Editing Joseph Paul Franklin (section)

==Background==
James Clayton Vaughn Jr. was born in Mobile, Alabama, on April 13, 1950, the eldest son of James Clayton Vaughn Sr. and Helen Rau Vaughn, and brother to Carolyn, Marilyn and Gordon. Vaughn's father was an epileptic [[World War II]] veteran and butcher who left the family when Vaughn was aged eight. His sister Carolyn recalled, "Whenever [Vaughn Sr.] came to visit he'd beat us," and their mother had Vaughn Sr. jailed twice for public drunkenness. Vaughn's mother was described by a family friend as "a full-blooded German, a real strict, perfectionist lady. I never saw her beat any of [her children], but they told me stories." Vaughn later stated that he was rarely given enough to eat and suffered severe [[Child Abuse|physical abuse]] as a child, and that his mother "didn't care about [him and his siblings]". He claimed that these factors stunted his emotional development, and said he had "always been least ten years or more behind other people in their maturity."

As early as high school, Vaughn developed an interest in evangelical Christianity, then in [[Nazi Party|Nazism]], and later held memberships in both the National Socialist White People's Party and the Ku Klux Klan. He eventually changed his name to "Joseph Paul Franklin" in honor of [[Joseph Goebbels|Paul Joseph Goebbels]] and Benjamin Franklin. In the 1960s, Franklin was inspired to start a [[race war]] after reading [[Adolf Hitler]]'s ''Mein Kampf''. "I've never felt that way about any other book that I read," he would reflect later. "It was something weird about that book.