The Texas Emergency Reserve (TER) was a

militia A militia ( ) is a military or paramilitary force that comprises civilian members, as opposed to a professional standing army of regular, full-time military personnel. Militias may be raised in times of need to support regular troops or se ...

group which operated in

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

, and at its peak had close to 2,500 members. In 1981, a U.S. District Court judge ordered the TER to close its military training camp based on a Texas law that forbade private armies in the state. The Reserve had ties with the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...

, and with one of the Klan's prominent members, Louis Beam. The Reserve is most famous for an incident which took place in Seabrook, Texas on March 15, 1981, in which armed members of the organization held a demonstration on a boat in the waters around the city in an attempt to intimidate local Vietnamese fishermen who had been settled there by the government. In the course of the demonstration, an effigy of a Vietnamese fisherman was hung from the stern of the ship and threatening gestures were made to the onlooking Vietnamese fishermen and their families.

References

Ku Klux Klan Right-wing militia organizations in the United States 1981 disestablishments in Texas Defunct organizations based in Texas Anti-Vietnamese sentiment Anti-Asian sentiment in the United States {{Texas-stub White nationalism in Texas