as a symbol of Klan terror is not restricted to the lawns of the Klan's enemies.

"If you visit a local Methodist church here [in the South], or even a Presbyterian church, you'll see representations of crosses with flames at the base. The firing of the cross is a Christian ideal."