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Ku Klux Klan ('''KKK''') is the name of several past and present organizations in the United States that have advocated White Supremacy , Anti-Semitism , Racism , Homophobia , Anti-Communism and Nativism . These organizations have often used terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation, such as Cross Lighting , to oppress African American s and other social or ethnic groups. 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 " Carpetbagger s" and " Scalawag s" as on putting down the freed Slave s. The KKK quickly adopted violent methods. A rapid reaction set in, with the Klan's leadership disowning violence 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). In 1915, a second distinct group was founded using the same name. It was inspired by the newfound power of the modern mass media, via the film '', anti-Catholicism, Anti-Communism , 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 because of scandals resulting from prominent members' crimes and its support of the Nazis . The name "Ku Klux Klan" has since been used by many different unrelated groups, including many who opposed the s. The modern KKK has been repudiated by all mainstream media, Political and Religious leaders. FIRST KLAN Creation Carpetbagger s, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ''Independent Monitor'', 1868]] ]] 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 veteransHorn, 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 from Pulaski, Tennessee , who were bored with postwar routine. The name was constructed by combining the Greek "" (κυκλος,circle) with " Clan "Horn, 1939, p. 11, states that Reed proposed "" ("") and Kennedy added "clan." Wade, 1987, p. 33 says Kennedy came up with both words, but Crowe suggested transforming "" into "." The Ku Klux Klan 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."''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' by Eric Foner, Perennial (HarperCollins), March 1989, p. 342. In an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee , 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." Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868 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 Trade r and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis, Tennessee , 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 Nigger s in their place."Horn, 1939. Horn casts doubt on some other aspects of the story. 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, although the Klan's focus was mainly 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. Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era , accessed February 19, 2007. 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''History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign Of 1896 . Volume: 7.'' by James Ford Rhodes, 1920, pages 157–158 In other violence, Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in a single county in Florida , and hundreds more in other counties.''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." An 1868 proclamation by GordonHorn, 1939. demonstrates several of the issues surrounding the Klan's violent activities.
, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.]] By 1868, only two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was already beginning to decreaseHorn, 1939, p. 375. 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.Wade, 1987, p. 102. 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."Horn, 1939, p. 375. In an 1868 newspaper interview,Cincinnati 'Commercial', Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men, and that although he was not a member, he was "in sympathy" and would "cooperate" with them, and he could 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. This was a half truth since one of the main reasons for targeting these white groups was that they were impediments to efforts against the former slaves. The Klan went 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."Horn, 1939, p. 27. Decline and suppression The first Klan was never centrally 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: Parsons, Elaine Frantz, "Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan." ''The Journal of American History'' 92.3, 2005, page 816 of North Carolina attempted to use the state militia against the Klan and was removed from office.]] 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."quotes from Wade, 1987. Because of 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."Horn, 1939, p. 360. 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."Horn, 1939, p. 362. Although the Klan was being used 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 unlikely to vote for conviction. In many states, there were fears that the use of black militiamen would ignite a race war. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow — The enforcement acts (1870–1871) , accessed February 19, 2006. When Republican Governor Of North Carolina William Woods Holden called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, the result was a backlash that led to Republicans losing their majority in the legislature, and ultimately, to his own impeachment and removal from office.Wade, 1987, p. 85. 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."''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'' by Eric Foner, Perennial (HarperCollins), March 1989, p. 435. 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 just a creation of nervous Republican governors in the South.Wade, 1987. 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.Horn, 1939, p. 373. 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, from which a black state representative escaped only by taking to the woods.Wade, 1987, p. 88. 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. 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 CarolinaWade, 1987, p. 102. 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,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 or regalia" had disappeared by the early 1870s (Wade, p. 109). That the Klan was entirely nonexistent for a period of decades is shown by the fact that in 1915, Simmons's refounding of the Klan was attended by only two aging "former Reconstruction Klansmen" (Wade, p. 144). Horn, a very sympathetic Southern historian of 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." [http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/ohisrch.html An Annotated Guide to Oral History Interviews of the Forest History Society], accessed February 19, 2006. A PBS web page (accessed February 19, 2006) states that "By 1872, the Klan as an organization was broken." 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.Wade, 1987, pp. 109–110. Even though the Klan no longer existed, it had achieved many of its goals, such as denying voting rights to Southern blacks. 1 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."Foner, ''Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877'', p. 437, and ''KKK Hearings,'' 46th Congress, 2d Session, Senate Report 693, and Joe G. Taylor, ''Louisiana Reconstructed, 1863–1877'' (Baton Rouge, 1974), p. 268–270. In 1882, long after the end of the first Klan, the Supreme Court ruled in '' United States V. Harris '' that the Klan Act was partially Unconstitutional , saying that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to private conspiracies.[http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf History Lesson, Jack M. Balkin], accessed February 19, 2007. However, the Force Act and the Klan Act have been invoked in later civil rights conflicts, including the 1964 murders of '' in 1991. 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 was the Peak Decade for lynchings. Creation '']] The founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 demonstrated the newfound power of modern mass media. Three closely related events sparked the resurgence:
'': "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.Dray, 2002. 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 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 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. ''The Birth of a Nation'' includes extensive quotations from Woodrow Wilson's ''History of the American People'', {Link without Title} , accessed February 19, 2007. for example, "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."Dray, 2002, p. 198. The comment was relayed to the press by Griffith and widely reported, and in subsequent correspondence, Wilson discussed Griffith's filmmaking in a highly positive tone, without challenging the veracity of the statement. 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 .Wade, 1987, p. 137. 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. ]] 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 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 because of 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. 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 in an attempt to give the original Klan a sense of national organization. ''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, states that the second Klan was indebted to the original Klan's Prescripts. The Prescript states as the Klan's purposes:The quote is from the 1868 Revised Precept, from Horn, 1939.
Membership founded the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915.]] 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 Moore, Leonard J. ''Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928'' (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1991) shows the stereotype was false: , site of the founding of the second Klan; work was begun in 1923 and was completed in 1970.]] 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 populationAccording 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: [http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2207/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_a_brief__biography The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography!], accessed February 19, 2007. and had chapters across the United States. There were clans founded in Canada , most notably in Saskatchewan , where there was a large clan movement against Catholic immigrants. When the KKK rode high across the Prairies by Kevin Weedmark, ''World Spectator'', accessed February 19, 2007. This Klan was operated as a profit-making venture by its leaders, and it participated in the boom in Fraternal Organization s 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 attempted to forge them into political activist groups. Activities , 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, anti-Communist 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 Nazi Germany , recruiters made effective use of the idea that America's 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 Southern, the new Klan was influential throughout the United States, with major political influence on politicians in several states. The new Klan was popular as far north as New England , where it engaged in violent activities such as torching an African American school in Scituate, Rhode Island .Robert Smith, In The 1920s the Klan Ruled the Countryside , The Rhode Island Century, ''The Providence Journal'', 4/26/1999 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 Pirate s. 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.''Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988'' by John Hope Franklin, Louisiana State University Press (reprint edition), February 1992, p. 145 The Klan warned Blacks that they must respect the rights of the white race "in whose country they are permitted to reside."''Race and History: Selected Essays 1938–1988'' by John Hope Franklin, Louisiana State University Press (reprint edition), February 1992, p. 145 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, '' 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 Gibbs 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.Feldman, Glenn. ''Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915–1949''. University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa, AL, 1999. Because of the elite conservative political structure in Alabama, the state's Klansmen were among the foremost advocates of better public schools, effective , 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 . When he was 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 Brothel s 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."Rogers et al. Pages 432–433. 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 won a Pulitzer Prize for his crusade.Rogers et al. Page 433. 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 the 1928 Election , and the Klan's official membership in Alabama plunged to under six thousand by 1930. At the peak of the Klan's political power, several 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. Decline The second Klan collapsed partly as a result of the backlash against 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:Moore, Leonard J. ''Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921–1928''. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991, p. 186. 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. 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.Richard von Busack, Superman Versus the KKK on the MetroActive site, accessed April 11, 2006 Kennedy eventually wrote a book based on his experiences, which became a bestseller during the 1950s and further damaged the Klan.''The Klan Unmasked'' by Stetson Kennedy, University Press of Florida, 1990. LATER KLANS After the breakup of the second Klan, the name "Ku Klux Klan" began to be used by several independent groups. The following table shows the change in the Klan's estimated membership over time.. [http://www.alabamamoments.state.al.us/sec46qs.html The 20th Century Ku Klux Klan in Alabama], The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography! , [http://www.africanamericans.com/KuKluxKlan.htm History of the Ku Klux Klan], What is the KKK? , Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century , all retrieved August 26, 2005. (The years given in the table represent approximate time periods.) 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:
1964 Murders of Two Young African-American Men in Mississippi,"] U.S. v. James Ford Seale, January 24, 2007, accessed Sept 9, 2007. Klan groups also killed several others during this time period, with many of the 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 innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random white terrorism."''Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South'' by John Egerton, Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1994, p. 562–563. However, while the post-war Klan groups were extremely violent, it was also a period in which the Klan was successfully pushed back. 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.Ingalls, 1979; January 1958 — The Lumbees face the Klan , accessed February 19, 2007. In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the Klan. 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 later revealed to have been working for the FBI.Thompson, 1982. 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. 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. , 1981]] Vulnerability to lawsuits has encouraged the trend away from central organization, as when, for example, the lynching of 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. PRESENT and advocating Holocaust Denial .]] Although often still discussed in contemporary American politics as representing the quintessential "fringe" end of the , 2002, accessed Sept. 4, 2006. Since late 2006 the Anti-Defamation League has revised its assessment of the Ku Klux Klan, claiming that "The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund has experienced a surprising and troubling resurgence due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and urban crime".[http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/intro.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk The Ku Klux Klan Rebounds , Anti-Defamation League. 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. Some of the larger KKK organizations currently in operation include:
There are also numerous smaller organizations using the Klan name. {Link without Title} , retrieved June 26, 2005. As of 2005, there were an estimated 3,000 Klan members, divided between estimates of 100 Extremism in America , Jewish Anti-Defamation League , 2002, accessed Sept. 4, 2006. and 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.Southern Poverty Law Center. Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2004. ''Intelligence Report''. Retrieved April 5, 2005 from Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2005 . Church of the American Knights of the KKK , retrieved June 26, 2005. What is the KKK? , retrieved August 26, 2005. Despite the large number of rival KKKs, the media and popular discourse generally speaks of ''the'' Ku Klux Klan, as if there was only one organization. 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 . Klan raises anti-immigrant clamor ''The Montgomery Advertiser'', June 5, 2006, accessed June 5, 2006. VOCABULARY Membership in the Klan is secret, and the Klan, like many fraternal organizations, has signs 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. A Visual Database of Extremist Symbols, Logos and Tattoos Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many wordsAxelrod, 1997, p. 160 beginning with "KL" including:
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" (or Imperial 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
NOTES REFERENCES
::Horn, born in 1889, was a Southern historian who was sympathetic to the first Klan, which, in a 1976 oral interview {Link without Title} , he was careful to distinguish 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."
::Winner of the Pulitzer Prize .
::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.
::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
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