Here is Wiki on the Second Klan which was founded in 1915 in the
aftermath of the Frank case. The article establishes that the Second
Klan was formally anti-Semitic. That anti-Semitism is mentioned at
least four times in the article.
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The second Klan 1915–1944
Movie poster for The Birth of a Nation
Creation
The second Klan rose in response to urbanization and
industrialization, massive immigration from eastern and southern
Europe, the Great Migration of African Americans to the North, and the
migration of African Americans and whites from rural areas to Southern
cities. The Klan grew most rapidly in cities which had high growth
rates between 1910 and 1930, such as Detroit, Memphis, Dayton,
Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston.[50]
Its growth was also affected by mobilization for World War I and
postwar tensions, especially in the cities where strangers came up
against each other more often. Southern whites resented the arming of
black soldiers. Black veterans did not want to go back to second class
status.[51]
This Klan modeled itself after other fraternal organizations created
in the early decades of the 20th century. 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
presented a Bible to a local Protestant minister. He then left town
with the money. The local units operated like many fraternal
organizations and occasionally brought in speakers. State and national
officials had little or no control over the locals and rarely
attempted to forge political activist groups.[citation needed] Stanley
Horn, a Southern historian sympathetic to the first Klan, was careful
in an oral interview to distinguish it from the later "spurious Ku
Klux organization which was in ill-repute — and, of course, had no
connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days".[52]
An illustration from The Clansman: "Take dat f'um yo equal—"
The accumulating social tensions that resulted from rapid change were
sparked by events in 1915:
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 tried, convicted and lynched near
Atlanta against a backdrop of media frenzy.
The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in Atlanta with a new anti-
immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Semitic agenda. The bulk of the
founders were from an Atlanta-area organization calling itself the
Knights of Mary Phagan that had organized around the Frank trial. The
new organization emulated the fictionalized version of the Klan
presented in The Birth of a Nation.
Director D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original
Klan. His film was based on the book and play The Clansman and the
book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon. Dixon 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 Klan craze. At the official premier in
Atlanta, members of the Klan rode up and down the street in front of
the theater.[53]
Much of the modern Klan's iconography, including the standardized
white costume and the lighted cross, are derived from the film. Its
imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old Scotland, as
portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir Walter Scott. The film's
influence and popularity were enhanced by a widely reported
endorsement by historian and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.
President Wilson
The Birth of a Nation included extensive quotations from Woodrow
Wilson's History of the American People, as if to give it a stronger
basis. After seeing the film in a special White House screening,
Wilson allegedly said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and
my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."[54] Given Wilson's
views on race and the Klan, his statement was taken as supportive of
the film. In later correspondence with Griffith, Wilson confirmed his
enthusiasm. Wilson's remarks immediately became controversial. Wilson
tried to remain aloof, but finally, on April 30, he issued a non-
denial denial.[55] Historian Arthur Link quotes Wilson's aide, Joseph
Tumulty: "the President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play
before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation
of it."[56]
Another event that influenced the Klan was sensational coverage of the
trial, conviction and lynching of a Jewish factory manager from
Atlanta named Leo Frank. In lurid newspaper accounts, Frank was
accused of the rape and murder of Mary Phagan, a girl employed at his
factory.
The lynching of Leo Frank
After a trial in Georgia in which a mob daily surrounded the
courtroom, Frank was convicted. Because of the presence of the armed
mob, the judge asked Frank and his counsel to stay away when the
verdict was announced. Frank's appeals failed. Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented from other justices and condemned the
mob's intimidation of the jury as the court's failing to provide due
process to the defendant. After the governor commuted Frank's sentence
to life imprisonment, a mob calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan
kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him.
The Frank trial was used skillfully by Georgia politician and
publisher Thomas E. Watson, the editor for The Jeffersonian magazine.
He was a leader in recreating the Klan and 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. A few aging members of
the original Klan attended, along with members of the self-named
Knights of Mary Phagan.
Simmons stated that he had been inspired by the original Klan's
Prescripts, written in 1867 by Confederate veteran George Gordon in an
attempt to create a national organization. These were never adopted by
the Klan, however.[57] The Prescript stated the Klan's purposes in
idealistic terms, hiding the fact that its members committed acts of
vigilante violence and murder from behind masks.
Lender et al. state that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided
by the temperance movement. They state that in Arkansas and elsewhere,
the Klan opposed bootleggers, and in 1922, two hundred Klan members
set fire to saloons in Union County. They further state that the
national Klan office was finally established in Dallas, Texas, but
that Little Rock, Arkansas was the home of the Women of the Ku Klux
Klan. They go on to state that the first head of this auxiliary was a
former president of the Arkansas WCTU.[58][verification needed]
Stone Mountain, site of the founding of the second Klan in 1915.
In 1921, the Klan arrived in Oregon from central California and
established the state's first klavern in Medford. In a state with one
of the country's highest percentages of white residents, the Klan
attracted up to 14,000 members and established 58 klaverns by the end
of 1922. Given the small population of non-white minorities outside
Portland, the Oregon Klan directed attention almost exclusively
against Catholics, who numbered about 8% of the population. In 1922,
the Masonic Grand Lodge of Oregon sponsored a bill to require all
school-age children to attend public schools. With support of the Klan
and Democratic Governor Walter M. Pierce, endorsed by the Klan, the
Compulsory Education Law was passed with a majority of votes. Its
primary purpose was to shut down Catholic schools in Oregon, but it
also affected other private and military schools. It was challenged in
court and struck down by the United States Supreme Court Pierce v.
Society of Sisters (1925) before it went into effect.[citation needed]
One historian contends that the KKK’s "support for Prohibition
represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout
the nation".[59] Membership in the Klan and other prohibition groups
overlapped, and they often coordinated activities. For example, Edward
Young Clarke, a top leader of the Klan, raised funds for both the Klan
and the Anti-Saloon League.[60] A man with his own demons, Clarke was
indicted in 1923 for violations of the Mann Act.[61]
Members
William Joseph Simmons founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.
A significant characteristic of the second Klan was that it was an
organization based in urban areas, reflecting the major shifts of
population to cities in both the North and the South. In Michigan, for
instance, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they made up more
than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower to
middle-class whites who were trying to protect their jobs and housing
from the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from
southern and eastern Europe, who tended to be Catholic and Jewish in
numbers higher than earlier groups of immigrants; and black and white
migrants from the South. As new populations poured into cities,
rapidly changing neighborhoods created social tensions. Because of the
rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as
Detroit and Chicago, the Klan grew rapidly in the U.S. Midwest. The
Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.
[62]
For some states, historians 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 often hostile and ridiculed Klansmen as ignorant
farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana showed the rural stereotype
was false for that state:
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 predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious
affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including
those who did not belong to any church.[63]
The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the
organization for long. Membership in the Klan turned over rapidly as
people found out that it was not the group they wanted. Millions
joined, and at its peak in the 1920s, the organization included about
15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social
tensions contributed to the Klan's decline.
Activities
Cross burning is said to have been introduced by William J. Simmons,
the founder of the second Klan in 1915.
In reaction to social changes, the Klan adopted anti-Jewish, anti-
Catholic, anti-Communist and anti-immigrant slants. The social unrest
of the postwar period included labor strikes in response to low wages
and poor working conditions in many industrial cities, often led by
immigrants, who also organized unions. Klan members worried about
labor organizers and the socialist leanings of some of the immigrants,
which added to the tensions. They also resented upwardly mobile ethnic
Catholics.[64] At the same time, in cities Klan members were
themselves working in industrial environments and often struggled with
working conditions.
Klan groups lynched and murdered Black soldiers returning from World
War I while they were still in military uniforms. The Klan warned
Blacks that they must respect the rights of the white race "in whose
country they are permitted to reside".[65] The number of lynchings
escalated, and from 1918 to 1927, 416 African Americans were killed,
mostly in the South.[66]
In Florida, when two black men attempted to vote in November 1920 in
Ocoee, Orange County, the Klan attacked the black community. In the
ensuing violence, six black residents and two whites were killed, and
twenty five black homes, two churches, and a fraternal lodge were
destroyed.[66]
Although Klan members were concentrated in the South, Midwest and
west, there were some members in New England, too. Klan members
torched an African American school in Scituate, Rhode Island.[67]
In the 1920s and 1930s, a violent and zealous faction of the Klan
called the Black Legion was active in the Midwestern U.S.. The Legion
wore black uniforms and targeted and assassinated communists and
socialists.[citation needed]
In southern cities such as Birmingham, Alabama, Klan members kept
control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs but opposed
unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to
disrupt the Congress of Industrial Organizations(CIO), which advocated
industrial unions and was open to African-American members. With
access to dynamite and skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in
the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham began using bombings to
intimidate upwardly mobile blacks who moved into middle-class
neighborhoods. "By mid-1949, there were so many charred house
carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite
Hill." Independent Klan groups remained active in Birmingham and were
deeply engaged in violent opposition to the Civil Rights Movement.[68]
Political influence
Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen", 1923
The Klan had major political influence in several states and was
influential mostly in the center of the country. The Klan spread from
the South into the Midwest and Northern states, and into Canada where
there was a large movement against Catholic immigrants.[69] At its
peak, Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the
adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40%
in some areas. Most of the Klan's membership resided in Midwestern
states.
In another well-known example from the same year, the Klan decided to
turn Anaheim, California, into a model Klan city. It secretly took
over the City Council, but the city conducted a special recall
election and Klan members were voted out.[70]
Klan delegates played a significant role at the path-setting 1924
Democratic National Convention in New York City, often called the
"Klanbake Convention". The convention initially pitted Klan-backed
candidate William Gibbs McAdoo against Catholic New York Governor Al
Smith. 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.
In some states, such as Alabama, the KKK worked for political and
social reform.[71] 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 reforms benefited lower class white
people. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as
leaders like J. Thomas Heflin, David Bibb Graves, and Hugo Black
manipulated the KKK membership against the power of Black Belt
planters who had long dominated the state.
Black was elected senator in 1926 and later became a Supreme Court
Justice. In 1926, with Klan support, a former Klan chapter head named
Bibb Graves won the Alabama governor's office. He pushed for increased
education funding, better public health, new highway construction, and
pro-labor legislation. Because the Alabama state legislature refused
to redistrict until 1972, however, even the Klan was unable to break
the planters' and rural areas' hold on power.
Resistance and decline
Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such
as Reinhold Niebuhr in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan. In
response to blunt attacks against Jewish Americans and the Klan's
campaign to illegalize private schools, the Jewish Anti-Defamation
League was formed after the lynching of Leo Frank. When one civic
group began to publish Klan membership lists, the number of members
quickly declined. The National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People carried on public education campaigns in order to
inform people about Klan activities and lobbied against Klan abuses in
Congress. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership began to decline
rapidly in most areas of the Midwest.[62]
In the second wave of the Great Migration, from 1940-1970 another five
million blacks left the South for northern, midwestern and western
cities. Due to the buildup of its defense industries, California was a
new destination for this migration, especially for those African
Americans from Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. They refused to
tolerate for any longer the miserable conditions and economic
situation in the South.
In Alabama, KKK vigilantes, thinking that they had governmental
protection, launched a wave of physical terror in 1927, targeting both
blacks and whites who had violated racial norms and for perceived
moral lapses.[72] The state's conservative elite counterattacked.
Grover C. Hall, Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser, began
publishing a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan
for its "racial and religious intolerance". Hall won a Pulitzer Prize
for his crusade.[73] Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on
the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American".
Sheriffs cracked down. In the 1928 presidential election, the state
voted for the Democratic candidate Al Smith, although he was Catholic.
Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than six thousand by 1930.
Small independent units continued to be active in Birmingham, where in
the late 1940s, members launched a reign of terror by bombing the
homes of upwardly mobile African Americans. KKK activism increased as
a reaction against the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.
(see below.)
When D.C. Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana and 22 northern
states, was convicted in 1925 of the notorious rape and murder of
Madge Oberholtzer, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana.
Stephenson was convicted in a sensational trial. According to
historian Leonard Moore, a leadership failure caused the
organization's collapse:[74]
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.
Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley 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 in the 1943
Detroit Race Riot, and efforts to disrupt the American war effort
during World War II.[citation needed] 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.
After World War II, folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated
the Klan and provided information to media and law enforcement
agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the
Superman radio program, resulting in 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 may have contributed to
the decline in Klan recruiting and membership.[75] In the 1950s,
Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further
damaged the Klan.[76]
The following table shows the change in the Klan's estimated
membership over time.[77] (The years given in the table represent
approximate time periods.)
Year Membership
1920 4,000,000
1924 6,000,000
1930 30,000
1980 5,000
2008 6,000
Later Klans, 1950 through 1960s
Soviet propaganda poster ("Freedom, American style") (1950, by Nikolay
Dolgorukov and Boris Efimov). It shows the Ku Klux Klan lynching
blacks.
The name "Ku Klux Klan" began to be used by several independent
groups. Beginning in the 1950s, individual Klan groups began to resist
the Civil Rights Movement by bombing houses in transitional
neighborhoods and the houses of activists, as well as by physical
violence, intimidation and assassination. In Birmingham, Alabama,
during the tenure of Bull Connor, Klan groups were closely allied with
the police and operated with impunity. There were so many bombings of
homes by Klan groups that the city's nickname was "Bombingham". In
states such as Alabama and Mississippi, Klan members forged alliances
with governors' administrations.[7]
Many murders went unreported and unprosecuted. Continuing
disfranchisement of blacks meant that most could not serve on juries,
which were all white. According to a report from the Southern Regional
Council in Atlanta, the homes of forty black Southern families were
bombed during 1951 and 1952. Some of the bombing victims were social
activists whose work exposed them to danger, but most of them were
either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent
bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random terrorism.[78]
Among the more notorious murders by Klan members:
The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of NAACP activists Harry
and Harriette Moore in Mims, Florida, resulting in their deaths.[79]
The 1957 murder of Willie Edwards, Jr. Klansmen forced Edwards to jump
to his death from a bridge into the Alabama River.[80]
The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers in Mississippi.
In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman Byron De La Beckwith was convicted.
The 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham,
Alabama, which killed four black girls. The perpetrators were Klan
members Robert Chambliss, convicted in 1977, Thomas Blanton and Bobby
Frank Cherry, convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, Herman
Cash, died before he was indicted.
The 1964 murders of three civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and
Schwerner in Mississippi. In June 2005, Klan member Edgar Ray Killen
was convicted of manslaughter.[81]
The 1964 murder of two black teenagers, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles
Eddie Moore in Mississippi. In August 2007, based on the confession of
Klansman Charles Marcus Edwards, James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux
Klansman, was convicted. Seale was sentenced to serve three life
sentences.[82] Seale was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's
deputy.[83]
Violence at a Klan march in Mobile, Alabama, 1977
The 1965 Alabama murder of Viola Liuzzo. She was a Southern-raised
Detroit mother of five who was visiting the state in order to attend a
civil rights march. At the time of her murder Liuzzo was transporting
Civil Rights Marchers.
The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer Sr., 58, in
Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard Sam Bowers was
convicted of his murder and sentenced to life. Two other Klan members
were indicted with Bowers, but one died before trial, and the other's
indictment was dismissed.
There was also resistance to Klan violence. 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 threatened to
return with more men. When they held a nighttime rally nearby, they
found themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbees. Gunfire was
exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the Battle
of Hayes Pond.[84]
When Freedom Riders arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, the police
commissioner Bull Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack
the riders before sending in the police.[7] When local and state
authorities failed to protect them, the federal government established
more effective intervention.
While the FBI had paid informants in the Klan, for instance in
Birmingham, Alabama in the early 1960s, its relations with local law
enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous. The head of
the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, appeared more concerned about Communist links
to civil rights activists than about controlling Klan excesses. In
1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and
disrupt civil rights groups.[7]
Since the 1970s
Once African Americans secured federal legislation to protect civil
and voting rights, the Klan shifted its focus to opposing court-
ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action, and more
open immigration. For instance, in 1971, Klansmen used bombs to
destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan. Klansman David Duke was
active in South Boston during the school busing crisis of 1974. Duke
was leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 until he
resigned from the Klan in 1978.
The Greensboro massacre occurred on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro,
North Carolina, United States. In the shoot-out, five marchers were
killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party
while staging a protest. It was the culmination of attempts by the
Communist Workers Party to organize industrial workers, predominantly
black, in the area.[85]
Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the Klan in 1979,
reported that the FBI's COINTELPRO efforts were highly successful.
Rival Klan factions accused each other's leaders of being FBI
informants. Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.[86] During
Thompson's brief membership, his truck was shot at, he was yelled at
by black children, and a Klan rally 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 counter protests and
sometimes with violence.
After Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in Alabama, the FBI
investigated his death. Two local Klansmen were convicted of having a
role including Henry Hays who was sentenced to death. With the support
of attorneys Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin at the Southern Poverty
Law Center (SPLC), Michael's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, sued the Ku
Klux Klan in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the United
Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found
the Klan responsible for the lynching of Michael Donald and ordered
the Klan to pay $7 million USD. To pay the judgment, the Klan turned
over all of its assets, including its national headquarters building
in Tuscaloosa.[87]
After exhausting the appeals process, Henry Hayes was executed for
Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since
1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against
an African American.[88]
Thompson, the journalist who claimed he had infiltrated the Klan,
related that Klan leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of
arrest showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by
the Southern Poverty Law Center for damages in the millions of
dollars. These were filed after Klansmen shot into a group of African
Americans. Klansmen curtailed activities to conserve money for defense
against the lawsuits.
The Klan itself used lawsuits as tools. They filed a libel suit to
prevent publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book. The
publisher canceled the publication.[citation needed]
The present-day Ku Klux Klan is not one organization. Rather it is
made up of small independent chapters across the United States.[89]
The formation of independent chapters has made the KKK groups more
difficult to infiltrate and researchers find it hard to estimate its
numbers.
KKK members have stepped up recruitment in recent years but the
organization continues to grow slowly, with membership estimated at
5,000-8,000 across 179 chapters. These latest drives have seized upon
issues such as people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban
crime and same-sex marriage. [90]
The only known former member of the Klan to hold a federal office
currently in the United States is Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of
West Virginia, who said he "deeply regrets" having joined the Klan
more than half a century ago, when he was about 24 years old. Byrd
joined as a young man in the 1940s, recruiting 150 friends and
acquaintances from his small West Virginia town. He later said he was
a Klan member for about a year, but contemporary newspapers carried
stories about a letter of his recommending a friend as Klaneagle in
1946.[91] In 2005, when he published a memoir and was asked again
about his life, Byrd said, "I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no
place in America. I apologized a thousand times ... and I don't mind
apologizing over and over again. I can't erase what happened."[91]
Some of the larger KKK organizations in operation include:
Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma,
Arkansas, Louisiana and other areas of the Southeastern U.S.
Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan[92]
Imperial Klans of America[93]
Knights of the White Kamelia
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-
claimed pastor Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas. It claims to be
the biggest Klan organization in America today. Spokesmen refer to it
as a "sixth era Klan", and it continues to be a racist group.
Numerous smaller groups use the Klan name. Estimates are that about
two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the South, with another
third situated primarily in the lower Midwest.[94][92][95]
On November 14, 2008, an all-white jury of seven men and seven women
awarded $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in
punitive damages to plaintiff Jordan Gruver, represented by the
Southern Poverty Law Center against the Imperial Klans of America.[96]
The ruling found that five IKA members had savagely beaten Gruver,
then 16 years old, at a Kentucky county fair in July 2006.[97]
Many Klan groups have formed strong alliances with other white
supremacist groups like Neo-Nazis. Some Klan groups have become
increasingly "Nazified" adopting the look and emblems of Nazi
skinheads.[98]
Although there are numerous KKK groups, the media and popular
discourse generally refer to the Klan for expediency.
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.
Vocabulary
Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations,
the Klan has signs which members can use to recognize one another. A
member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) in conversation
to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The
response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.[99]
Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words[100]
beginning with "KL" including:
Klabee: treasurers
Kleagle: recruiter
Klecktoken: initiation fee
Kligrapp: secretary
Klonvocation: gathering
Kloran: ritual book
Kloreroe: delegate
Kludd: chaplain
All of the above terminology was created by William Simmons, as part
of his 1915 revival of the Klan. The Reconstruction-era Klan used
different titles; the only titles to carry over were "Wizard" for the
overall leader of the Klan, "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of
security, and a few others, mostly for regional officers of the
organization.
See also
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ku Klux Klan
History of the United States (1865–1918)
Jim Crow laws
Knights of the Golden Circle
Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan
Notable alleged Ku Klux Klan members in national politics
Silent Brotherhood
Timeline of racial tension in Omaha, Nebraska
White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Footnotes
^ The Various Shady Lives Of The Ku Klux Klan - Time
^ [1]
^ "Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871." Civil Rights in the United States. 2
vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 2000. Reproduced in History Resource
Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. url=http://galenet.galegroup.com/
servlet/HistRC/
^ Jackson 1992 ed., pp. 241-242.
^ According to the 1920 census, the population of white males 18 years
and older was about 31 million, but many of these men would have been
ineligible for membership because they were immigrants, Jews, or Roman
Catholics. Klan membership peaked at about 4-5 million in the
mid-1920s. "The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography". The African American
Registry.
^ Lay, Shawn. "Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century". The New Georgia
Encyclopedia. Coker College.
^ a b c d McWhorter 2001.
^ Horn 1939, p. 9. The founders were John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy,
James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones
^ Horn 1939, p. 11, states that Reed proposed κύκλος (kyklos) and
Kennedy added clan. Wade 1987, p. 33 says that Kennedy came up with
both words, but Crowe suggested transforming κύκλος into kuklux.
^ W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998, pp.
679-680
^ W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998, p.
671-675.
^ "Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868". State University
of New York at Albany.
^ Horn 1939. Horn casts doubt on some other aspects of the story.
^ Cincinnati 'Commercial', August 28, 1868, quoted in Wade 1987.
^ Horn 1939, p. 27.
^ Parsons 2005, p. 816.
^ a b Foner 1989, p. 425-426.
^ Foner 1989, p. 342.
^ W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998, p.
677-678.
^ Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–
1877, New York: Perennial Classics, 1989; reprinted 2002, p.432
^ A special report prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center. "A
Hundred Years of Terror". Indiana University-Purdue University
Indianapolis.
^ W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998, pp.
674-675
^ W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: 1860–1880, New
York: Oxford University Press, 1935; reprint, The Free Press, 1998, pp.
680-681
^ Bryant, Jonathan M.. "Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era". The
New Georgia Encyclopedia. Georgia Southern University.
^ The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida by Michael Newton,
pp. 1-30. Newton quotes from the Testimony Taken by the Joint Select
Committee to Enquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late
Insurrectionary States. Vol. 13. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1872. Among historians of the Klan, this volume is
also known as "The KKK testimony".
^ Rhodes 1920, pp. 157–158.
^ a b Horn 1939, p. 375.
^ a b Wade 1987, p. 102.
^ White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern
Reconstruction by Allen W. Trelease (Louisiana State University Press:
1995)
^ Trelease 1995.
^ quotes from Wade 1987.
^ Horn 1939, p. 360.
^ Horn 1939, p. 362.
^ a b Wormser, Richard. "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow — The
Enforcement Acts (1870–1871)". Public Broadcasting Service.
^ Wade 1987, p. 85.
^ Foner 1989, p. 435.
^ Wade 1987.
^ Horn 1939, p. 373.
^ Wade 1987, p. 88.
^ Wade 1987, p. 109, writes that by ca. 1871–1874, "For many, the
lapse of the enforcement acts was justified since their reason for
being — the Ku-Klux Klan — had been effectively smashed as a result of
the dramatic showdown in South Carolina". Klan costumes, also called
"regalia", disappeared by the early 1870s (Wade 1987, p. 109). The
fact that the Klan did not exist for decades was shown when Simmons's
1915 recreation of the Klan attracted only two aging "former
Reconstruction Klansmen." All other members were new.(Wade 1987, p.
144).
^ "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The Enforcement Acts, 1870–1871",
Public Broadcast Service, accessed 5 Apr 2008
^ Wade 1987, p. 109–110.
^ Foner 1989, p. 437, and KKK Hearings, 46th Congress, 2d Session,
Senate Report 693, and Taylor 1974, p. 268-270.
^ Balkin, Jack M. (2002). "History Lesson" (PDF). Yale University.
^ Simon, Dennis M.. "The Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1968". Southern
Methodist University.
^ "Viola Liuzzo". Spartacus Educational.
^ Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon",
Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, p.27, accessed 10 Mar 2008
^ Richard H. Pildes, "Democracy, Anti-Democracy, and the Canon",
Constitutional Commentary, Vol.17, 2000, pp.12–13, 27, accessed 10 Mar
2008
^ Maxine D. Rogers, Larry E. Rivers, David R. Colburn, R. Tom Dye, and
William W. Rogers, Documented History of the Incident Which Occurred
at Rosewood, Florida in January 1923, Florida: Dec 1993, p.2, accessed
28 Mar 2008
^ Jackson 1967, p. 241.
^ Maxine D. Rogers, et.al., Documented History of Rosewood, Florida in
January 1923, op.cit., pp.4-6, accessed 28 Mar 2008
^ An Interview with Stanley F. Horn - Oral History Interviews of the
Forest History Society
^ Dray 2002.
^ Dray 2002, p. 198. Griffith quickly relayed the comment to the
press, where it was widely reported. In subsequent correspondence,
Wilson discussed Griffith's filmmaking in a positive tone, without
challenging use of his statement.
^ Wade 1987, p. 137.
^ Letter from J. M. Tumulty, secretary to President Wilson, to the
Boston branch of the NAACP, quoted in Link, Wilson.
^ The Ku Klux Klan and Related American Racialist and Antisemitic
Organizations: A History and Analysis by Chester L Quarles, Page 219.
The second Klan's constitution and preamble, reprinted in Quarles
book, stated that the second Klan was indebted to the original Klan's
Prescripts.
^ Lender et al 1982, p. 33.
^ Prendergast 1987, pp. 25-52, 27.
^ Barr 1999, p. 370.
^ "A Wizard's Indictment". TIME. March 10, 1923.
^ a b Jackson, 1992.
^ Moore 1991.
^ Maxine D. Rogers, et.al., Documented History of Rosewood, Florida in
January 1923, op.cit., p.6, accessed 28 Mar 2008
^ Franklin 1992, p.145
^ a b Maxine D. Rogers, et.al., Documented History of Rosewood,
Florida in January 1923, op.cit., p.7, accessed 28 Mar 2008
^ Smith, Robert L. (April 26, 1999). "In the 1920s, the Klan ruled the
countryside". The Providence Journal.
^ Diane McWhorter, Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic
Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, New York: Touchstone Book,
2002, p.75
^ Weedmark, Kevin. "When the KKK rode high across the Prairies".
Moosomin World-Spectator.
^ It's been seventy years since Anaheim booted the Klan, reprinted
from the Los Angeles Times
^ Feldman 1999.
^ Rogers et al, pp. 432-433.
^ Rogers et al, p. 433.
^ Moore 1991, p.186.
^ von Busack, Richard. "Superman Versus the KKK". MetroActive.
^ Kennedy 1990.
^ "The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography". The African American
Registry. and Lay, Shawn. "Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century". The
New Georgia Encyclopedia. Coker College.
^ Egerton 1994, p. 562-563.
^ "Who Was Harry T. Moore?" — The Palm Beach Post, August 16, 1999
^ Cox, Major W. (March 2, 1999). "Justice Still Absent in Bridge
Death". Montgomery Advertiser.
^ Axtman, Kris (June 23, 2005). "Mississippi verdict greeted by a
generation gap". The Christian Science Monitor.
^ Mitchell, Jerry. "Seale gets 3 life terms for '64 murders". USA
Today.
^ "Reputed Klansman, Ex-Cop, and Sheriff's Deputy Indicted For The
1964 Murders of Two Young African-American Men in Mississippi; U.S. v.
James Ford Seale". January 24, 2007. Retrieved on 2008-03-23.
^ Ingalls 1979; Graham, Nicholas (January 2005). "January 1958 -- The
Lumbees face the Klan". University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
^ Mark Hand (2004-11-18). "The Greensboro Massacre". Press Action.
^ Thompson 1982.
^ "Ku Klux Klan". Spartacus Educational, accessed 22 Apr 2008.
^ "Ku Klux Klan". Spartacus Educational.
^ About the Ku Klux Klan, Anti-Defamation League, 2002. According to
the report, the KKK's estimated size then was "No more than a few
thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units."
^ Brad Knickerbocker (9 February 2007). "Anti-Immigrant Sentiments
Fuel Ku Klux Klan Resurgence". Christian Science Monitor.
^ a b Eric Pianin, "A Senator's Shame", Washington Post, 19 Jun 2005,
accessed 4 Aug 2008
^ a b "Church of the American Knights of the KKK". Anti-Defamation
League. October 22, 1999.
^ "No. 2 Klan group on trial in Ky. teen's beating". Associated Press.
November 11, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-11-22.
^ "Active U.S. Hate Groups". Intelligence Report. Southern Poverty Law
Center.
^ "About the Ku Klux Klan". Anti-Defamation League.
^ "Jury awards $2.5 million to teen beaten by Klan members". CNN.
November 14, 2008. Retrieved on 2008-11-18.
^ "Southern Poverty Law Center vs. Imperial Klans of America".
Southern Poverty Law Center. July 25, 2007. Retrieved on 2007-09-18.
^ Ku Klux Klan - Affiliations Anti-Defamation League.
^ "A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos". Anti-
Defamation League.
^ Axelrod 1997, p. 160.
Bibliography
Axelrod, Alan (1997). The International Encyclopedia of Secret
Societies & Fraternal Orders. New York: Facts On File.
Barr, Andrew (1999). Drink: A Social History of America. New York:
Carroll & Graf.
Chalmers, David M. (1987). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku
Klux Klan. Durahm, N.C.: Duke University Press. pp. 512. ISBN
9780822307303.
Dray, Philip (2002). At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of
Black America. New York: Random House.
Egerton, John (1994). Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before
the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Alfred and Knopf Inc..
Feldman, Glenn (1999). Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama,
1915-1949. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
Foner, Eric (1989). Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution,
1863-1877. Perennial (HarperCollins).
Franklin, John Hope (1992). Race and History: Selected Essays
1938-1988. Louisiana State University Press.
Horn, Stanley F. (1939). Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux
Klan, 1866-1871. Montclair, New Jersey: Patterson Smith Publishing
Corporation.
Ingalls, Robert P. (1979). Hoods: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan. New
York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Jackson, Kenneth T. (1967; 1992 edition). The Ku Klux Klan in the
City, 1915-1930. Oxford University Press.
Kennedy, Stetson (1990). The Klan Unmasked. University Press of
Florida.
Lender, Mark E.; James K. Martin (1982). Drinking in America. New
York: Free Press.
Levitt, Stephen D.; Stephen J. Dubner (2005). Freakonomics: A Rogue
Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. New York: William
Morrow.
McWhorter, Diane (2001). Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The
Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. New York: Simon &
Schuster.
Moore, Leonard J. (1991). Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in
Indiana, 1921-1928. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Newton, Michael; Judy Ann Newton (1991). The Ku Klux Klan: An
Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publishing.
Parsons, Elaine Frantz (2005). "Midnight Rangers: Costume and
Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan". The Journal of
American History 92 (3): 811–836.
Prendergast, Michael L., "A History of Alcohol Problem Prevention
Efforts in the United States", written at Greenwich, Connecticut, in
Holder, Harold D., Control Issues in Alcohol Abuse Prevention:
Strategies for States and Communities, JAI Press, 1987.
Rhodes, James Ford (1920). History of the United States from the
Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. 7.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
Rogers, William; Robert Ward, Leah Atkins and Wayne Flynt (1994).
Alabama: The History of a Deep South State. Tuscaloosa, Alabama:
University of Alabama Press.
Steinberg, Alfred (1962). The man from Missouri; the life and times of
Harry S. Truman. New York: Putnam. OCLC 466366.
Taylor, Joe G. (1974). Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863-1877. Baton
Rouge.
Thompson, Jerry (1982). My Life in the Klan. New York: Putnam. ISBN
0399126953.
Trelease, Allen W. (1995). White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy
and Southern Reconstruction. Louisiana State University Press.
First published in 1971 and based on massive research in primary
sources, this is the most comprehensive treatment of the Klan and its
relationship to post-Civil War Reconstruction. Includes narrative
research on other night-riding groups. Details close link between Klan
and late 19th century and early 20th century Democratic Party.
Wade, Wyn Craig (1987). The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America.
New York: Simon and Schuster.
An unsympathetic account of both Klans, with a dedication to "my
Kentucky grandmother ... a fierce and steadfast Radical Republican
from the wane of Reconstruction until her death nearly a century
later".
Further reading
Blee, Kathleen M. (1992). Women of the Klan. University of California
Press. ISBN 0-520-07876-4.
"White supremacist groups flourishing". The Associated Press.
Nelson, Jack (1993). Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against
the Jews. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-69223-2.
External links
The Ku Klux Klan website
Imperial Klans of America: "Stand for Christ, Race and Nation"
Klan Tableau A film documenting William Christenberry's Klan Tableau
in Washington, D.C. (Includes interview with Christenberry.)
The History of the Original Ku Klux Klan — by an anonymous author
sympathetic to the original Klan.
The Southern Poverty Law Center Report
The ADL on the KKK
Proceedings of the Second Imperial Klonvocation (1924)
In 1999, South Carolina town defines the KKK as terrorist
A long interview with Stanley F. Horn, author of Invisible Empire: The
Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871.
Full text of the Klan Act of 1871 (simplified version)
The Protestant "Kluxing" of Cañyon City, Colorado — (Cañyon City
Public Library)
Ku Klux Klan leader predicts Barack Obama will be assassinated -
Scotsman.com August 10, 2008.
KKK (Amarillo, Tex.) Records, 1921-1925 and undated, in the Southwest
Collection/Special Collections Library at Texas Tech University
Ku Klux Klan from the Handbook of Texas Online
