That summer there were numerous violent confrontations. McKeithen established a Biracial Commission on Human Rights, Relations, and Responsibilities to work on easing tensions and managing transition. He appointed Israel Augustine and Ernest "Dutch" Morial as Louisiana's first African-American judges since Reconstruction. But during 1967 disturbances, McKeithen took a hard line, threatening to have authorities shoot looters and rioters. McKeithen later became a national spokesperson for the opposition to busing school children to achieve integration. John Martzell, a New Orleans attorney and executive secretary of the State Human Relations Commission from 1966 to 1972, said that McKeithen's efforts to promote racial harmony remained little known. In 1969, McKeithen sent 250 Louisiana National Guard troops into Baton Rouge to support a curfew declared by Mayor-President, W. W. Dumas. He was trying to suppress rioting that had broken out after police fatally shot a fleeing 17-year-old black suspect. The officer was temporarily suspended from the force, as was customary. Dumas said he would fully support police in such instances. Former Governor George Wallace of Alabama urged McKeithen in 1967 to take the leadership against the civil rights movement, but he declined, having told Wallace, "I just don't feel as strongly about it as you do, George." In April 2016, nearly half a century after events, "The Monroe News-Star" reported that McKeithen in the summer of 1965 arranged for $10,000 of private funds to be sent to Bogalusa to be divided equally between leaders of the Ku Klux Klan leadership and the Deacons for Defense, to keep peace during racial demonstrations in Washington Parish. McKeithen's counselor, Gus Weill, said that the payments "bought peace". The payments were made through the now defunct Fountain Insurance Agency in Baton Rouge, the owner of which was a member of the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission. McKeithen supporters helped raise the funds for this purpose. The unnamed agent mailed "insurance checks" to the recipients' homes and was later reimbursed by the Sovereignty Commission, since disbanded. The late James C. Kelly, a police chief in Monroe known for his opposition to the KKK, was found to have been a conduit for other payments to Klan leaders. The Federal Bureau of Investigation noted that rank-and-file Klansmen were at first unaware of the payments to their leaders, but they began to question the loyalty of the leadership after learning that Chief Kelly had paid $200 to Houston Morris, a leader in Monroe.