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Do not fill this in! ===National changes=== {| class="wikitable floatright" |+ style="text-align: left;" |Estimated membership statistics |- !Year !Membership !References |- !1925 | style="text-align:right;"|4,000,000–6,000,000* |<ref name=aareg/>{{sfn|Baudouin|1997}} |- !1930 | style="text-align:right;"|30,000 |<ref name=aareg>{{cite web |url=http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/ku-klux-klan-brief-biography |title=The Ku Klux Klan, a brief biography |website=www.aaregistry.org |access-date=July 19, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120825005249/http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/ku-klux-klan-brief-biography |archive-date=August 25, 2012 }}</ref> |- !1965 | style="text-align:right;"|40,000 |<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581-2,00.html |title=The Various Shady Lives of The Ku Klux Klan |magazine=Time |date=April 9, 1965 |access-date=December 24, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100513062418/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581-2,00.html |archive-date=May 13, 2010 }}</ref> |- !1968 | style="text-align:right;"|14,000 |{{sfn|Klobuchar|2009|p=74}} |- !1970 | style="text-align:right;"|2,000–3,500 |<ref>{{cite web |last=Lay |first=Shawn |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century |website=[[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |publisher=[[Coker College]] |access-date=August 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051025072407/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 |archive-date=October 25, 2005 |url-status=live}}</ref>{{sfn|Klobuchar|2009|p=74}} |- !1974 | style="text-align:right;"|1,500 |{{sfn|Klobuchar|2009|p=74}}{{sfn|Baudouin|1997}} |- !1975 | style="text-align:right;"|6,500 |{{sfn|Baudouin|1997}} |- !1979 | style="text-align:right;"|10,000 |{{sfn|Baudouin|1997}} |- !1991 | style="text-align:right;"|6,000–10,000 |{{sfn|Baudouin|1997}} |- !2009 | style="text-align:right;"|5,000–8,000 |{{sfn|Klobuchar|2009|p=84}} |- !2016 | style="text-align:right;"|3,000 |<ref name="TatteredRobes" /> |- |} In 1939, after experiencing several years of decline due to the [[Great Depression]], the [[Grand Wizard|Imperial Wizard]] [[Hiram Wesley Evans]] sold the national organization to [[James A. Colescott]], an Indiana [[veterinary physician]], and [[Samuel Green (Ku Klux Klan)|Samuel Green]], an Atlanta [[Obstetrics|obstetrician]]. They could not revive the Klan's declining membership. In 1944, the [[Internal Revenue Service]] filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott dissolved the organization by decree on April 23 of that year. Local Klan groups closed down over the following years.<ref>{{cite news |title=Georgia Orders Action to Revoke Charter of Klan. Federal Lien Also Put on File to Collect Income Taxes Dating Back to 1921. Governor Warns of a Special Session if Needed to Enact 'De-Hooding' Measures Tells of Phone Threats Georgia Acts to Crush the Klan. Federal Tax Lien Also Is Filed |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1946/05/31/archives/georgia-orders-action-to-revoke-charter-of-klan-federal-lien-also.html |quote=Governor Ellis Arnall today ordered the State's legal department to bring action to revoke the Georgia charter of the Ku Klux Klan. ... 'It is my further information that on June 4, 1944, the Ku Klux Klan ... |work=The New York Times |date=May 31, 1946 |access-date=January 12, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180723004703/https://www.nytimes.com/1946/05/31/archives/georgia-orders-action-to-revoke-charter-of-klan-federal-lien-also.html |archive-date=July 23, 2018 |url-status=live}}</ref> After [[World War II]], the [[Folklore studies|folklorist]] and author [[Stetson Kennedy]] infiltrated the Klan; he provided internal data to media and law enforcement agencies. He also provided secret code words to the writers of the ''[[Superman (radio)|Superman]]'' radio program, resulting in episodes in which [[Superman]] took on a thinly disguised version of the KKK. Kennedy stripped away the Klan's mystique and trivialized its rituals and code words, which may have contributed to the decline in Klan recruiting and membership.<ref>{{cite news |last=von Busack |first=Richard |title=Superman Versus the KKK |url=http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.02.98/comics-9826.html |url-status=live |work=MetroActive |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150511114046/http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.02.98/comics-9826.html |archive-date=May 11, 2015}}</ref> In the 1950s Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.{{sfn|Kennedy|1990}} ====Historiography of the second Klan==== The historiography of the second Klan of the 1920s has changed over time. Early histories were based on mainstream sources of the time, but since the late 20th century, other histories have been written drawing from records and analysis of members of the chapters in social histories.{{sfn|Fox|2011}}{{sfn|Pegram|2011|pp=221–228}} =====Anti-modern interpretations===== [[File:Ku Klux Klan parade7.jpg|thumb|Ku Klux Klan parade in [[Washington, D.C.]], September 13, 1926]] The KKK was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. Investigators in the 1920s used KKK publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled Klansmen, newspaper reports, and speculation to write stories about what the Klan was doing. Almost all the major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to its activities. The historian Thomas R. Pegram says that published accounts exaggerated the official viewpoint of the Klan leadership and repeated the interpretations of hostile newspapers and the Klan's enemies. There was almost no evidence in that time regarding the behavior or beliefs of individual Klansmen. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid-20th century emphasized its Southern roots and the violent vigilante-style actions of the Klan in its efforts to turn back the clock of modernity. Scholars compared it to [[fascism]] in Europe.{{sfn|Chalmers|1987|p=322}} Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system."<ref>{{cite journal |jstor= 493879 |title= A 'Dog in the Nighttime' Problem: American Fascism in the 1930s |journal= The History Teacher |volume= 19 |issue= 4 |last1= Amann |first1= Peter H. |year= 1986 |doi= 10.2307/493879 |page=562}}</ref> Pegram says this original interpretation: {{blockquote|...depicted the Klan movement as an irrational rebuke of modernity by undereducated, economically marginal bigots, religious zealots, and dupes willing to be manipulated by the Klan's cynical, mendacious leaders. It was, in this view, a movement of country parsons and small-town malcontents who were out of step with the dynamism of twentieth-century urban America.{{sfn|Pegram|2011|p=222}}}} =====New social history interpretations===== The "[[social history]]" revolution in historiography from the 1960s explored history from the bottom up. In terms of the Klan, it developed evidence based on the characteristics, beliefs, and behavior of the typical membership, and downplayed accounts by elite sources.{{sfn|Pegram|2011|p=225}}{{sfn|Moore|1996}} Historians discovered membership lists and the minutes of local meetings from KKK chapters scattered around the country. They discovered that the original interpretation was largely mistaken about the membership and activities of the Klan; the membership was not anti-modern, rural or rustic and consisted of fairly well-educated middle-class joiners and community activists. Half the members lived in the fast-growing industrial cities of the period: Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, were Klan strongholds during the 1920s.<ref>Kenneth T. Jackson, ''The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915–1930'' (1967){{ISBN?}}</ref> Studies find that in general, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, successful middle classes, with few members drawn from the elite or the working classes. Pegram, reviewing the studies, concludes, "the popular Klan of the 1920s, while diverse, was more of a civic exponent of white Protestant social values than a repressive hate group."{{sfn|Pegram|2011}} [[Kelly J. Baker]] argues that religion was critical—the KKK based its hatred on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans: "Members embraced Protestant Christianity and a crusade to save America from domestic as well as foreign threats."{{sfn|Baker|2011|p=11}} Member were primarily [[Baptists]], [[Methodists]], and members of the [[Disciples of Christ]], while men of "more elite or liberal" Protestant denominations such as [[Unitarianism|Unitarians]], [[Episcopalians]], [[Congregationalism in the United States|Congregationalists]] and [[Lutherans]], were less likely to join.<ref>{{cite book |last=MacLean |first=Nancy K. |title=Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YmjRCwAAQBAJ&q=klan+baptists+methodists&pg=PA8 |publisher=Oxford University Press |date=1995 |page=8 |access-date=December 7, 2020 |isbn=978-0195098365}}</ref> ===== Indiana ===== In Indiana, traditional political historians focused on notorious leaders, especially [[D. C. Stephenson]], the Grand Dragon of the [[Indiana Klan]], whose conviction for the 1925 kidnap, rape, and murder of [[Madge Oberholtzer]] helped destroy the Ku Klux Klan movement nationwide. In his history of 1967, [[Kenneth T. Jackson]] described the Klan of the 1920s as associated with cities and urbanization, with chapters often acting as a kind of fraternal organization to aid people coming from other areas.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} Social historian Leonard Moore titled his monograph ''Citizen Klansmen'' (1997) and contrasted the intolerant rhetoric of the group's leaders with the actions of most of the membership. The Klan was white Protestant, established Americans who were fearful of change represented by new immigrants and Black migrants to the North. They were highly suspicious of Catholics, Jews and Black people, who they believed subverted ideal, Protestant moral standards. Violence was uncommon in most chapters. In Indiana, KKK members directed more threats and economic blacklisting primarily against fellow white Protestants for transgressions of community moral standards, such as adultery, [[Domestic violence|wife-beating]], [[gambling]] and heavy drinking. Up to one third of Indiana's Protestant men joined the order making it, Moore argued, "a kind of interest group for average white Protestants who believed that their values should be dominant in their community and state."{{sfn|Moore|1991}} Northern Indiana's industrial cities had attracted a large Catholic population of European immigrants and their descendants. They established the [[University of Notre Dame]], a major Catholic college near South Bend. In May 1924, when the KKK scheduled a regional meeting in the city, Notre Dame students blocked the Klansmen and stole some KKK regalia. On the next day, the Klansmen counterattacked. Finally, the college president and the football coach [[Knute Rockne]] kept the students on campus to avert further violence.<ref>Arthur Hope. ''The Story of Notre Dame'' (1999) ch 26 [http://archives.nd.edu/hope/hope26.htm online] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100301070126/http://archives.nd.edu/hope/hope26.htm |date=March 1, 2010}}</ref><ref>See also the semi-fictional account {{cite book |last=Tucker |first=Todd |title=Notre Dame vs. The Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan |publisher=[[Loyola Press]] |year=2004 |isbn=978-0829417715}}</ref> ===== Alabama ===== In Alabama, some young, white, urban activists joined the KKK to fight the old guard establishment. [[Hugo Black]] was a member before becoming nationally famous; he focused on anti-Catholicism. However, in rural Alabama the Klan continued to operate to enforce [[Jim Crow laws]]; its members resorted more often to violence against Black people for infringements of the social order of white supremacy.{{sfn|Feldman|1999}} Racial terrorism was used in smaller towns to suppress Black political activity. Elbert Williams of [[Brownsville, Tennessee]], was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize Black residents to register and vote; also that year, Jesse Thornton of [[Luverne, Alabama]], was lynched for failing to address a police officer as "Mister".<ref>"Sixth Lynching", ''The Crisis,'' October 1940, p. 324</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). 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