There it was, the century-old ritual of the Ku Klux Klan unfolding at a segregation rally attended by hundreds of hooded, robed Kluxers. It was June 8, 1963, three days before then-Gov. George Wallace would stand in the doorway of the nearby University of Alabama in a futile attempt to block the court-ordered admission of two black students.

Perched at a microphone atop an old flatbed truck stood the nation’s most powerful Klan leader, Robert M. Bobby Shelton, imperial wizard of the United Klans of America, boasting 40,000 dues-paying members. If the present trend of encroachment of the nigger and the federal government on states’ rights continues, there’s going to be war, Shelton shouted.

It won’t be a war between the South and the North. It’ll be between the blacks and the whites. I’d just as soon have the war now as later.

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Today, as unofficial imperial wizard emeritus, Bobby Shelton concedes he lost the war. The Klan of yesteryear is dead, he said in a recent interview.

Times are changing. Society’s changing. You can’t have parades with Klansmen in robes anymore. You can’t have Klansmen riding horses through the streets anymore. The public won’t go along with it. The Klan is gone. It will never return.

In the 1960s, Shelton’s United Klans and a dozen other Klan groups had a combined membership of more than 100,000. The United Klans’ newspaper, The Fiery Cross, claimed a mailing list of 2 million. In those days, Shelton was highly visible. He could be found most days at his headquarters in a downtown Tuscaloosa office building. After hours, when he was not stealing away for one secret Klan mission or another, he was often seen whiling away the time in laconic conversation with cronies in the lobby of the old Stafford Hotel.

Now, Shelton is harder to find. His telephone number is unlisted. He does not advertise his whereabouts. But, with a little information and luck, it is possible to track him down in a neighboring town by traveling on a narrow country thoroughfare lined with lush evergreen thicketswhere occasional barbecue stands seem more plentiful than road markers. At last, off to the west, there is a glimpse of a small body of water known as Lake Sherwood.

Shelton, 65, lives in a long, low ranch-style house that backs up to the lake. On this day, he pulls up at the house in a pickup truck. Atop his head, in place of his long-familiar hood, is a black baseball cap bearing a stock-car-racing emblem. On his finger is a big gold Klan ring bearing a simulated drop of blood on its stone. Shelton seems chunkier than three decades ago and weaker. He underwent triple-bypass surgery 18 months ago.

It was six years ago that Shelton retired as imperial wizard and dissolved the United Klans. By that time, Klan members had been implicated in an array of notorious racial crimes such as the 1960s bombing of a black church in Birminghamwhich killed four young girlsand the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Lawsuits were draining Klan treasuries. Other right-wing organizationssuch as the militias, neo-Nazis and skinheadswere drawing away members. And one victory after ano ther for the civil rights movementwith no corresponding triumphs for segregationistssharply diminished Klan power. Today, it is estimated that overall Klan membership has dropped as low as 5,000.