Barely three weeks after Americans elected their first black president amid a wave of interracial good feeling, a spasm of noose hangings, racist graffiti, vandalism and death threats is convulsing dozens of towns across the country as white extremists lash out at the new political order.

Even more ominously, America’s most potent symbol of racial hatred – the Ku Klux Klan – has begun to reassert itself, emerging from decades of disorganization and obscurity in a spate of recent violence. [video]

A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages on Friday to a Kentucky teenager who was severely beaten by members of a Ku Klux Klan group because they mistakenly thought he was an illegal Latino immigrant, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

The verdict included $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages against “Imperial Wizard” Ron Edwards.

The law center said before the verdict that a large damage award could break the Klan group, allowing the teen and the law center to seize the group’s assets, including its headquarters, a 15-acre compound in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. [video]

Eight people were arrested Tuesday, one on a charge of murder, in connection with the fatal shooting of a woman at a remote Louisiana campsite during what police say was an initiation ceremony for the Ku Klux Klan.

The group’s leader, identified as Chuck Foster, 44, was charged with second-degree murder. The others were charged with lesser crimes related to trying to conceal the killing, Bonnett said.