Louis Ray Beam, Jr. is an American white supremacist, conspiracy theorist, and neo-fascist. After high school, he joined the United States Army and served as a helicopter door-gunner in Vietnam. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Once he returned to the United States, he became a Klansman, leading a maritime Louisiana KKK element and a Klan rally in Texas against government help to Vietnamese immigrant fishermen. He was also the leader of the Texas Emergency Reserve, a militia that was disbanded by the courts in 1982 as a result of a lawsuit filed under Texas anti-militia law by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).