| Cletis KKK Perkins 2006-07-27, 12:33 pm |
| XXXX Cross XXXXing this shit XXXX others want to read about XXXX this,
XXXX there are XXXX white only groups NIGGERS keep out!
Cletis.
Steve Linford wrote:
> ) is the name of a number of past and present fraternal organizations
> in the United States that have advocated white supremacy,
> anti-Semitism, racism, anti-Catholicism, and nativism. These
> organizations have often promoted the use of terrorism, violence and
> acts of intimidation such as cross burning to oppress African Americans
> and others. The Klan's first incarnation was in 1866. Founded by
> veterans of the Confederate Army, its main purpose was to resist
> Reconstruction, and it focused as much on intimidating "carpetbaggers"
> and "scalawags" as on putting down the freed slaves. It quickly adopted
> violent methods. A rapid reaction set in, with the Klan's leadership
> disowning it, and Southern elites seeing the Klan as an excuse for
> federal troops to continue their activities in the South. The
> organization was in decline from 1868 to 1870, and was destroyed in the
> early 1870s by President Ulysses S. Grant's vigorous action under the
> Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act).
> William Joseph Simmons founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.
> Enlarge
> William Joseph Simmons founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.
>
> The founding in 1915 of a second distinct group using the same name was
> inspired by the newfound power of the modern mass media, via the film
> The Birth of a Nation and inflammatory anti-Semitic newspaper accounts
> surrounding the trial and lynching of accused murderer Leo Frank. The
> second KKK was a formal membership organization, with a national and
> state structure, that paid thousands of men to organize local chapters
> all over the country. Millions joined, and at its peak in the 1920s the
> organization included about 15% of the nation's eligible population.[1]
> The second KKK typically preached racism, anti-Catholicism, nativism,
> and anti-Semitism, and some local groups took part in lynchings and
> other violent activities. Its popularity fell during the Great
> Depression, and membership fell further during World War II, due to
> scandals resulting from prominent members' crimes and support of the
> Nazis.
>
> The name "Ku Klux Klan" has since been used by many different unrelated
> groups, including many who opposed the Civil Rights Act and
> desegregation in the 1950s and '60s, with members of these groups
> eventually being convicted of murder and manslaughter in the deaths of
> Civil Rights workers and children (such as in the bombing of the 16th
> Street Baptist Church in Alabama). Today, dozens of organizations with
> chapters across the United States and other countries use all or part
> of the name in their titles, but their total membership is estimated to
> be only a few thousand. These groups, with operations in separated
> small local units, are considered extreme hate groups. The modern KKK
> has been repudiated by all mainstream media and political and religious
> leaders.
>
> The first Ku Klux Klan
> A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers,
> Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868
> Enlarge
> A cartoon threatening that the KKK would lynch carpetbaggers,
> Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868
> A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic party as
> continuations of the Confederacy
> Enlarge
> A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democratic party as
> continuations of the Confederacy
> Nathan Bedford Forrest
> Enlarge
> Nathan Bedford Forrest
>
> Creation
>
> The original Ku Klux Klan was created after the end of the American
> Civil War on December 24, 1865, by six educated, middle-class
> Confederate veterans[2] who were bored with postwar Pulaski, Tennessee.
> The name was constructed by combining the Greek "kylos" (circle) with
> "clan."[3] It was at first a humorous social club centering on
> practical jokes and hazing rituals[4] but soon spread into nearly every
> Southern state, launching a "reign of terror" against Republican
> leaders both black and white. Those assassinated during the campaign
> included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the
> South Carolina legislature, and several men who had served in
> constitutional conventions."[5]
>
> invading black homes at night to steal firearms. Some of these
> activities may have been modeled on previous Tennessee vigilante groups
> such as the Yellow Jackets and Redcaps.
>
> In an 1867 meeting in Nashville an effort was made to create a
> hierarchical organization with local chapters reporting to county
> leaders, counties reporting to districts, districts reporting to
> states, and states reporting to a national headquarters. The proposals,
> in a document called the "Prescript," were written by George Gordon, a
> former Confederate brigadier general. The Prescript included
> inspirational language about the goals of the Klan along with a list of
> questions to be asked of applicants for membership, which confirmed the
> focus on resisting Reconstruction and the Republican Party. The
> applicant was to be asked whether he was a Republican, a Union Army
> veteran, or a member of the Loyal League; whether he was "opposed to
> Negro equality both social and political;" and whether he was in favor
> of "a white man's government," "maintaining the constitutional rights
> of the South," "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men
> of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their
> rights," and "the inalienable right of self-preservation of the people
> against the exercise of arbitrary and unlicensed power."[6]
>
> Despite the work that came out of the 1867 meeting, the Prescript was
> never accepted by any of the local units. They continued to operate
> autonomously, and there never were county, district or state
> headquarters.
>
> According to one oral report, Gordon went to former slave trader and
> Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis and told him
> about the new organization, to which Forrest replied, "That's a good
> thing; that's a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in
> their place."[7] A few weeks later, Forrest was selected as Grand
> Wizard, the Klan's national leader. In later interviews, however,
> Forrest denied the leadership role and stated that he never had any
> effective control over the Klan cells.
>
> Activities
>
> The Klan sought to control the political and social status of the freed
> slaves. Specifically, it attempted to curb black education, economic
> advancement, voting rights, and the right to bear arms. However, the
> Klan's focus was not limited to African Americans; Southern Republicans
> also became the target of vicious intimidation tactics. The violence
> achieved its purpose. For example, in the April 1868 Georgia
> gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican
> Rufus Bullock, but in the November presidential election, the county
> cast only one vote for Republican candidate Ulysses Grant.[8]
>
> Klan intimidation was often targeted at schoolteachers and operatives
> of the federal Freedmen's Bureau. Black members of the Loyal Leagues
> were also the frequent targets of Klan raids. In a typical episode in
> Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry [9]
>
> One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at
> Cotton Gin Port in Monroe County, was visited ... between one and two
> o'clock at night in March, 1871, by about fifty men mounted and
> disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by
> a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress
> which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and
> lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on
> their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol
> in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men
> stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her
> "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said
> she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave
> a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.
>
> In other violence, Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a
> single county in Florida, and hundreds more in other counties.[10]
>
> An 1868 proclamation by Gordon[11] demonstrates several of the issues
> surrounding the Klan's violent activities.
>
> * Many blacks were veterans of the Union Army, and were armed. From
> the beginning, one of the original Klan's strongest focuses was on
> confiscating firearms from blacks. In the proclamation, Gordon warned
> that the Klan had been "fired into three times," and that if the blacks
> "make war upon us they must abide by the awful retribution that will
> follow."
> * Gordon also stated that the Klan was a peaceful organization.
> Such claims were common ways for the Klan to attempt to protect itself
> from prosecution. However, a federal grand jury in 1869 determined that
> the Klan was a "terrorist organization." Hundreds of indictments for
> crimes of violence and terrorism were issued. Klan members were
> prosecuted, and many fled jurisdiction, particularly in South
> Carolina.[12]
> * Gordon warned that some people had been carrying out violent acts
> in the name of the Klan. It was true that many people who had not been
> formally inducted into the Klan found the Klan's uniform to be a
> convenient way to hide their identities when carrying out acts of
> violence. However, it was also convenient for the higher levels of the
> organization to disclaim responsibility for such acts, and the
> secretive, decentralized nature of the Klan made membership fuzzy
> rather than clear-cut. In many ways the Klan was a military force
> serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and
> those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.[13]
>
> Wikisource has full text of:
> The 1868 interview with Forrest
>
> By this time, only two years after the Klan's creation, its activity
> was already beginning to decrease[14] and, as Gordon's proclamation
> shows, to become less political and more simply a way of avoiding
> prosecution for violence. Many influential southern Democrats were
> beginning to see it as a liability, an excuse for the federal
> government to retain its power over the South.[15] Georgian B.H. Hill
> went so far as to claim "that some of these outrages were actually
> perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."[16]
> Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi,
> September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.
> Enlarge
> Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in Tishomingo County, Mississippi,
> September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.
>
> In an 1868 newspaper interview,[17] Forrest boasted that the Klan was a
> nationwide organization of 550,000 men, and that although he himself
> was not a member, he was "in sympathy" and would "cooperate" with them,
> and could himself muster 40,000 Klansmen with five days' notice. He
> stated that the Klan did not see blacks as its enemy so much the Loyal
> Leagues, Republican state governments like Tennessee governor
> Brownlow's, and other carpetbaggers and scalawags. There was an element
> of truth to this claim, since the Klan did go after white members of
> these groups, especially the schoolteachers brought south by the
> Freedmen's Bureau, many of whom had before the war been abolitionists
> or active in the underground railroad. Many white southerners believed,
> for example, that blacks were voting for the Republican Party only
> because they had been hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. Black members of
> the Loyal Leagues were also the frequent targets of Klan raids. One
> Alabama newspaper editor declared that "The League is nothing more than
> a nigger Ku Klux Klan."[18]
>
> Decline and suppression
>
> The first Klan was never well organized. As a secret or "invisible"
> group, it had no membership rosters, no dues, no newspapers, no
> spokesmen, no chapters, no local officers, no state or national
> officials. Its popularity came from its reputation, which was greatly
> enhanced by its outlandish costumes and its wild and threatening
> theatrics. As historian Elaine Frantz Parsons discovered [19]:
>
> "Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack
> vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla
> bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers,
> coercive moral reformers, bored young men, sadists, rapists, white
> workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor
> discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and
> even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic
> whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in
> common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic,
> was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen."
>
> As has been previously stated, Forrest's national organization had
> little control over the local Klans, which were highly autonomous. One
> Klan official complained that his own "so-called 'Chief'-ship was
> purely nominal, I having not the least authority over the reckless
> young country boys who were most active in 'night-riding,' whipping,
> etc., all of which was outside of the intent and constitution of the
> Klan..." Forrest ordered the Klan to disband in 1869, stating that it
> was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic
> purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public
> peace."[20] Due to the national organization's lack of control, this
> proclamation was more a symptom of the Klan's decline than a cause of
> it. Historian Stanley Horn writes that "generally speaking, the Klan's
> end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration
> than a formal and decisive disbandment."[21] A reporter in Georgia
> wrote in January 1870 that "A true statement of the case is not that
> the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men
> who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux."[22]
> Gov. William Holden of North Carolina attempted to use the state
> militia against the Klan, and was voted out of office.
> Enlarge
> Gov. William Holden of North Carolina attempted to use the state
> militia against the Klan, and was voted out of office.
>
> Although the Klan was being used more and more often as a mask for
> nonpolitical crimes, state and local governments seldom acted against
> it. In lynching cases, whites were almost never indicted by all-white
> coroner's juries, and even when there was an indictment, all-white
> trial juries were extremely unlikely to vote for conviction. In many
> states, there were fears that the use of black militiamen would ignite
> a race war.[23] When Republican Governor of North Carolina William
> Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, the
> result was a backlash that lost him the upcoming election.[24]
>
> Despite this power, there was resistance to Klan terror. "Occasionally,
> organized groups successfully confronted the Klan. White Union Army
> veterans in mountainous Blount County, Alabama, organized 'the anti-Ku
> Klux,' which put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with
> reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black
> churches and schools. Armed blacks patrolled the streets of
> Bennettsville, South Carolina, to prevent Klan assaults."[25]
>
> There was also a national movement to crack down on the Klan. Even
> though many Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan
> even existed, or was a creation of nervous Republican governors in the
> South.[26] in January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican senator John Scott
> convened a committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan
> atrocities. Many Southern states had already passed anti-Klan
> legislation, and in February congressman (and former Union general)
> Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts (who was widely reviled by
> Southern whites) introduced federal legislation modeled on it.[27] The
> tide was turned in favor of the bill by the governor of South
> Carolina's appeal for federal troops, and by reports of a riot and
> massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi courthouse, which a black state
> representative escaped only by taking to the woods.[28]
> Benjamin Franklin Butler wrote the 1871 Klan Act.
> Enlarge
> Benjamin Franklin Butler wrote the 1871 Klan Act.
>
> In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation, the Ku
> Klux Klan Act, which was used along with the 1870 Force Act to enforce
> the civil rights provisions of the constitution. Under the Klan Act,
> federal troops were used rather than state militias, and Klansmen were
> prosecuted in federal court, where juries were often predominantly
> black.[29] Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned, and
> habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina. These
> efforts were so successful that the Klan was destroyed in South
> Carolina[30] and decimated throughout the rest of the country, where it
> had already been in decline for several years. Prosecutions were led by
> Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman. The tapering off of the federal
> government's actions under the Klan Act, ca. 1871-74, went along with
> the final extinction of the Klan,[31] although in some areas similar
> activities, including intimidation and murder of black voters,
> continued under the auspices of local organizations such as the White
> League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs.[32] Even though the
> Klan no longer existed, it had achieved many of its goals, such as
> denying voting rights to Southern blacks.
> Wikisource has full text of:
> The 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act
>
> However, it took several more years for all Klan elements to be
> destroyed. On Easter Sunday, 1873, the bloodiest single instance of
> racial violence in the Reconstruction era happened during the Colfax
> massacre. The Massacre began when black citizens fought back against
> the Klan and its allies in the White league. As Louisiana black teacher
> and legislator John G. Lewis later remarked. "They attempted (armed
> self-defense) in Colfax. The result was that on Easter Sunday of 1873,
> when the sun went down that night, it went down on the corpses of two
> hundred and eighty negroes."[33]
>
> In 1882, long after the end of the first Klan, the Supreme Court ruled
> in United States vs. Harris that the Klan Act was partially
> unconstitutional, saying that Congress's power under the Fourteenth
> Amendment did not extend to private conspiracies.[34] However, the
> Force Act and the Klan Act have been invoked in later civil rights
> conflicts, including the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and
> Schwerner[35]; the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo;[36] and Bray v.
> Alexandria Women's Health Clinic in 1991.
>
> The second Klan
>
> In the four and a half decades after the suppression of the first Ku
> Klux Klan, race relations in the United States remained very bad--the
> nadir of American race relations is often placed in this era and
> according to Tuskegee Institute the 1890s were the peak decade for
> lynchings.
>
> Creation
> Movie poster for The Birth of a Nation
> Enlarge
> Movie poster for The Birth of a Nation
>
> The founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 demonstrated the
> newfound power of modern mass media. The year saw three closely related
> events:
>
> * The film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and
> glorifying the first Klan.
> * Leo Frank, a Jewish man accused of the rape and murder of a young
> white girl named Mary Phagan, was lynched against a backdrop of media
> frenzy.
> * The second Ku Klux Klan was founded with a new anti-immigrant and
> anti-Semitic agenda. The bulk of the founders were from an organization
> calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan, and the new organization
> emulated the fictionalized version of the original Klan presented in
> The Birth of a Nation.
>
> An illustration from The Clansman: "Take dat f'um yo equal-"
> Enlarge
> An illustration from The Clansman: "Take dat f'um yo equal-"
>
> D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan,
> which was by then a fading memory. His film was based on the book and
> play The Clansman and the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas
> Dixon who said his purpose was "to revolutionize northern sentiment by
> a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience
> into a good Democrat!" The film created a nationwide craze for the
> Klan. At a preview in Los Angeles, actors dressed as Klansmen were
> hired to ride by as a promotional stunt, and real-life members of the
> newly reorganized Klan rode up and down the street at its later
> official premiere in Atlanta. In some cases, enthusiastic southern
> audiences fired their guns into the screen.[37]
>
> The film's popularity and influence were enhanced by a widely reported
> endorsement of its factual accuracy by historian and U.S. President
> Woodrow Wilson (see below, under Political Influence) as a favor to an
> old friend. Much of the modern Klan's iconography, including the
> standardized white costume and the burning cross, are imitations of the
> film, whose imagery was itself based on Dixon's romanticized concept of
> old Scotland as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott
> rather than on the Reconstruction Klan.
> A quote from Woodrow Wilson used in the film
> Enlarge
> A quote from Woodrow Wilson used in the film
>
> The Birth of a Nation includes extensive quotations from Woodrow
> Wilson's History of the American People,[38] e.g., "The white men were
> roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation ... until at last there
> had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of
> the South, to protect the Southern country." Wilson, on seeing the film
> in a special White House screening on February 18, 1915, exclaimed, "It
> is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it
> is all so terribly true."[39] Wilson's family had sympathized with the
> Confederacy during the Civil War, and cared for wounded Confederate
> soldiers at a church. When he was a young man, his party had vigorously
> opposed Reconstruction, and as president he resegregated the federal
> government for the first time since Reconstruction.
>
> Given the film's strong Democratic partisan message and Wilson's
> documented views on race and the Klan, it is not unreasonable to
> interpret the statement as supporting the Klan, and the word "regret"
> as referring to the film's depiction of Radical Republican
> Reconstruction. Later correspondence with Griffith, the film's
> director, confirms Wilson's enthusiasm about the film. Wilson's remarks
> were widely reported and immediately became controversial. Wilson tried
> to remain aloof from the controversy, but finally, on April 30, he
> issued a non-denial denial.[40] His endorsement of the film greatly
> enhanced its popularity and influence, and helped Griffith to defend it
> against legal attack by the NAACP; the film, in turn, was a major
> factor leading to the creation of the second Klan in the same year.
> The lynching of Leo Frank
> Enlarge
> The lynching of Leo Frank
>
> In the same year, an important event in the coalescence of the second
> Klan was the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager. In
> sensationalistic newspaper accounts, Frank was accused of fantastic
> sexual crimes and of the murder of a Mary Phagan, a girl employed at
> his factory. He was convicted of murder after a questionable trial in
> Georgia (the judge asked that Frank and his counsel not be present when
> the verdict was announced due to the violent mob of people surrounding
> the court house). His appeals failed (Supreme Court Justice Oliver
> Wendell Holmes dissented, condemning the intimidation of the jury as
> failing to provide due process of law). The governor then commuted his
> sentence to life imprisonment, but a mob calling itself the Knights of
> Mary Phagan kidnapped Frank from the prison farm and lynched him.
> Ironically, much of the evidence in the murder actually pointed to the
> factory's black janitor, Jim Conley, who the prosecution claimed only
> helped Frank to dispose of the body.
> The huge Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, site of the founding
> of the second Klan; work was begun in 1923 with funding mainly from the
> Klan, and was completed in 1970.
> Enlarge
> The huge Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain, site of the founding
> of the second Klan; work was begun in 1923 with funding mainly from the
> Klan, and was completed in 1970.
>
> For many southerners who believed Frank to be guilty, there was a
> strong resonance between the Frank trial and The Birth of a Nation,
> because they saw an analogy between Mary Phagan and the film's
> character Flora, a young virgin who throws herself off a cliff to avoid
> being raped by the black character Gus, described as "a renegade, a
> product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers."
>
> The Frank trial was used skillfully by Georgia politician and publisher
> Thomas E. Watson, the editor for The Jeffersonian magazine at the time
> and later a leader in the reorganization of the Klan who was later
> elected to the U.S. Senate. The new Klan was inaugurated in 1915 at a
> meeting led by William J. Simmons on top of Stone Mountain, and
> attended by aging members of the original Klan, along with members of
> the Knights of Mary Phagan.
>
> Simmons found inspiration for this second Klan in the original Klan's
> "Prescripts," written in 1867 by George Gordon (a former Confederate
> brigadier general) in an attempt to give the original Klan a sense of
> national organization. [41] The Prescript states as the Klan's
> purposes:[42]
>
> * First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless
> from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent
> and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the
> suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of the
> Confederate soldiers.
>
> * Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United
> States ...
>
> * Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional
> laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial
> except by their peers in conformity with the laws of the land.
>
> Membership
>
> Historians in recent years have obtained membership rosters of some
> local units and matched the names against city directory and local
> records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big city
> newspapers were unanimously hostile and often ridiculed the Klansmen as
> ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana [43] shows the
> stereotype was false:
>
> Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society:
> they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they
> significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be
> from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen
> were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively
> or even predominately as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious
> affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including
> those who did not belong to any church.
>
> The Klan was successful in recruiting throughout the country, but the
> membership turned over rapidly. Still, millions joined and at its peak
> in the 1920s the organization included about 15% of the nation's
> eligible population[44] and had chapters across the United States.
> There were even clans founded in Canada, most notably in Saskatchewan,
> where there was a large clan movement against Catholic immigrants.[45]
>
> This Klan was operated as a profit-making venture by its leaders, and
> participated in the boom in fraternal organizations at the time.
> Organizers signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees
> and bought KKK costumes. The organizer kept half the money and sent the
> rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with
> an area, he organized a huge rally, often with burning crosses and
> perhaps a ceremonial presentation of a Bible to a local Protestant
> minister. He left town with all the money. The local units operated
> like many fraternal organizations, occasionally bringing in speakers.
> The state and national officials had little or no control over the
> locals and rarely or never attempted to forge them into political
> activist groups.
>
> Activities
> The burning cross is a symbol used by the Klan to create terror. Cross
> burning is said to have been introduced by William J. Simmons, the
> founder of the second Klan in 1915.
> Enlarge
> The burning cross is a symbol used by the Klan to create terror. Cross
> burning is said to have been introduced by William J. Simmons, the
> founder of the second Klan in 1915.
>
> In keeping with its origins in the Leo Frank lynching, the reorganized
> Klan had a new anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant slant.
> This was consistent with the new Klan's greater success at recruiting
> in the U.S. Midwest than in the South. As in the Nazi party's
> propaganda in Germany, recruiters made effective use of the idea that
> prospective members' problems were caused by Blacks or by Jewish
> bankers, or by other such groups.
>
> The new Klan differed from the original one in that while the first
> Klan had been Democratic and Southern, this new Klan, although it still
> boasted members from the Democratic Party, was to a greater degree
> Republican and was influential throughout the United States, with major
> political influence on politicians in several states.
>
> In the 1920s and 1930s a faction of the Klan called the Black Legion
> was very active in the Midwestern U.S. Rather than wearing white robes,
> the Legion wore black uniforms reminiscent of pirates. The Black Legion
> was the most violent and zealous faction of the Klan, and were notable
> for targeting and assassinating communists and socialists.
>
> In addition, Klan groups also took part in lynchings, even going so far
> at to murder Black soldiers returning from World War I while they were
> still in their military uniforms.[46] The Klan warned Blacks that they
> must respect the rights of the white race "in whose country they are
> permitted to reside.[47]
> Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen," 1923
> Enlarge
> Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen," 1923
>
> Political influence
>
> The second Ku Klux Klan rose to great prominence and spread from the
> South into the Midwest and Northern states and even into Canada. At its
> peak, Klan membership exceeded 4 million and comprised 20% of the adult
> white male population in many broad geographic regions, as high as 40%
> in some areas. Most of the membership resided in Midwestern states.
>
> Through sympathetic elected officials, the KKK controlled the
> governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon in addition to
> some of the Southern legislatures. Klan influence was particularly
> strong in Indiana, where Republican Klansman Edward Jackson was elected
> governor in 1924, and the entire apparatus of state government was
> riddled with Klansmen. In another well-known example from the same
> year, the Klan decided to make Anaheim, California, into a model Klan
> city; it secretly took over the city council, but was voted out in a
> special recall election.
> Klansmen in Anaheim, California, 1924
> Enlarge
> Klansmen in Anaheim, California, 1924
>
> Klan delegates played a significant role at the pathsetting 1924
> Democratic National Convention in New York City, often called the
> "Klanbake Convention" as a result. The convention initially pitted
> Klan-backed candidate William McAdoo against New York Governor Al
> Smith, who drew the opposition of the group because of his Catholic
> faith. After days of stalemates and rioting, both candidates withdrew
> in favor of a compromise. Klan delegates defeated a Democratic Party
> platform plank that would have condemned their organization. On July 4,
> 1924, thousands of Klansmen converged on a nearby field in New Jersey
> where they participated in cross burnings, burned effigies of Smith,
> and celebrated their defeat of the platform plank.
>
> There is also evidence that in certain states, such as Alabama, the KKK
> was not a mere hate group and showed a genuine desire for political and
> social reform.[48] Because of the elite conservative political
> structure in Alabama, the state's Klansmen were among the foremost
> advocates of better public schools, effective prohibition enforcement,
> expanded road construction, and other "progressive" political measures.
> In many ways these progressive political goals, which benefited
> ordinary and lower class white people in the state, were the result of
> the Klan offering these same people their first chance to install their
> own political champions into office. [49]
>
> By 1925 the Klan was a powerful political force in the state, as
> powerful figures like J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo
> Black manipulated the KKK membership against the power of the "Big
> Mule" industrialists and Black Belt planters who had long dominated the
> state. Black was elected Senator in 1926 and became a leading supporter
> of the New Deal. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 1937, the revelation
> that he was a former Klansman shocked the country but he stayed on the
> Court. In 1926 Bibb Graves, a former chapter head, won the governor's
> office with KKK members' support. He led one of the most progressive
> administrations in the state's history, pushing for increased education
> funding, better public health, new highway construction, and pro-labor
> legislation.
>
> However, as a result of these political victories, KKK vigilantes,
> thinking they enjoyed governmental protection, launched a wave of
> physical terror across Alabama in 1927, targeting both blacks and
> whites. The Klan not only targeted people for violating racial norms
> but also for perceived moral lapses. In Birmingham, the Klan raided
> local brothels and roadhouses. In Troy, Alabama, the Klan reported to
> parents the names of teenagers they caught making out in cars. One
> local Klan group also "kidnapped a white divorcee and stripped her to
> her waist, tied her to a tree, and whipped her savagely." [50] The
> conservative elite counterattacked. Grover C. Hall, Sr., editor of the
> Montgomery Advertiser, began a series of editorials and articles
> attacking the Klan for their "racial and religious intolerance." Hall
> ended up winning a Pulitzer Prize for his crusade.[51] Other newspapers
> also kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan as violent and
> un-American. Sheriffs cracked down on Klan violence. The counterattack
> worked; the state voted for Catholic Al Smith for president in 1928,
> and the Klan's official membership in Alabama plunged to under six
> thousand by 1930.
>
> At the peak of the Klan's political power, a number of highly notable
> political figures in the U.S. and Canada joined the Klan or flirted
> with membership. The list includes two Supreme Court justices and,
> according to evidence which is in some cases contested, possibly two
> presidents.
>
> Main article: Notable Ku Klux Klan members in national politics
>
> D.C. Stephenson's prison mugshot, 1926
> Enlarge
> D.C. Stephenson's prison mugshot, 1926
>
> Decline
>
> The second Klan collapsed partly as a result of the backlash to their
> actions and partly as a result of a scandal involving David Stephenson
> (at the time a member of the Republican Party, after previous active
> membership in the Socialist Party and then in the Democratic Party),
> the Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states, who was
> convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer in a sensational
> trial (she was bitten so many times that one man who saw her described
> her condition as having been "chewed by a cannibal"). According to
> historian Leonard Moore, at the heart of the backlash to the Klan's
> actions and the resulting scandals was a leadership failure which
> caused the organization's collapse:[52]
>
> Stephenson and the other salesmen and office seekers who maneuvered
> for control of Indiana's Invisible Empire lacked both the ability and
> the desire to use the political system to carry out the Klan's stated
> goals. They were disinterested in, or perhaps even unaware of, grass
> roots concerns within the movement. For them, the Klan had been nothing
> more than a means for gaining wealth and power. These marginal men had
> risen to the top of the hooded order because, until it became a
> political force, the Klan had never required strong, dedicated
> leadership. More established and experienced politicians who endorsed
> the Klan, or who pursued some of the interests of their Klan
> constituents, also accomplished little. Factionalism created one
> barrier, but many politicians had supported the Klan simply out of
> expedience. When charges of crime and corruption began to taint the
> movement, those concerned about their political futures had even less
> reason to work on the Klan's behalf.
>
> As a result of these scandals, the Klan fell out of public favor in the
> 1930s and withdrew from political activity. Grand Wizard Hiram Evans
> sold the organization in 1939 to James Colescott, an Indiana
> veterinarian, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta obstetrician, but they were
> unable to staunch the exodus of members. The Klan's image was further
> damaged by Colescott's association with Nazi-sympathizer organizations,
> the Klan's involvement with the 1943 Detroit Race Riot, and efforts to
> disrupt the American war effort during World War II. In 1944 the IRS
> filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott
> was forced to dissolve the organization in 1944.
> Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
> in 1928.
> Enlarge
> Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
> in 1928.
>
> Folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan after World
> War II and provided information on the Klan to media and law
> enforcement agencies. He also provided Klan information, including
> secret code words, to the writers of the Superman radio program,
> resulting in a series of four episodes in which Superman took on the
> KKK. Kennedy's intention to strip away the Klan's mystique and
> trivialize the Klan's rituals and code words likely did have a negative
> impact on Klan recruiting and membership.[53] Kennedy eventually wrote
> a book based on his experiences, which became a bestseller during the
> 1950s and further damaged the Klan. [54]
>
> Later Ku Klux Klans
>
> After the breakup of the second Klan, the name "Ku Klux Klan" began to
> be used by a number of independent groups. The following table shows
> the change in the Klan's estimated membership over time.[55] (The years
> given in the table represent approximate time periods.)
> year membership
> 1920 4,000,000
> 1930 30,000
> 1970 2,000
> 2000 3,000
>
> Beginning in the 1950s, a large number of the individual Klan groups
> began to resist the civil rights movement. This resistance involved
> numerous acts of violence and intimidation. Among the more notorious
> events of this time period were:
> Anthony and Viola Liuzzo, 1949
> Enlarge
> Anthony and Viola Liuzzo, 1949
>
> * The assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi.
> In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of
> Evers' murder.
> * The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58,
> also in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was
> convicted of Dahmer's murder. Two other Klan members were indicted with
> Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other's indictment was
> dismissed.[56]
> * The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Alabama,
> which killed four children. Four Klansmen were named as suspects in
> they were not prosecuted until years later. The Klan members were
> Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank
> Cherry, convicted of murder in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect,
> Herman Cash, died before he was indicted.
> * The murder of Willie Edwards, Jr., in 1957. Edwards was forced by
> Klansmen to jump to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.[57]
> * The 1964 murders of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and
> Schwerner in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen
> was convicted of manslaughter in the murders.[58]
> * The 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo, a Southern-raised white mother
> of five who was visiting the South from her home in Detroit to attend a
> civil rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting
> Civil Rights Marchers.
>
> In addition to these murders, Klan groups also killed a number of
> others during this time period, with many of these acts going
> unreported. For example, in 1951 Harry T. Moore, a school-teacher and
> state director of the NAACP, died with his wife, Harriette, when their
> house was bombed. Even though an FBI investigation at the time turned
> up several suspects, no one was prosecuted in the case. "Forty years
> later, a former marine and Ku Klux Klansman told NAACP officials that
> he and other Klansmen had conspired with law enforcement officials to
> plan and carry out the murder.... According to a subsequent report from
> the Southern Regional Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black
> Southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some, like Harry
> Moore, were social activists whose work exposed them to danger, but
> most were either people who had refused to bow to racist convention, or
> were simply innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white
> terrorism."[59]
>
> However, while the post-war Klan groups were extremely violent, this
> was also the period that saw a successful push back against the KKK.
> For example, in a 1958 North Carolina incident, the Klan burned crosses
> at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans who had associated with
> white people, and then held a nighttime rally nearby, only to find
> themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbees. Gunfire was
> exchanged, and the Klan was routed.[60]
> Violence at a Klan march in Mobile, Alabama, 1977
> Enlarge
> Violence at a Klan march in Mobile, Alabama, 1977
>
> In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and
> disrupt the Klan. COINTELPRO occupied a curiously ambiguous position in
> the civil rights movement, since it used its tactics of infiltration,
> disinformation, and violence against violent far-left and far-right
> groups such as the Klan and the Weathermen, but simultaneously against
> peaceful organizations such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern
> Christian Leadership Conference. This ambivalence was shown
> dramatically in the case of the murder of Liuzzo, who was shot on the
> road by four Klansmen in a car, of whom one was an FBI informant. After
> she was murdered, the FBI spread false rumors that she was a communist,
> and that she had abandoned her children in order to have sex with black
> civil rights workers. Regardless of the FBI's ambivalence, Jerry
> Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the Klan in 1979,
> reported that COINTELPRO's efforts had been highly successful in
> disrupting the Klan. Rival Klan factions both accused each other's
> leaders of being FBI informants, and one leader, Bill Wilkinson of the
> Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was in fact later
> revealed to have been working for the FBI.[61]
>
> Once the century-long struggle over black voting rights in the South
> had ended, the Klans shifted their focus to other issues, including
> affirmative action, immigration, and especially busing ordered by the
> courts in order to desegregate schools. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to
> destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan, and charismatic Klansman
> David Duke was active in South Boston during the school busing crisis
> of 1974. Duke also made efforts to update its image, urging Klansmen to
> "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." Duke was
> leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 until he resigned
> from the Klan in 1978. In 1980, he formed the National Association for
> the Advancement of White People, a white nationalist political
> organization. He was elected to the Louisiana State House of
> Representatives in 1989 as a Republican, even though the party threw
> its support to a different Republican candidate.
> An inflammatory cartoon that was used as evidence in the civil trial
> resulting from Michael Donald's murder
> Enlarge
> An inflammatory cartoon that was used as evidence in the civil trial
> resulting from Michael Donald's murder
>
> In this period, resistance to the Klan became more common. Thompson
> reported that in his brief membership in the Klan, his truck was shot
> at, he was yelled at by black children, and a Klan rally that he
> attended turned into a riot when black soldiers on an adjacent military
> base taunted the Klansmen. Attempts by the Klan to march were often met
> with counterprotests, and violence sometimes ensued.
> The lynching of Michael Donald, 1981
> Enlarge
> The lynching of Michael Donald, 1981
>
> Vulnerability to lawsuits has encouraged the trend away from central
> organization, as when, for example, the lynching of Michael Donald in
> 1981 led to a civil suit that bankrupted one Klan group, the United
> Klans of America[62]. Thompson related how many Klan leaders who
> appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about
> a series of multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought against them as
> individuals by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a result of a
> shootout between Klansmen and a group of African Americans, and
> curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense
> against the suits. Lawsuits were also used as tools by the Klan,
> however, and the paperback publication of Thompson's book was canceled
> because of a libel suit brought by the Klan.
>
> Klan activity has also been diverted into other racist groups and
> movements, such as Christian Identity, neo-Nazi groups, and racist
> subgroups of the skinheads.
>
> The Ku Klux Klan today
> KKK members displaying the Nazi salute and advocating Holocaust denial
> Enlarge
> KKK members displaying the Nazi salute and advocating Holocaust denial
>
> Although often still discussed in contemporary American politics as
> representing the quintessential "fringe" end of the far-right spectrum,
> today the group only exists in the form of a number of very isolated,
> scattered "supporters" that probably do not number more than a few
> thousand. In a 2002 report on "Extremism in America", the Jewish
> Anti-Defamation League wrote "Today, there is no such thing as the Ku
> Klux Klan. Fragmentation, decentralization and decline have continued
> unabated." However, they also noted that the "need for justification
> runs deep in the disaffected and is unlikely to disappear, regardless
> of how low the Klan's fortunes eventually sink."
>
> Today the only known former member of the Klan to hold a federal office
> in the United States is Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West
> Virginia, who says he "deeply regrets" joining the Klan over half a
> century ago, when he was about 24 years old. There are currently no
> known members of the Klan who also hold a Federal office.
>
> Some of the larger KKK organizations currently in operation include:
>
> * Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan[63]
> * Imperial Klans of America
> * Knights of the White Kamelia
> * Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by National Director Pastor
> Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas. Claims to be biggest Klan
> organization in America today. It refers to itself as the "sixth era
> Klan" and continues to be a racist group.
>
> There are also a number of smaller organizations using the Klan
> name.[64]
>
> As of 2005, there were an estimated 3,000 Klan members, divided among
> 158 chapters of a variety of splinter organizations, about two-thirds
> of which were in former Confederate states. The other third are
> primarily in the Midwest. [65][66][67]
>
> The ACLU has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in
> defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies,
> parades, and marches, and their right to field political candidates.
>
> In a July 2005 incident, a Hispanic man's house was burned down in
> Hamilton, Ohio, after accusations that he sexually assaulted a
> nine-year-old white girl. Klan members in Klan robes showed up
> afterward to distribute pamphlets. In May 2006, a Ku Klux Klan group
> led an anti-immigration march in Russellville, Alabama.[68]
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