Elizabeth Rickey  Elizabeth "Beth" Rickey (June 11, 1956 - September 12, 2009) was a leader in the anti-racism and anti-discrimination movement. Her efforts specifically focused on exposing former neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Elizabeth Rickey was born on June 11, 1956 in Lafayette, Louisiana to Horace B. Rickey Jr., an army lieutenant colonel in World War II, and his wife Flora Ann Womback. She had a brother named Robert and her uncle, Branch Rickey, was the first to sign an African American baseball player, Jackie Robinson, to major league baseball. The family was traditionally Republican and Rickey followed their beliefs. Her family did not agree with racism or racist ideologies. She attended what is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she received a Master's Degree in government, and Tulane University, where she earned a PhD in political science. Rickey's father was a member of the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee, and in 1988 Rickey also become a member. After hearing David Duke speak on several occasions and one journalist familiar with Rickey noted that she recognized “that Duke was both more sinister than ordinary redneck racists and far more politically savvy." She felt that when he spoke, people could not always sense the racism in his words and as such, would not be able to see his true nature and danger. After the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism was formed in March 1990 by Lance Hill, Lawrence N. Powell, Jane Buchsbaum, and James Stovall, a minister from Baton Rouge, Rickey quickly joined. Rickey strongly disagreed with David Duke and viewed him as a sinister person. She stated that he was "a racial ideologue of a type that I have yet to encounter in my entire lifetime," and stated that he was worse than George Wallace and that he is "truly a type that one would find in the 1930's in Germany. He sees himself at this Messiah, that he's going to save the white race". Duke described his time in the Ku Klux Klan as a "youthful indiscretion" and after he was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives as a Republican, Rickey began following Duke and recording what he stated at public gatherings. She began with a gathering of the Populist Party that was attended by Art Jones, whose hand Duke shook, and by people openly identifying as skinheads and members of the Ku Klux Klan. During his speech he described his win as a "victory for the white majority" and when Rickey's recording was later aired, Duke described the meeting as a conservative, anti-tax rally.