Ku Klux Klan Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ==History== ===Origin of the name=== The name was probably formed by combining the Greek ''{{lang|grc-Latn|[[kyklos]]}}'' ([[wikt:κύκλος|κύκλος]], which means circle) with ''[[clan]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Horn|1939|p=11}} states that Reed proposed ''{{lang|grc|κύκλος}}'' (''{{lang|grc-Latn|kyklos}}'') and Kennedy added ''clan''. {{harvnb|Wade|1987|p=33}} says that Kennedy came up with both words, but Crowe suggested transforming ''{{lang|grc|κύκλος}}'' into ''{{lang|grc-Latn|kuklux}}''.</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era |website=New Georgia Encyclopedia |date=October 3, 2002 |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919005917/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |archive-date=September 19, 2008 |url-status=live }}</ref> The word had previously been used for other fraternal organizations in the South such as [[Kuklos Adelphon]]. ===First Klan: 1865–1871=== {{main|First Klan}} {{see also|Nathan Bedford Forrest#Ku Klux Klan membership}} ====Creation and naming==== [[File:Kkk-carpetbagger-cartoon.jpg|thumb|A [[cartoon]] threatening that the KKK will [[lynching|lynch]] [[scalawag]]s (left) and [[carpetbagger]]s (right) on March 4, 1869, the day [[Ulysses S. Grant|President Grant]] takes office. [[Tuscaloosa, Alabama]], ''Independent Monitor'', September 1, 1868.{{efn|An analysis of this cartoon can be found in {{harvnb|Hubbs|2015}}}}]] Six [[Confederate States of America|Confederate]] veterans from [[Pulaski, Tennessee]], created the original Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, shortly after the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], during the [[Reconstruction Era in the United States|Reconstruction]] of the South.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=9|ps=: The founders were John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy, James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones.}}{{sfn|Fleming|1905|p=27}} The group was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in [[New Orleans]] (1865) and the [[Knights of the White Camelia]] (1867) in [[Louisiana]].{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=679–680}} Historians generally classify the KKK as part of the post-Civil War [[insurgent]] violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy. In 1866, Mississippi governor [[William L. Sharkey]] reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against Black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses and attacked and killed [[Black people]], leaving their bodies on the roads.{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=671–675}} While racism was a core belief of the Klan, antisemitism was not. Many prominent [[Jews in the Southern United States|Southern Jews]] identified wholly with southern culture, resulting in examples of Jewish participation in the Klan.{{sfn|Lindemann|1991|p=[https://archive.org/details/jewaccusedthreea0000lind/page/225/mode/2up 225]}} [[File:Anti-kkk-cartoon.jpg|thumb|This Frank Bellew cartoon links the Democratic Party with secession and the [[Confederate States of America|Confederate cause.]]<ref>[https://elections.harpweek.com/1868/cartoon-1868-Medium.asp?UniqueID=9&Year=1868#qmitemhl0_13_3 Harper's Weekly] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200803051551/https://elections.harpweek.com/1868/cartoon-1868-Medium.asp?UniqueID=9&Year=1868#qmitemhl0_13_3 |date=August 3, 2020 }}.</ref>|alt=]] At an 1867 meeting in [[Nashville, Tennessee]], Klan members gathered to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting to a national headquarters. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent. [[File:NathanBedfordForrest.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] in Confederate military uniform ]] Former Confederate brigadier general [[George Gordon (Civil War General)|George Gordon]] developed the ''Prescript'', which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights".<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/kkk.html |title=Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868 |publisher=[[State University of New York at Albany]] |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303192240/http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/his101/kkk.html |archive-date=March 3, 2016 }}</ref> The latter is a reference to the [[Ironclad Oath]], which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union. Confederate general [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] was elected the first [[Grand Wizard|grand wizard]], and claimed to be the Klan's national leader.<ref name=autogenerated1 /><ref>{{cite book |title=A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest |last=Wills |first=Brian Steel |year=1992 |publisher=HarperCollins Publishers |location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/battlefromstart00bria/page/336 336] |isbn=978-0060924454 |url=https://archive.org/details/battlefromstart00bria/page/336 }}</ref> In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest stated that the Klan's primary opposition was to the [[Loyal Leagues]], [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] state governments, people such as Tennessee governor [[William Gannaway Brownlow]], and other "[[carpetbagger]]s" and "[[scalawag]]s".<ref>''The Sun''. "Civil War Threatened in Tennessee". September 3, 1868: 2; ''The Charleston Daily News''. "A Talk with General Forrest". September 8, 1868: 1.</ref> He argued that many Southerners believed that Black people were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues.<ref>[[s:Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest|Cincinnati ''Commercial'', August 28, 1868]], quoted in {{harvnb|Wade|1987}}</ref> One Alabama newspaper editor declared "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan."{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=27}} Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan units never accepted the ''Prescript'' and continued to operate autonomously. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership: <blockquote>Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-Black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime [[guerrilla]] bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of Black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]], was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen.{{sfn|Parsons|2005|p=816}}</blockquote> {{Wikisource|Interview with Nathan Bedford Forrest}} Historian [[Eric Foner]] observed: "In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the [[planter class]], and all those who desired restoration of white supremacy. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the Black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=425–426}} To that end they worked to curb the education, economic advancement, [[voting rights]], and [[right to keep and bear arms]] of Black people.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=425–426}} The Klan soon spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a reign of terror against Republican leaders both Black and white. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman [[James M. Hinds]], three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions."{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=342}} ====Activities==== In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled the post-war "raids of the Ku Klux, young white men of [[Rockingham County, Virginia|Rockingham County]] who would go into the huts of the recently freed negroes or catch some negro who had been working for thirty cents a day on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die."<ref>{{Cite news |date=1933-07-07 |title=Former Negro Slave Resident of Shippenberg |pages=6 |work=The News-Chronicle |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-news-chronicle-former-negro-slave-re/129748355/ |access-date=2023-08-10 |via=Newspapers.com}}</ref> Seemingly random whipping attacks, meant to be suggestive of previous condition of servitude, were a widespread aspect of the early Klan; for example in 1870–71 in Limestone Township (now [[Cherokee County, South Carolina|Cherokee County]]), South Carolina, of 77 documented attacks, "four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had had [[Cropping (punishment)|their ears cropped]]."<ref name=":5">{{Cite journal |last=Simkins |first=Francis B. |author-link=Francis Butler Simkins |date=1927 |title=The Ku Klux Klan in South Carolina, 1868-1871 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |journal=The Journal of Negro History |volume=12 |issue=4 |pages=606–647 |doi=10.2307/2714040 |jstor=2714040 |s2cid=149858835 |issn=0022-2992 |access-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-date=August 10, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230810230435/https://www.jstor.org/stable/2714040 |url-status=live }}</ref> [[File:Mississippi ku klux.jpg|thumb|upright|Three Ku Klux Klan members arrested in [[Tishomingo County, Mississippi]], September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|title=History of the Ku Klux Klan – Preach the Cross|access-date=September 15, 2014|publisher=preachthecross.net|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140916012701/http://preachthecross.net/history-of-the-ku-klux-klan/|archive-date=September 16, 2014}}</ref>]] {{Wikisource|Why the Ku Klux}} Klan members adopted masks and robes that hid their identities and added to the drama of their night rides, their chosen time for attacks. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. "The kind of thing that men are afraid or ashamed to do openly, and by day, they accomplish secretly, masked, and at night."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=677–678}} The KKK night riders "sometimes claimed to be ghosts of Confederate soldiers so, as they claimed, to frighten superstitious Blacks. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously."{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=432}} The Klan attacked Black members of the [[Union League|Loyal Leagues]] and intimidated Southern Republicans and [[Freedmen's Bureau]] workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people. "Armed guerrilla warfare killed thousands of Negroes; political riots were staged; their causes or occasions were always obscure, their results always certain: ten to one hundred times as many Negroes were killed as whites." Masked men shot into houses and burned them, sometimes with the occupants still inside. They drove successful Black farmers off their land. "Generally, it can be reported that in North and South Carolina, in 18 months ending in June 1867, there were 197 murders and 548 cases of aggravated assault."{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=674–675}} [[File:George W. Ashburn.jpg|thumb|[[George W. Ashburn]] was assassinated for his pro-Black sentiments.]] Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in [[Louisiana]] within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1868. Although [[St. Landry Parish]] had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders, no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact.{{sfn|Du Bois|1935|pp=680–681}} In the April 1868 [[Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia]] gubernatorial election, [[Columbia County, Georgia|Columbia County]] cast 1,222 votes for Republican [[Rufus Bullock]]. By the [[1868 United States presidential election|November presidential election]], Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for [[Ulysses S. Grant]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |title=Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era |author=Bryant, Jonathan M |website=[[The New Georgia Encyclopedia]] |publisher=[[Georgia Southern University]] |access-date=August 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080919005917/http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 |archive-date=September 19, 2008 |url-status=live }}</ref> Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in [[Jackson County, Florida]], and hundreds more in other counties including Madison, Alachua, Columbia, and Hamilton. Florida Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies.{{sfn|Newton|2001|pp=1–30|ps=. 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''.}} [[File:1875.08.23Prophet1A copy.jpg|thumb|upright|Garb and weapons of the [[Ku Klux Klan in Southern Illinois]], as posed for [[Joseph A. Dacus]] of the ''Missouri Republican,'' in August 1875]] Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, also occurred. In [[Mississippi]], according to the Congressional inquiry: <blockquote>One of these teachers (Miss Allen of Illinois), whose school was at Cotton Gin Port in [[Monroe County, Mississippi|Monroe County]], was visited ... between one and two o'clock in the morning in March 1871, by about fifty men mounted and disguised. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. They treated her "gentlemanly and quietly" but complained of the heavy school-tax, said she must stop teaching and go away and warned her that they never gave a second notice. She heeded the warning and left the county.{{sfn|Rhodes|1920|pp=157–158}}</blockquote> By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}} Members were hiding behind Klan masks and robes as a way to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=102}} There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian [[B. H. Hill]] stating "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=375}} ====Resistance==== {{Wikisource|Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871}} Union Army veterans in mountainous [[Blount County, Alabama]], organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning Black churches and schools. Armed Black people formed their own defense in [[Bennettsville, South Carolina]], and patrolled the streets to protect their homes.{{sfn|Foner|1988|p=435}} National sentiment gathered to crack down on the Klan, even though some Democrats at the national level questioned whether the Klan really existed, or believed that it was a creation of nervous Southern Republican governors.{{sfn|Wade|1987}} Many southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation.<ref name=Ranney2006>{{cite book|last1=Ranney|first1=Joseph A|title=In the Wake of Slavery: Civil War, Civil Rights, and the Reconstruction of Southern Law|date=2006|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0275989729|pages=57–58}}</ref> [[File:BenFrankButler.jpg|thumb|left|upright|[[Benjamin Butler|Benjamin Franklin Butler]] wrote the [[Third Enforcement Act|Civil Rights Act of 1871]].]] In January 1871, [[Pennsylvania]] Republican senator [[John Scott (Pennsylvania)|John Scott]] convened a congressional committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities, accumulating 12 volumes. In February, former Union general and congressman [[Benjamin Butler|Benjamin Franklin Butler]] of Massachusetts introduced the [[Third Enforcement Act|Civil Rights Act of 1871]] (Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him.{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=373}} While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The [[governor of South Carolina]] appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A [[Meridian race riot of 1871|riot and massacre]] occurred in a [[Meridian, Mississippi]], courthouse, from which a Black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=88}} The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend ''[[habeas corpus]].''<ref name="Scaturro">{{cite web| last=Scaturro |first=Frank |title=The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, 1869–1877 |url=http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/granthist4.html |publisher=[[College of St. Scholastica]] |date=October 26, 2006 |access-date=March 5, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110719151209/http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/granthist4.html |archive-date=July 19, 2011 }}</ref> In 1871, President [[Ulysses S. Grant]] signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the [[Enforcement Act of 1870]] were used by the federal government to enforce the civil rights provisions for individuals under the constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of ''habeas corpus'' and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the [[Insurrection Act of 1807]]. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges [[Hugh Lennox Bond]] and George S. Bryan presided over [[South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials of 1871-1872|South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials]] in Columbia, S.C., during December 1871.<ref>p. 5, United States Circuit Court (4th Circuit). ''Proceedings in the Ku Klux Trials at Columbia, S.C. in the United States Circuit Court''. Edited by Benn Pitman and Louis Freeland Post. Columbia, SC: Republican Printing Company, 1872.</ref> The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration with fines.<ref>''The New York Times''. "Kuklux Trials – Sentence of the Prisoners". December 29, 1871.</ref> More Black people served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process.<ref name="Scaturro" /><ref name="jimcrow-stories" /> Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned during the crackdown, "once the national government became set upon a policy of military intervention whole populations which had scouted the authority of the weak 'Radical' government of the State became meek."<ref name=":5" /> ====End of the first Klan==== Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men and that he could muster 40,000 Klansmen within five days' notice. However, the Klan had no membership rosters, no chapters, and no local officers, so it was difficult for observers to judge its membership.<ref>''The New York Times''. "N. B. Forrest". September 3, 1868.</ref> It had created a sensation by the dramatic nature of its masked forays and because of its many murders. In 1870, a federal grand jury determined that the Klan was a "[[terrorist]] organization"{{sfn|Trelease|1995}} and issued hundreds of indictments for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina.{{sfn|Trelease|1995}} Many people not formally inducted into the Klan had used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace".<ref>Quotes from {{harvnb|Wade|1987|p=59}}</ref> Historian [[Stanley Horn]] argues that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment".{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=360}} A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: "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".{{sfn|Horn|1939|p=362}} [[File:NCG-WilliamHolden.jpg|thumb|upright|Gov. [[William Woods Holden|William Holden]] of North Carolina]] In many states, officials were reluctant to use Black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised.<ref name="jimcrow-stories">{{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |title=The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow – The Enforcement Acts (1870–1871) |author=Wormser, Richard |publisher=[[Public Broadcasting Service]] |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160228064916/http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |archive-date=February 28, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref> Republican [[governor of North Carolina]] [[William Woods Holden]] [[Kirk–Holden war|called out the militia against]] the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This and extensive violence and fraud at the polls caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, but their reasons for doing so were numerous.{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=85}} Klan operations ended in South Carolina{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=102}} and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General [[Amos Tappan Ackerman]] led the prosecutions.<ref>{{harvnb|Wade|1987|p=109}}, writes that by 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".</ref> Foner argues that: {{blockquote|By 1872, the federal government's evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority to bear had broken the Klan's back and produced a dramatic decline in violence throughout the South. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan.{{sfn|Foner|1988|pp=458–459}}}} New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the [[White League]], [[Red Shirts (Southern United States)|Red Shirts]], saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered Black political leaders.{{sfn|Wade|1987|pp=109–110}} The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics. In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in ''[[United States v. Harris]]'' that the Klan Act was partially [[Constitutionality|unconstitutional]]. It ruled that Congress's power under the [[Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fourteenth Amendment]] did not include the right to regulate against private conspiracies. It recommended that persons who had been victimized should seek relief in state courts, which were entirely unsympathetic to such appeals.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf |title=History Lesson |author=Balkin, Jack M. |year=2002 |publisher=[[Yale University]] |access-date=February 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304054220/http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf |archive-date=March 4, 2016}}</ref> Klan costumes, also called "[[Ku Klux Klan regalia and insignia|regalia]]", disappeared from use by the early 1870s,{{sfn|Wade|1987|p=109}} after Grand Wizard Forrest called for their destruction as part of disbanding the Klan. The Klan was broken as an organization by 1872.<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow: The Enforcement Acts, 1870–1871"], Public Broadcast Service {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171019161432/https://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html |date=October 19, 2017}}. Retrieved April 5, 2008.</ref> ===Second Klan: 1915–1944=== ====Refounding in 1915==== In 1915, the film ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its endeavors. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1915 by [[William Joseph Simmons]] at [[Stone Mountain]], near Atlanta, with fifteen "charter members".<ref name="time">{{cite news|title=The Various Shady Lives of the Ku Klux Klan|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]]|quote=An itinerant Methodist preacher named William Joseph Simmons started up the Klan again in Atlanta in 1915. Simmons, an ascetic-looking man, was a fetishist on fraternal organizations. He was already a "colonel" in the [[Woodmen of the World]], but he decided to build an organization all his own. He was an effective speaker, with an affinity for alliteration; he had preached on "Women, Weddings and Wives", "Red Heads, Dead Heads and No Heads", and the "Kinship of Kourtship and Kissing". On Thanksgiving Eve 1915, Simmons took 15 friends to the top of Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, built an altar on which he placed an American flag, a Bible and an unsheathed sword, set fire to a crude wooden cross, muttered a few incantations about a "practical fraternity among men", and declared himself Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.|date=April 9, 1965|access-date=August 1, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090806144942/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html|archive-date=August 6, 2009}}</ref> Its growth was based on a new anti-immigrant, [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States|anti-Catholic]], [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibitionist]] and [[anti-Semitic]] agenda, which reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in ''The Birth of a Nation''; membership was kept secret by wearing masks in public. =====''The Birth of a Nation''===== [[File:Dixonfp.jpg|thumb|left|Frontispiece to the first edition of Dixon's ''The Clansman'', by [[Arthur I. Keller]]]] [[File:'The Fiery Cross of old Scotland's hills!'.jpg|thumb|"The Fiery Cross of old Scotland's hills!" Illustration from the first edition of ''The Clansman'', by Arthur I. Keller. Note figures in background.]] [[File:Birth of a Nation theatrical poster.jpg|thumb|Movie poster for ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'', which has been widely credited with inspiring the 20th-century revival of the Ku Klux Klan]] Director [[D. W. Griffith]]'s ''The Birth of a Nation'' glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play ''[[The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan]]'', as well as the book ''[[The Leopard's Spots]]'', both by [[Thomas Dixon Jr.]] Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the [[Cross burning|burning cross]]. Its imagery was based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir [[Walter Scott]]. The film's influence was enhanced by a false claim of endorsement by President [[Woodrow Wilson]]. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the [[White House]]. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson strongly disliked the film and felt he had been tricked by Dixon. The White House issued a denial of the "lightning" quote, saying that he was entirely unaware of the nature of the film and at no time had expressed his approbation of it.<ref>{{cite book|author=John Milton Cooper Jr.|title=Woodrow Wilson: A Biography |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xOZVsyO4K2cC&pg=PA273|year=2011|publisher=Random House Digital, Inc.|pages=272–273|isbn=978-0307277909|access-date=June 27, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150414055749/http://books.google.com/books?id=xOZVsyO4K2cC&pg=PA273|archive-date=April 14, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> ====Goals==== [[File:Ku Klux Klan Virgina 1922 Parade.jpg|thumb|Three Ku Klux Klan members at a 1922 parade]] [[File:KKK - St Patricks Dau (cr).jpg|thumb|In this 1926 cartoon, the Ku Klux Klan chases the Catholic Church, personified by [[St. Patrick]], from the shores of America. Among the "snakes" are various supposed negative attributes of the Church, including superstition, the union of church and state, control of public schools, and intolerance.]] The first and third Klans were primarily Southeastern groups aimed against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened the scope of the organization to appeal to people in the Midwestern and Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American.<ref name="HCUA" /> The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers".<ref>Brian R. Farmer, ''American Conservatism: History, Theory and Practice'' (2005), p. 208.{{ISBN?}}</ref> Much of the Klan's energy went into guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Blee says that its members wanted to protect "the interests of white womanhood".{{sfn|Blee|1991|p=47}} Joseph Simmons published the pamphlet ''ABC of the Invisible Empire'' in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism".<ref>{{cite book|last=McWhirter|first=Cameron|title=Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America|date=2011|publisher=Henry Holt and Company, LLC| location=New York|isbn=978-0805089066|page=65}}</ref> Such moral-sounding purpose underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, recruiting members with a promise of aid for settling into the new urban societies of rapidly growing cities such as Dallas and Detroit.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} During the 1930s, particularly after [[James A. Colescott]] of Indiana took over as imperial wizard, opposition to [[Communism]] became another primary aim of the Klan.<ref name="HCUA" /> ====Organization==== New Klan founder [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]] joined 12 different fraternal organizations and [[Ku Klux Klan recruitment|recruited for the Klan]] with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html |title=Nation: 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/20090806144942/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,898581,00.html |archive-date=August 6, 2009 }}</ref> Klan organizers called "[[Kleagle]]s" signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received KKK costumes in return. 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 rally, often with burning crosses, and perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher. He left town with the money collected. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers. Simmons initially met with little success in either recruiting members or in raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta: ''Searchlight'' (1919–1924), ''Imperial Night-Hawk'' (1923–1924), and ''The Kourier''.{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=296}}<ref>{{cite magazine |url=https://archive.org/details/ImperialNighthawkVol.1No.77 |magazine=Imperial Nighthawk |volume=1 |issue=8 |date=January 1, 1923|location=Atlanta, Georgia |publisher=Knights of the Ku Klux Klan|via=Internet Archive|title=Imperial Nighthawk Vol. 1 No. 8 }}</ref><ref>{{OCLC |magazine=The Kourier |date=January 1, 1924 |oclc=1755269}}</ref> ====Perceived moral threats==== The second Klan was a response to the growing power of Catholics and [[American Jews]] and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values, as well as some high-profile instances of violence against whites.{{sfn|Baker|2011}} The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in [[Indiana]]. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in [[Detroit]] and [[Dayton]] in the Midwest, and [[Atlanta]], [[Dallas]], [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]], and [[Houston]] in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=241}} Members of the KKK swore to uphold American values and Christian morality, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK;{{sfn|Jackson|1967|p=18}} indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. Historian Robert Moats Miller reports that "not a single endorsement of the Klan was found by the present writer in the Methodist press, while many of the attacks on the Klan were quite savage. ...The Southern Baptist press condoned the aims but condemned the methods of the Klan." National denominational organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it.<ref>{{cite journal|jstor = 2954550|title = A Note on the Relationship between the Protestant Churches and the Revived Ku Klux Klan|journal = The Journal of Southern History|volume = 22|issue = 3|pages = 355–368|last1 = Miller|first1 = Robert Moats|year = 1956|doi = 10.2307/2954550}}, quotes pp. 360, 363.</ref> The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klan were. However, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization. The most violent Klan was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, several members of the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman. They burned the letters "KKK" into his forehead and gave him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, explicitly and publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Encouraged by the approval of this whipping, Klansmen in Dallas whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been Black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men who were accused of offenses against their wives such as adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support or gambling. Klansmen often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whippings so they could write a story about it in the next day's newspaper.<ref name="auto">{{Cite web |url=https://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2017/02/backstory-kkk-paraded-oak-cliff/ |title=Backstory: When the KKK paraded in Oak Cliff |access-date=March 17, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190327091648/https://oakcliff.advocatemag.com/2017/02/backstory-kkk-paraded-oak-cliff/ |archive-date=March 27, 2019 |url-status=live |date=February 28, 2017 }}</ref> All the Dallas newspapers strongly condemned the Klan. Historians report that the ''Morning News'': "diligently published thousands of anti-Klan editorials, exposés, and critical stories, informing its readership of Klan activities in their community as well as from around the state and the nation."<ref>Amber Jolly and Ted Banks, "Dallas Ku Klux Klan No. 66," ''Handbook of Texas'' (2022) [https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/dallas-ku-klux-klan-no-66 online]</ref> The Alabama KKK whipped both white and Black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_ba2ce3d7-16a0-5e6a-af20-d527135cd9b5.html |title=Baldwin: The Ku Klux Klan in Randolph County |date=March 3, 2010 |access-date=March 26, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326234153/http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_ba2ce3d7-16a0-5e6a-af20-d527135cd9b5.html |archive-date=March 26, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_d1c0b824-a217-57b5-ad03-509e0fe88125.html |title=Baldwin: Local Klan enforced their version of law here |date=March 10, 2010 |access-date=March 26, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190326234155/http://www.therandolphleader.com/opinion/columns/article_d1c0b824-a217-57b5-ad03-509e0fe88125.html |archive-date=March 26, 2019 |url-status=live }}</ref> Anti-Catholicism was a main concern of the Alabama Klan, and [[Hugo Black#Ku Klux Klan and anti-Catholicism|Hugo Black]] built his political career in the 1920s on fighting Catholicism. Black, a Democrat, went on to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Supreme Court.<ref>Daniel M. Berman, "Hugo L. Black: The Early Years". ''Catholic University Law Review'' (1959). 8 (2): 103–116 [https://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3011&context=lawreview online].</ref> ====Rapid growth==== In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, [[Mary Elizabeth Tyler|Elizabeth Tyler]] and [[Edward Young Clarke]].{{sfn|Newton|2009|p=70}} The new leadership invigorated the Klan and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members based on current social tensions, and stressed responses to fears raised by defiance of [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized [[History of antisemitism in the United States|anti-Jewish]], [[Anti-Catholicism in the United States|anti-Catholic]], [[anti-immigrant]] and later [[anti-communism|anti-Communist]] positions. It presented itself as a fraternal, nativist and strenuously patriotic organization; and its leaders emphasized support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition laws. It expanded membership dramatically to a 1924 peak of 1.5 million to 4 million, which was between 4–15% of the eligible population.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}} By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}} It had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, the Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised both [[Republican Party (United States)|Republicans]] and Democrats, as well as [[Independent voter|independents]]. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, "it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties".<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen D.|last=Cummings|title=Red States, Blue States, and the Coming Sharecropper Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H4NNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA119|year=2008|page=119|publisher=Algora |access-date=February 27, 2016| isbn=978-0875866277| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160416201847/https://books.google.com/books?id=H4NNBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA119|archive-date=April 16, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> Sociologist [[Rory M. McVeigh|Rory McVeigh]] has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties: {{blockquote|Klan leaders hope to have all major candidates competing to win the movement's endorsement. ... The Klan's leadership wanted to keep their options open and repeatedly announced that the movement was not aligned with any political party. This non-alliance strategy was also valuable as a recruiting tool. The Klan drew its members from Democratic as well as Republican voters. If the movement had aligned itself with a single political party, it would have substantially narrowed its pool of potential recruits.{{sfn|McVeigh|2009|p=184}}}} Religion was a major selling point. [[Kelly J. Baker]] argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross was a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. But no nationally prominent religious leader said he was a Klan member.{{sfn|Baker|2011}} Economists Fryer and Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative, [[multi-level marketing]] campaign. They also argue that the Klan leadership focused more intently on monetizing the organization during this period than fulfilling the political goals of the organization. Local leaders profited from expanding their membership.{{sfn|Fryer|Levitt|2012}} ====Prohibition==== Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition.{{sfn|Pegram|2011|pp=119–156}} The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's "support for [[Prohibition in the United States|Prohibition]] represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation".{{sfn|Prendergast|1987|pp=25–52 [27]}} The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes with violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in [[Union County, Arkansas]]. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated activities.{{sfn|Barr|1999|p=370}} ====Urbanization==== [[File:theendkkk.jpg|thumb|"The End" referring to the end of Catholic influence in the US. ''[[Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty]]'' 1926]] 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 the North, West, 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 feared the waves of newcomers to the industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were mostly Catholic or Jewish; 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 Midwest. The Klan also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} In the medium-size industrial city of [[Worcester, Massachusetts]], in the 1920s, the Klan ascended to power quickly but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no violence and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as "night-shirt knights". Half of the members were [[Swedish Americans]], including some first-generation immigrants. The [[Ethnic violence|ethnic]] and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to the rise of the Klan in the city. Swedish Protestants were struggling against Irish Catholics, who had been entrenched longer, for political and ideological control of the city.<ref>Emily Parker (Fall 2009). {{"'}}Night-Shirt Knights' in the City: The Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Worcester, Massachusetts", ''New England Journal of History'', Vol. 66 Issue 1, pp. 62–78.</ref> In 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 that the rural stereotype was false for that state: <blockquote>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 [[Protestantism|Protestants]], of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as [[fundamentalism|fundamentalists]]. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.{{sfn|Moore|1991|p=9}}</blockquote> 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 which they had wanted. Millions joined and at its peak in the 1920s the organization claimed numbers that amounted to 15% of the nation's eligible population. The lessening of social tensions contributed to the Klan's decline. ====Costumes and the burning cross==== [[File:Ku Klux Klan members and a burning cross, Denver, Colorado, 1921.jpg|thumb|[[Cross burning]] was introduced by [[William Joseph Simmons|William J. Simmons]], the founder of the second Klan in 1915.]] The distinctive white costume permitted large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies, while keeping the membership roles a secret. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers. The second Klan embraced the burning [[Latin cross]] as a dramatic display of symbolism, with a tone of intimidation.<ref name="Greenhouse">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/us/supreme-court-roundup-free-speech-or-hate-speech-court-weighs-cross-burning.html?pagewanted=all|title=Supreme Court Roundup; Free Speech or Hate Speech? Court Weighs Cross Burning|last=Greenhouse|first=Linda|date=May 29, 2002|work=The New York Times|access-date=February 20, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090724115314/http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/29/us/supreme-court-roundup-free-speech-or-hate-speech-court-weighs-cross-burning.html?pagewanted=all|archive-date=July 24, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of [[hymn]]s, and other overtly religious symbolism.{{sfn|Wade|1998}} In his novel ''The Clansman'', Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used [[Crann Tara|fiery crosses]] from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans,<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3xhhv4 |title=Were Scots responsible for the Ku Klux Klan? |last1=Oliver |first1=Neil |author-link=Neil Oliver |last2=Frantz Parsons |first2=Elaine |publisher=BBC |access-date=October 4, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023030843/http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/z3xhhv4 |archive-date=October 23, 2017 |url-status=live }}</ref> and film director D.W. Griffith used this image in ''The Birth of a Nation''; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.<ref>{{cite web |first=Cecil |last=Adams |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1038/why-does-the-ku-klux-klan-burn-crosses |title=Why does the Ku Klux Klan burn crosses? |website=The Straight Dope |date=June 18, 1993 |access-date=December 24, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100619134951/http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1038/why-does-the-ku-klux-klan-burn-crosses |archive-date=June 19, 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref> ====Women==== {{main|Women of the Ku Klux Klan}} By the 1920s, the KKK developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, stressing liquor's negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. As a result of the Women's Klan's efforts, Texas would not hire Catholic teachers to work in its public schools. As sexual and financial scandals rocked the Klan leadership late in the 1920s, the organization's popularity among both men and women dropped off sharply.{{sfn|Blee|1991}} ====Political role==== [[File:klan-sheet-music.jpg|thumb|left|Sheet music to "We Are All Loyal Klansmen", 1923]] The second Klan expanded with new chapters in cities in the Midwest and West, and reached both Republicans and Democrats, as well as men without a party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans to make common cause in the North.<ref>Pegram, Thomas R. (2008). "Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition Enforcement". ''Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era'' vol. 7 no. 1 pp. 89–119</ref> The Klan had numerous members in every part of the United States but was particularly strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and comprised 20% of the adult white male population in many broad geographic regions, and 40% in some areas.<ref>Marty Gitlin (2009). ''The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture''. p. 20.{{ISBN?}}</ref> The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially [[Saskatchewan]], where it opposed Catholics.{{sfn|Sher|1983}} In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The [[Indiana Klan]] was perhaps the most prominent Ku Klux Klan in the nation. It claimed more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members.<ref name=nicfh>{{cite web| url=http://www.centerforhistory.org/indiana_history_main7.html|title=Indiana History Chapter Seven|publisher=Northern Indiana Center for History|access-date=October 7, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080411163028/http://www.centerforhistory.org/indiana_history_main7.html|archive-date=April 11, 2008}}</ref> In 1924 it supported Republican [[Edward L. Jackson|Edward Jackson]] in his successful campaign for governor.<ref name="Library" /> Catholic and liberal Democrats—who were strongest in northeastern cities—decided to make the Klan an issue at the [[1924 Democratic National Convention]] in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100.<ref>Robert A. Slayton (2001). ''Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith''. pp. 211–213{{ISBN?}}</ref> The leading presidential candidates were [[William Gibbs McAdoo]], a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor [[Al Smith]], a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Lee N. |last=Allen |title=The McAdoo Campaign for the Presidential Nomination in 1924 |journal=Journal of Southern History |year=1963 |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=211–228 |jstor=2205041 |doi=10.2307/2205041 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first=Douglas B. |last=Craig |title=After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, 1920–1934 |year=1992 |location=Chapel Hill |publisher=University of North Carolina Press |at=ch. 2–3 |isbn=978-0807820582 }}</ref> [[File:Children with Dr. Samuel Green, Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, July 24, 1948.jpg|thumb|Two children wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods stand on either side of [[Samuel Green (Ku Klux Klan)|Samuel Green]], a Ku Klux Klan [[Grand Dragon]], at [[Stone Mountain, Georgia]], on July 24, 1948.|alt=]] In some states, such as Alabama and California, KKK chapters had worked for political reform. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in [[Anaheim, California]]. The city had been controlled by an entrenched commercial-civic elite that was mostly [[German Americans|German American]]. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, the German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition laws – the mayor had been a saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically oriented non-ethnic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic and self-serving. The historian Christopher Cocoltchos says the Klansmen tried to create a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in [[Orange County, California]]. The economic and occupational profile of the pro- and anti-Klan groups shows the two were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many [[Catholic Germans]]. Individuals who joined the Klan had earlier demonstrated a much higher rate of voting and civic activism than did their opponents. Cocoltchos suggests that many of the individuals in Orange County joined the Klan out of that sense of civic activism. The Klan representatives easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924. They fired city employees who were known to be Catholic and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council tried to enforce Prohibition. After its victory, the Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer.<ref name="Cocoltchos" /> The opposition organized, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed the Klansmen running in the state primaries; they defeated most of the candidates. Klan opponents in 1925 took back local government and succeeded in a special election in recalling the Klansmen who had been elected in April 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed, its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local [[Klavern]] moved to Kansas.<ref name="Cocoltchos">Christopher N. Cocoltchos (2004). "The Invisible Empire and the Search for the Orderly Community: The Ku Klux Klan in Anaheim, California". Shawn Lay, ed. ''The invisible empire in the West'', pp. 97–120.{{ISBN?}}</ref> In the South, Klan members were still Democratic, as it was essentially a one-party region for whites. Klan chapters were closely allied with Democratic police, sheriffs, and other functionaries of local government. Due to [[Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era|disenfranchisement]] of most African Americans and many poor whites around the start of the 20th century, the only political activity for whites took place within the Democratic Party. In Alabama, Klan members advocated better public schools, effective [[Prohibition]] enforcement, expanded road construction, and other political measures to benefit lower-class [[white people]]. By 1925, the Klan was a political force in the state, as leaders such as [[J. Thomas Heflin]], [[David Bibb Graves]], and [[Hugo Black]] tried to build political power against the Black Belt wealthy [[Planter (American South)|planters]], who had long dominated the state.{{sfn|Feldman|1999}} In 1926, with Klan support, [[Bibb Graves]] won the Alabama governor's office. He was a former Klan chapter head. 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, and then under court order, the Klan was unable to break the planters' and rural areas' hold on legislative power. Scholars and biographers have recently examined Hugo Black's Klan role. Ball finds regarding the KKK that Black "sympathized with the group's economic, nativist, and anti-Catholic beliefs".{{sfn|Ball|1996|p=16}} Newman says Black "disliked the Catholic Church as an institution" and gave over 100 anti-Catholic speeches to KKK meetings across Alabama in his 1926 election campaign.<ref>Roger K. Newman (1997). ''Hugo Black: A Biography''. pp. 87, 104 {{ISBN?}}</ref> Black was elected US senator in 1926 as a Democrat. In 1937 President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] appointed Black to the Supreme Court without knowing how active in the Klan he had been in the 1920s. He was confirmed by his fellow Senators before the full KKK connection was known; Justice Black said he left the Klan when he became a senator.{{sfn|Ball|1996|p=96}} ====Resistance and decline==== [[File:D. C. Stephenson Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan in Indiana, c 1922.jpg|thumb|upright|[[D. C. Stephenson]], Grand Dragon of the [[Indiana Klan]]. His conviction in 1925 for the murder of [[Madge Oberholtzer]], a white schoolteacher, led to the decline of the Indiana Klan.]] Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as [[Reinhold Niebuhr]] in Detroit, spoke out against the Klan, gaining national attention. The Jewish [[Anti-Defamation League]] was formed in the early 20th century in response to attacks on [[American Jews|Jewish Americans]], including the lynching of [[Leo Frank]] in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to [[Compulsory public education in the United States|prohibit private schools]] (which was chiefly aimed at Catholic parochial schools). Opposing groups worked to penetrate the Klan's secrecy. After one civic group in Indiana began to publish Klan membership lists, there was a rapid decline in the number of Klan members. The [[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) launched public education campaigns in order to inform people about Klan activities and lobbied in Congress against Klan abuses. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly.{{sfn|Jackson|1967}} Specific events contributed to the Klan's decline as well. In Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon [[D. C. Stephenson]] destroyed the image of the KKK as upholders of law and order. By 1926 the Klan was "crippled and discredited".<ref name="Library">{{cite web|url=http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|title=Ku Klux Klan in Indiana|publisher=Indiana State Library|date=November 2000|access-date=September 27, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090918163319/http://www.in.gov/library/2848.htm|archive-date=September 18, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> D. C. Stephenson was the grand dragon of Indiana and 22 northern states. In 1923 he had led the states under his control in order to break away from the national KKK organization. At his 1925 trial, he was convicted of second-degree murder for his part in the rape, and subsequent death, of [[Madge Oberholtzer]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |title=D. C. Stephenson manuscript collection |publisher=Indiana Historical Society |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100208221521/http://www.indianahistory.org/library/manuscripts/collection_guides/m0264.html |archive-date=February 8, 2010 }}</ref> After Stephenson's conviction, the Klan declined dramatically in Indiana. The historian Leonard Moore says that a failure in leadership caused the Klan's collapse: <blockquote>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 uninterested 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.{{sfn|Moore|1991|p=186}}</blockquote> [[File:Kkk1928.jpg|thumb|left|Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1928.|alt=]] In Alabama, KKK [[vigilantes]] launched a wave of physical terror in 1927. They targeted both Black and white people for violations of racial norms and for perceived moral lapses.{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|pp=432–433}} This led to a strong backlash, beginning in the media. [[Grover C. Hall]] Sr., editor of the ''[[Montgomery Advertiser]]'' from 1926, wrote a series of editorials and articles that attacked the Klan. (Today the paper says it "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]".)<ref name=history>[http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser "History of the Montgomery Advertiser"]. ''Montgomery Advertiser'': a Gannett Company. Retrieved November 8, 2013. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120825232802/http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/99999999/CUSTOMERSERVICE01/91026023/History-Montgomery-Advertiser |date=August 25, 2012 }}</ref> Hall won a [[Pulitzer Prize]] for the crusade, the 1928 [[Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing|Editorial Writing Pulitzer]], citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance".{{sfn|Rogers|Ward|Atkins|Flynt|1994|p=433}}<ref>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing "Editorial Writing"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131031075115/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Editorial-Writing |date=October 31, 2013 }}. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 8, 2013.</ref> Other newspapers kept up a steady, loud attack on the Klan, referring to the organization as violent and "un-American". Sheriffs cracked down on activities. In the [[1928 United States presidential election|1928 presidential election]], the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate [[Al Smith]] and voted the Democratic Party line as usual. Although in decline, a measure of the Klan's influence was still evident when it staged its march along [[Pennsylvania Avenue]] in [[Washington, D.C.]], in 1928. By 1930, Klan membership in Alabama dropped to less than 6,000. Small independent units continued to be active in the industrial city of [[Birmingham, Alabama|Birmingham]]. KKK units were active through the 1930s in parts of Georgia, with a group of "night riders" in [[Atlanta]] enforcing their moral views by flogging people who violated them, whites as well as Black people. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating murders of a young white couple taken from their car on a lovers lane, and flogged a white barber to death for drinking, both in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". As the police began to investigate, they found the records of the KKK had disappeared from their East Point office. The cases were reported by the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]''<ref name="records">[http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz "Klan's Records Vanish in Terror Quiz/Floggers Linked to Killings in Lovers Lane"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204085445/http://archives.chicagotribune.com/1940/03/24/page/19/article/klans-records-vanish-in-face-of-terror-quiz/ |date=February 4, 2017}}, ''Chicago Tribune'', March 24, 1940; accessed February 3, 2017</ref> and the NAACP in its ''[[The Crisis|Crisis]]'' magazine,<ref name="crisis">{{cite magazine |date=October 1940 |title=Sixth Lynching |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |magazine=[[The Crisis]] |publisher=[[NAACP|National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] |volume=47 |issue=10 |pages=323–324 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215093611/https://books.google.com/books?id=7FoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA324 |archive-date=February 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> as well as local papers. In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) took place in the South: [[Elbert Williams]] was the first NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in [[Brownsville, Tennessee]], for working to register Black people to vote, and several other activists were run out of town; [[Jesse Thornton]] was lynched in [[Luverne, Alabama]], for a minor social infraction; and 16-year-old [[Lynching of Austin Callaway|Austin Callaway]], a suspect in the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the middle of the night and killed by six white men in [[LaGrange, Georgia]].<ref name="crisis" /> In January 2017, the police chief and mayor of LaGrange apologized for their offices' failures to protect Callaway, at a reconciliation service marking his death.<ref name="cnn">{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |title='Justice failed Austin Callaway': Town attempts to atone for 1940 lynching |first=Emanuella |last=Grinberg |publisher=[[CNN]] |date=January 27, 2017 |access-date=February 3, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202065324/http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/us/lagrange-georgia-callaway-1940-lynching/ |archive-date=February 2, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|title=Nightly News Full Broadcast (January 27th)|publisher=[[NBC News]]|access-date=February 3, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202064213/http://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/nightly-news-full-broadcast-january-27th-864596547728|archive-date=February 2, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> ====Labor and anti-unionism==== In major Southern cities such as [[Birmingham, Alabama]], Klan members kept control of access to the better-paying industrial jobs and opposed unions. During the 1930s and 1940s, Klan leaders urged members to disrupt the [[Congress of Industrial Organizations]] (CIO), which advocated industrial unions and accepted African American members, unlike earlier unions. With access to dynamite and using the skills from their jobs in mining and steel, in the late 1940s some Klan members in Birmingham used bombings to destroy houses in order to intimidate upwardly mobile Black people who moved into middle-class neighborhoods. It has been said that "By mid-1949, there were so many charred house carcasses that the area [College Hills] was informally named Dynamite Hill."<ref name=Carry /> Activism by these independent KKK groups in Birmingham increased as a reaction to the [[civil rights movement]] of the 1950s and 1960s. Independent Klan groups violently opposed the civil rights movement.<ref name=Carry>Diane McWhorter, ''Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution'', New York: Touchstone Book, 2002, p. 75.{{ISBN?}}</ref> KKK members were implicated in the [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing]] on a Sunday in September 1963, which killed four African American girls and injured 22 other people. Members of the [[Communist Workers' Party (United States)|Communist Workers' Party]] came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 [[Greensboro massacre#Background|Greensboro massacre]].<ref name=wayback /><ref name="death">{{cite web| title= 'Death to the Klan' March| url= http://ncpedia.org/death-klan-march| website= NCpedia| publisher= [[North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources]]| access-date= March 26, 2016| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20170731230118/http://www.ncpedia.org/death-klan-march| archive-date= July 31, 2017| url-status=live| df= mdy-all}}</ref> ====Development of Christian Identity Theology==== {{see also|Serpent seed|Christian Identity}} According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of [[British Israelism]] and began to develop [[Christian Identity|Christian Identity Theology]] in the 1910s.{{sfn|Schamber|Stroud|2000|p=11}} During the 1920s, Monson published ''Satan's Seat: The Enemy of Our Race'' in which he adopted [[Russel Kelso Carter]]'s theory that Jews and non-whites were descended from the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Monson connected the work of the corrupt race to the activities of the Catholic Church and the Pope. Monson's ideas were popular among some KKK members in the 1950s.{{sfn|Schamber|Stroud|2000|p=11}} ===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> ===Later Klans: 1950s–present=== In 1944, the second KKK was disbanded by Imperial Wizard [[James A. Colescott]] after the IRS levied a large tax liability against the organization.<ref>{{cite news |title=Dr. Colescott Dies. Successor of Hiram W. Evans Disbanded Order in 1944. Joined Group in 1920s. |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1950/01/13/archives/dr-colescott-dies-exchief-of-klan-successor-of-hiram-w-evans.html |quote=Dr. James A. Colescott, former chief of the Ku Klux Klan, died last night in the United States veterans' Hospital at Coral Gables. His age was 53. ... |work=The New York Times |date=January 13, 1950 |access-date=February 11, 2009 |archive-date=February 4, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204211450/http://www.nytimes.com/1950/01/13/archives/dr-colescott-dies-exchief-of-klan-successor-of-hiram-w-evans.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In 1946, [[Samuel Green (Klansman)|Samuel Green]] reestablished the KKK at a ceremony on Stone Mountain.{{sfn|Quarles|1999|pp=80–83}} His group primarily operated in Georgia. Green was succeeded by [[Samuel Roper (Ku Klux Klan)|Samuel Roper]] as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was succeeded by [[Eldon Edwards]] in 1950.<ref name="ajcobit1986">Staff report (March 4, 1986). Samuel W. Roper, 90, was second director of GBI in early 1940s. ''[[Atlanta Journal-Constitution]]''</ref> Based in Atlanta, Edwards worked to rebuild the organization by uniting the different factions of the KKK from other parts of the United States, but the strength of the organization was short-lived, and the group fractured as it competed with other klan organizations. In 1959, [[Roy Elonzo Davis|Roy Davis]] was elected to follow Edwards as national leader.<ref>{{cite news|title=Imperial Wizard Says KKK's Membership Very Small in Texas|date=February 11, 1961|work=Dallas Morning News}}</ref> Edwards had previously appointed Davis Grand Dragon of Texas in an effort to unite their two klan organizations. Davis was already leading the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Davis held rallies Florida and other southern states during 1961 and 1962 recruiting members. Davis had been a close associate of William J. Simmons and been active in the KKK since it first reformed in 1915.<ref>{{cite news|title=Ku Klux Klan Active In Shreveport Area|publisher=The Times of Shreveport|date=February 10, 1961}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Klan Is Renounced By 4,000 at Chattanooga|publisher=The Tennessean|date=October 4, 1924}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Simmons Order Growing Rapidly|publisher=Arkansas Gazette|date=October 6, 1924}}</ref> Congress launched an investigation into the KKK in early 1964, following the [[assassination of John F. Kennedy]] in Dallas. Davis, based in Dallas, resigned as Imperial Wizard of the Original Knights shortly after the Original Knights received a Congressional subpoena. The Original Knights became increasingly fractured in the immediate aftermath as many members were forced to testify before Congress.<ref name=c49>{{cite book |author=Committee on Un-American Activities |title=Activities of Ku Klux Klan Organizations of the United States; Parts 1–5 |publisher=United States Congress |date=January 1966 |page=49}}</ref> The [[White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan]] formed in 1964 after splitting from the Original Knights.<ref name="noag">{{cite news|title=No Assistance Given In Case|date=May 18, 1965|publisher=Lake Charles American Press}}</ref> According to an FBI report published in May 1965, the KKK was divided into 14 different organizations at the time with a total membership of approximately 9,000.<ref name="noag"/> The FBI reported that Roy Davis's Original Knights was the largest faction and had about 1,500 members. [[Robert Shelton (Ku Klux Klan)|Robert Shelton]] of Alabama was leading a faction of 400–600 members.<ref name="noag"/> Congressional investigators found that by the end of 1965 most members of Original Knights organization joined Shelton's United Klans and the Original Knights of the KKK disbanded. Shelton's United Klan continued to absorb members from the competing factions and remained the largest Klan group unto the 1970s, peaking with an estimated 30,000 members and another 250,000 non-member supporters during the late 1960s.<ref name=c49/><ref name="UKA-Obit">{{cite news |title=Robert Shelton, 73, Leader of Big Klan Faction |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/us/robert-shelton-73-leader-of-big-klan-faction.html |work=The New York Times |date=March 20, 2003 |access-date=September 18, 2007 |archive-date=May 18, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090518014732/http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/20/us/robert-shelton-73-leader-of-big-klan-faction.html |url-status=live }}</ref> ====1950s–1960s: post-war opposition to civil rights==== After the decline of the national organization, small independent groups adopted the name "Ku Klux Klan", along with variations. They had no formal relationships with each other, and most had no connection to the second KKK, except for the fact that they copied its terminology and costumes. Beginning in the 1950s, for instance, individual Klan groups in [[Birmingham, Alabama]], began to resist social change and Black people's efforts to improve their lives by bombing houses in transitional neighborhoods. The white men worked in mining and steel industries, with access to these materials. There were so many bombings of Black people's homes in Birmingham by Klan groups in the 1950s that the city was nicknamed "[[Bombingham]]".{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} During the tenure of [[Bull Connor]] as police commissioner in Birmingham, Klan groups were closely allied with the police and operated with impunity. When the [[Freedom Riders]] arrived in Birmingham in 1961, Connor gave Klan members fifteen minutes to attack the riders before sending in the police to quell the attack.{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} When local and state authorities failed to protect the Freedom Riders and activists, the federal government began to establish intervention and protection. In states such as Alabama and [[Mississippi]], Klan members forged alliances with governors' administrations.{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} In Birmingham and elsewhere, the KKK groups bombed the houses of [[civil rights]] activists. In some cases they used physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly against individuals. Continuing [[disfranchisement]] of Black people across the South meant that most could not serve on juries, which were [[all-white juries|all-white]] and demonstrably biased verdicts and sentences.{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} [[File:FBI Poster of Missing Civil Rights Workers.jpg|thumb|[[Andrew Goodman (activist)|Goodman]], [[James Chaney|Chaney]], and [[Michael Schwerner|Schwerner]] were three civil rights workers abducted and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.]] According to a report from the [[Southern Regional Council]] in [[Atlanta]], the homes of 40 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 were either people who refused to bow to racist convention or were innocent bystanders, unsuspecting victims of random violence.{{sfn|Egerton|1994|pp=562–563}} Among the more notorious murders by Klan members in the 1950s and 1960s were: * The 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of the home of [[National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]] (NAACP) activists [[Harry T. Moore|Harry and Harriette Moore]] in [[Mims, Florida]], resulting in their deaths.<ref>"[http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/454.html Who Was Harry T. Moore?]" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118102012/http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/454.html |date=January 18, 2012 }} ''The Palm Beach Post'', August 16, 1999.</ref> * The 1957 murder of [[Willie Edwards|Willie Edwards Jr]]., who was forced by Klansmen to jump to his death from a bridge into the [[Alabama River]].<ref>{{cite news |last=Cox |first=Major W. |title=Justice Still Absent in Bridge Death |url=http://www.majorcox.com/columns/edwards1.htm |work=[[Montgomery Advertiser]] |date=March 2, 1999 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101126110805/http://majorcox.com/columns/edwards1.htm |archive-date=November 26, 2010}}</ref> * The 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer [[Medgar Evers]] in Mississippi. In 1994, former Ku Klux Klansman [[Byron De La Beckwith]] was convicted. * The [[16th Street Baptist Church bombing]] in September 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four [[African-American|African American]] girls and injured 22 people. The perpetrators were Klan members [[Robert Chambliss]], convicted in 1977, [[Thomas Edwin Blanton Jr.]] and [[Bobby Frank Cherry]], convicted in 2001 and 2002. The fourth suspect, [[Herman Cash]], died before he was indicted. * The 1964 [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]], three civil rights workers, in Mississippi. Seven men were convicted of federal civil rights charges in the 1960s. In June 2005, Klan member [[Edgar Ray Killen]] was convicted of state [[manslaughter]] charges.<ref>{{cite news |last=Axtman |first=Kris |title=Mississippi verdict greeted by a generation gap |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/p01s03-ussc.html |work=[[The Christian Science Monitor]] |date=June 23, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060629153401/http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0623/p01s03-ussc.html |archive-date=June 29, 2006 |url-status=live }}</ref> * The 1964 murder of two Black teenagers, [[Mississippi Cold Case#Moore and Dee murders|Henry Hezekiah Dee]] and [[Mississippi Cold Case#Moore and Dee murders|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. Seale, who died in prison in 2011, was a former Mississippi policeman and sheriff's deputy.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://news.findlaw.com/usatoday/docs/crights/usseale12407ind.html |title=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 |access-date=March 23, 2008 |date=January 24, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080328042914/http://news.findlaw.com/usatoday/docs/crights/usseale12407ind.html |archive-date=March 28, 2008 }}</ref> * 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 related to the [[Selma to Montgomery marches|Selma to Montgomery March]]. * The 1966 firebombing death of NAACP leader [[Vernon Dahmer]] Sr., 58, in Mississippi. In 1998 former Ku Klux Klan wizard [[Samuel 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. * In July 1966, in [[Bogalusa, Louisiana]], a stronghold of Klan activity, Clarence Triggs was found murdered.<ref>{{cite news | last=Keller |first=Larry |title=Klan Murder Shines Light on Bogalusa, La |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2009/klan-murder-shines-light-bogalusa-la. |url-status=live |work=Intelligence Report |date=May 29, 2009 |access-date=August 13, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170814055432/https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2009/klan-murder-shines-light-bogalusa-la |archive-date=August 14, 2017}}</ref> * The 1967 multiple bombings in Jackson, Mississippi, of the residence of a [[Methodist]] activist, Robert Kochtitzky, the [[synagogue]], and the residence of [[Rabbi]] Perry Nussbaum. These were carried out by Klan member Thomas Albert Tarrants III, who was convicted in 1968. Another Klan bombing was averted in Meridian the same year.<ref>Nelson, Jack. (1993). ''Terror in the Night: The Klan's Campaign Against the Jews''. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 208–211. {{ISBN|0671692232}}.</ref> ====Resistance==== There was considerable resistance among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers [[W. Horace Carter]] ([[Tabor City, North Carolina]]), who had campaigned for three years, and Willard Cole ([[Whiteville, North Carolina]]) shared the [[Pulitzer Prize for Public Service]] citing "their successful campaign against the Ku Klux Klan, waged on their own doorstep at the risk of economic loss and personal danger, culminating in the conviction of over one hundred Klansmen and an end to terrorism in their communities".<ref>"[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-Service Public Service]" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131112124907/http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Public-Service |date=November 12, 2013 }}. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved November 8, 2013.</ref> In a 1958 incident in [[North Carolina]], the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two [[Lumbee]] [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]] for associating with white people, and threatened more actions. When the KKK held a nighttime rally nearby, they were quickly surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbee. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed at what became known as the [[Battle of Hayes Pond]].<ref>Ingalls 1979</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html |title=January 1958 – The Lumbees face the Klan |author=Graham, Nicholas |date=January 2005 |publisher=[[University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill]] |access-date=June 26, 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071024123305/http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html |archive-date=October 24, 2007 }}</ref> While the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation]] (FBI) had paid informants in the Klan (for instance, in Birmingham 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 against citizens. In 1964, the FBI's [[COINTELPRO]] program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups.{{sfn|McWhorter|2001}} As 20th-century Supreme Court rulings extended federal enforcement of citizens' [[civil rights]], the government revived the [[Enforcement Acts]] and the [[Klan Act]] from Reconstruction days. Federal prosecutors used these laws as the basis for investigations and indictments in the 1964 [[murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner]];<ref>{{cite web| url=http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html |title=The Civil Rights Movement, 1964–1968 |author=Simon, Dennis M. |publisher=[[Southern Methodist University]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050827194827/http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html |archive-date=August 27, 2005 }}</ref> and the 1965 murder of [[Viola Liuzzo]]. They were also the basis for prosecution in 1991 in ''[[Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic]]''. In 1965, the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] started an investigation on the Klan, putting in the public spotlight its front organizations, finances, methods and divisions.<ref name=":1">{{Cite journal|date=1965|title=Ku Klux Klan Probe Begun |url=https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal65-875-26759-1261051|journal=CQ Almanac|edition=21|pages=1517–1525|access-date=August 14, 2017}}</ref> ====1970s–present==== [[File:Kkk-march-violence.jpg|thumb|Violence at a Klan march in [[Mobile, Alabama]], 1977]] After federal legislation was passed prohibiting legal segregation and authorizing enforcement of protection of voting rights, KKK groups began to oppose court-ordered [[desegregation busing|busing to desegregate schools]], [[affirmative action]], and the more open [[Immigration to the United States|immigration]] authorized in the 1960s. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in [[Pontiac, Michigan]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Times |first=William K. Stevens Special to The New York |date=1973-05-22 |title=5 Ex-Klansmen Convicted in School Bus Bomb Plot |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/22/archives/5-exklansmen-convicted-in-school-bus-bomb-plot.html |access-date=2023-07-06 |issn=0362-4331 |archive-date=July 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230707162447/https://www.nytimes.com/1973/05/22/archives/5-exklansmen-convicted-in-school-bus-bomb-plot.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Daily Illini 10 September 1971 — Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections |url=https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=DIL19710910.2.14&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN---------- |access-date=2023-07-06 |website=idnc.library.illinois.edu |archive-date=July 7, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230707161827/https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=DIL19710910.2.14&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN---------- |url-status=live }}</ref> By 1975, there were known KKK groups on most college campuses in Louisiana as well as at [[Vanderbilt University]], the [[University of Georgia]], the [[University of Mississippi]], the [[University of Akron]], and the [[University of Southern California]].<ref name="imperialwizardofkkk">{{cite news |title='Ladies' Become Vocal in Ku Klux Klan |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/22745082/?terms=%22vanderbilt%2Buniversity%22%2B%22ku%2Bklux%2Bklan%22 |newspaper=The Post-Crescent |location=Appleton, Wisconsin |date=May 23, 1975 |page=9 |via=[[Newspapers.com]] |access-date=July 15, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160307035011/https://www.newspapers.com/image/22745082/?terms=%22vanderbilt%2Buniversity%22%2B%22ku%2Bklux%2Bklan%22 |archive-date=March 7, 2016 |url-status=live }} {{Open access}}</ref> =====Massacre of Communist Workers' Party protesters===== On November 3, 1979, five communist protesters were killed by KKK and [[American Nazi Party]] members in [[Greensboro, North Carolina]], in what is known as the [[Greensboro massacre]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/18/remembering_the_1979_greensboro_massacre_25 |title=Remembering the 1979 Greensboro Massacre: 25 Years Later Survivors Form Country's First Truth and Reconciliation Commission |work=[[Democracy Now!]] |date=November 18, 2004 |access-date=August 15, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090806031642/http://www.democracynow.org/2004/11/18/remembering_the_1979_greensboro_massacre_25 |archive-date=August 6, 2009 |url-status=live }}</ref> The [[Communist Workers' Party (United States)|Communist Workers' Party]] had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area.<ref name="wayback">Mark Hand (November 18, 2004). [http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand11182004/ "The Greensboro Massacre"]. Press Action. {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081006171314/http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand11182004/ |date=October 6, 2008 }}</ref> Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers. =====Jerry Thompson infiltration===== Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated the KKK in 1979, reported that the FBI's [[COINTELPRO]] efforts were highly successful. Rival KKK factions accused each other's leaders of being [[FBI informant]]s. William Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.{{sfn|Thompson|1982}} Thompson also related that KKK leaders showed great concern about a series of civil lawsuits filed by the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]], claiming damages amounting to millions of dollars. These were filed after KKK members shot into a group of African Americans.<!-- which event is this? --> Klansmen curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense against the lawsuits. The KKK also used lawsuits as tools; they filed a libel suit in order to prevent the publication of a paperback edition of Thompson's book but were unsuccessful. =====Chattanooga shooting===== In 1980, three KKK members shot four elderly Black women (Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson) in [[Chattanooga, Tennessee]], following a KKK initiation rally. A fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three KKK members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an [[all-white jury]]. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=r59bGyH4lOAC&q=1980+chattanooga+kkk+shootings&pg=PA22 |title=The White Separatist Movement in the United States: "White Power, White Pride!" |author=Betty A. Dobratz & Stephanie L. Shanks-Meile |publisher=JHU Press |date=2000|access-date=February 20, 2011|isbn=978-0801865374}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.archives.gov/news/john-roberts/accession-60-89-0173/039-civil-rights-division-anti-klan/folder039.pdf |title=Women's Appeal for Justice in Chattanooga – US Department of Justice |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110522025207/http://www.archives.gov/news/john-roberts/accession-60-89-0173/039-civil-rights-division-anti-klan/folder039.pdf |archive-date=May 22, 2011 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=19800422&id=5SMNAAAAIBAJ&pg=6077,4796456 |work=The Victoria Advocate |title=Bonds for Klan Upheld |via=Google News |date=April 22, 1980 |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150919034508/https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=19800422&id=5SMNAAAAIBAJ&sjid=QmsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6077,4796456 |archive-date=September 19, 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref> In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.<ref>{{cite news |author=UPI |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/28/us/around-the-nation-jury-award-to-5-blacks-hailed-as-blow-to-klan.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FB%2FBlack%20Culture%20and%20 |work=The New York Times |title=History Around the Nation; Jury Award to 5 Blacks Hailed as Blow to Klan |location=Chattanooga, TN |date=February 28, 1982 |access-date=February 20, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110512151509/http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/28/us/around-the-nation-jury-award-to-5-blacks-hailed-as-blow-to-klan.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FB%2FBlack%20Culture%20and%20 |archive-date=May 12, 2011 |url-status=live}}</ref> =====Michael Donald lynching===== After [[Lynching of Michael Donald|Michael Donald was lynched]] in 1981 in [[Alabama]], the FBI investigated his death. The US attorney prosecuted the case. Two local KKK members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays who was sentenced to death. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by [[electric chair]] for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997.<ref>{{cite news|title=Ex-Klansman sheds tears for victim before execution |url=http://www.deseretnews.com/article/564664/Ex-Klansman-sheds-tears-for-victim-before-execution.html?pg=all|access-date=June 15, 2016|work=Deseret News|date=June 6, 1997|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160804211903/http://www.deseretnews.com/article/564664/Ex-Klansman-sheds-tears-for-victim-before-execution.html?pg=all|archive-date=August 4, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.<ref name="age" /> With the support of attorneys [[Morris Dees]] of the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] (SPLC) and state senator [[Michael A. Figures]], Donald's mother [[Beulah Mae Donald]] sued the KKK in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the [[United Klans of America]] was tried in February 1987.<ref name="jesse" /> The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay US$7 million, but the KKK did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine. They had to sell off their national headquarters building in [[Tuscaloosa, Alabama|Tuscaloosa]].<ref name="jesse">{{cite news |last=Kornbluth |first=Jesse |title=The Woman Who Beat The Klan |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/01/magazine/the-woman-who-beat-the-klan.html?pagewanted=all|url-status=live |work=[[The New York Times Magazine]] |date=November 1, 1987 |access-date=June 15, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160808010100/http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/01/magazine/the-woman-who-beat-the-klan.html?pagewanted=all |archive-date=August 8, 2016}}</ref><ref name=age>{{cite news|title=Klan Member Put to Death In Race Death|date=June 6, 1997|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/06/us/klan-member-put-to-death-in-race-death.html|access-date=August 9, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151015053956/http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/06/us/klan-member-put-to-death-in-race-death.html|archive-date=October 15, 2015|url-status=live}}</ref> =====Neo-Nazi alliances and Stormfront===== {{main|Stormfront (website)}} In 1995, [[Don Black (white supremacist)|Don Black]] and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK grand wizard [[David Duke]], began a small [[bulletin board system]] (BBS) called [[Stormfront (website)|Stormfront]], which has become a prominent online forum for [[white nationalism]], [[Neo-Nazism]], [[hate speech]], [[racism]], and [[antisemitism]] in the early 21st century.<ref>"[http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/5/143556/393 RedState, White Supremacy, and Responsibility]" {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160427010459/http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/5/143556/393 |date=April 27, 2016}}, ''[[Daily Kos]]'', December 5, 2005.</ref><ref name="FOX">[[Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)|Bill O'Reilly]], "[http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86338,00.html Circling the Wagons in Georgia]" {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604203422/http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,86338,00.html |date=June 4, 2011}}, ''[[Fox News]]'', May 8, 2003.</ref><ref>"[http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2001/dtv2001-0023.html WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center: Case No. DTV2001-0023]" {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170326190909/http://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/decisions/html/2001/dtv2001-0023.html |date=March 26, 2017}}, [[World Intellectual Property Organization]], January 13, 2002.</ref> In a 2007 article by the ADL, it was reported that many KKK groups had formed strong alliances with other white supremacist groups, such as [[neo-Nazism|neo-Nazis]]. Some KKK groups have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the look and emblems of [[white power skinhead]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/affiliations.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |title=Ku Klux Klan – Affiliations – Extremism in America |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |access-date=July 28, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100729144311/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/affiliations.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |archive-date=July 29, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Immigration fuels Klan surge {{!}} Facing South |url=https://www.facingsouth.org/2007/02/immigration-fuels-klan-surge.html |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=www.facingsouth.org |archive-date=July 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230704213942/https://www.facingsouth.org/2007/02/immigration-fuels-klan-surge.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2007-02-06 |title=Report: Supremacist activity flourishes |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16995297 |access-date=2023-07-04 |website=NBC News |language=en |archive-date=July 4, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230704214622/https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16995297 |url-status=live }}</ref> =====Current developments===== The modern KKK is not one organization; rather, it is composed of small independent chapters across the United States.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp |title=About the Ku Klux Klan – Extremism in America |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100725122657/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp |archive-date=July 25, 2010 }}</ref> According to a 1999 ADL report, the KKK's estimated size then was "No more than a few thousand, organized into slightly more than 100 units".<ref name=adl-ak-kkk>{{cite web|url=http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp |title=Church of the American Knights of the KKK |access-date=July 28, 2010 |date=October 22, 1999 |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100901094652/http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp |archive-date=September 1, 2010}}</ref> In 2017, the [[Southern Poverty Law Center]] (SPLC), which monitors extremist groups, estimated that there were "at least 29 separate, rival Klan groups currently active in the United States, and they compete with one another for members, dues, news media attention and the title of being the true heir to the Ku Klux Klan".<ref name="Stack">{{cite news |first=Liam |last=Stack |date=February 13, 2017 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/kkk-leader-death-frank-ancona.html |title=Leader of a Ku Klux Klan Group Is Found Dead in Missouri |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170215102320/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/kkk-leader-death-frank-ancona.html |archive-date=February 15, 2017 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> The formation of independent chapters has made KKK groups more difficult to infiltrate, and researchers find it hard to estimate their numbers. Analysts believe that about two-thirds of KKK members are concentrated in the [[Southern United States]], with another third situated primarily in the lower [[Midwestern United States|Midwest]].<ref name=adl-ak-kkk /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp |title=Active U.S. Hate Groups |website=Intelligence Report |publisher=[[Southern Poverty Law Center]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050406181750/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp |archive-date=April 6, 2005 }}</ref><ref name=adl-kkk>{{cite web|url=http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp |title=About the Ku Klux Klan – Extremism in America |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |access-date=July 28, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100725122657/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/default.asp |archive-date=July 25, 2010 }}</ref> For some time, the Klan's numbers have been steadily dropping. This decline has been attributed to the Klan's lack of competence in the use of the [[Internet]], their history of violence, a proliferation of competing [[hate group]]s, and a decline in the number of young [[racism|racist]] activists who are willing to join groups at all.<ref name="Slate 2012">{{cite news|last=Palmer|first=Brian|title=Ku Klux Kontraction: How did the KKK lose nearly one-third of its chapters in one year?|url=http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/03/ku_klux_klan_in_decline_why_did_the_kkk_lose_so_many_chapters_in_2010_.html|access-date=March 25, 2012|newspaper=[[Slate Magazine]]|date=March 8, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120325030239/http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2012/03/ku_klux_klan_in_decline_why_did_the_kkk_lose_so_many_chapters_in_2010_.html|archive-date=March 25, 2012|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2015, the number of KKK chapters nationwide grew from 72 to 190. The SPLC released a similar report stating that "there were significant increases in Klan as well as [[Black separatist]] groups".<ref name="splc2016" /> A 2016 analysis by the SPLC found that hate groups in general were on the rise in the United States.<ref name="splc2016">{{cite web|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2016/year-hate-and-extremism|title=The Year in Hate and Extremism|publisher=Southern Poverty Law|access-date=April 29, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160402041946/https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2016/year-hate-and-extremism|archive-date=April 2, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> The ADL published a report in 2016 that concluded: "Despite a persistent ability to attract media attention, organized Ku Klux Klan groups are actually continuing a long-term trend of decline. They remain a collection of mostly small, disjointed groups that continually change in name and leadership."<ref name="TatteredRobes" /> Recent KKK membership campaigns have stimulated people's anxieties about [[illegal immigration]], urban crime, [[civil union]]s, and [[same-sex marriage]].<ref>{{cite web |last=Knickerbocker |first=Brad |title=Anti-Immigrant Sentiments Fuel Ku Klux Klan Resurgence |url=http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0209/p02s02-ussc.html |url-status=live |website=[[The Christian Science Monitor]] |date=February 9, 2007 |access-date=April 5, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080327201821/http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0209/p02s02-ussc.html |archive-date=March 27, 2008}}</ref> In 2006, J. Keith Akins argued that "Klan literature and propaganda is rabidly [[homophobic]] and encourages violence against [[gays]] and [[lesbians]]. ...Since the late 1970s, the Klan has increasingly focused its ire on this previously ignored population."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Akins |first1=J. Keith |title=The Ku Klux Klan: America's Forgotten Terrorists |journal=Law Enforcement Executive Forum |issue=January 2006 |page=137 |url=https://iletsbeiforumjournal.com/images/Issues/FreeIssues/ILEEF%202006-5.7.pdf#page=144 |access-date=November 30, 2020 |publisher=Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board Executive Institute |archive-date=October 1, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201001232934/https://www.iletsbeiforumjournal.com/images/Issues/FreeIssues/ILEEF%202006-5.7.pdf#page=144 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The Klan has produced [[Islamophobia|Islamophobic]] propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers.<ref>{{cite news|last=Rink|first=Matthew|date=September 25, 2020|title=KKK-supportive notes dropped in Erie County driveways|work=[[Erie Times-News]]|url=https://www.goerie.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/25/kkk-supportive-notes-dropped-in-erie-county-driveways/42691653/|access-date=March 10, 2021|archive-date=March 2, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210302191520/https://www.goerie.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/25/kkk-supportive-notes-dropped-in-erie-county-driveways/42691653/|url-status=live}}</ref> The [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their [[First Amendment to the United States Constitution|First Amendment]] rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.<ref>{{cite news|title=A.C.L.U. Lawsuit Backs Klan In Seeking Permit for Cross |newspaper=The New York Times |date=December 16, 1993 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/16/us/aclu-lawsuit-backs-klan-in-seeking-permit-for-cross.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101006202846/http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/16/us/aclu-lawsuit-backs-klan-in-seeking-permit-for-cross.html |archive-date=October 6, 2010}} The [[American Civil Liberties Union|ACLU]] professes a mission to defend the constitutional rights of all groups, whether [[left-wing politics|left]], [[centrism|center]], or right.</ref> {{anchor|Frank Ancona}} The February 14, 2019, edition of the [[Linden, Alabama]], weekly newspaper ''[[The Democrat-Reporter]]'' carried an editorial titled "Klan needs to ride again" written by [[Goodloe Sutton]]—the newspaper's owner, publisher and editor—which urged the Klan to return to staging their night rides, because proposals were being made to raise taxes in the state. In an interview, Sutton suggested that Washington, D.C., could be "clean[ed] out" by way of lynchings. "We'll get the hemp ropes out, loop them over a tall limb and hang all of them," Sutton said. He also specified that he was only referring to hanging "socialist-communists" and compared the Klan to the [[NAACP]]. The editorial and Sutton's subsequent comments provoked calls for his resignation from Alabama politicians and the Alabama Press Association, which later censured Sutton and suspended the newspaper's membership. In addition, the [[University of Southern Mississippi]]'s School of Communication removed Sutton—who is an alumnus of that school—from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame, and "strongly condemned" his remarks. Sutton was also stripped of a distinguished community journalism award he had been presented in 2009 by [[Auburn University]]'s Journalism Advisory Council.<ref>Criss, Doug and Burnside, Tina (February 20, 2019). "[https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/media/alabama-newspaper-klan-trnd/index.html The editor of an Alabama newspaper is calling for the return of the Ku Klux Klan's infamous night rides]" ({{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190222070832/https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/19/media/alabama-newspaper-klan-trnd/index.html |date=February 22, 2019}}). [[CNN]].</ref> Sutton expressed no regret and said that the editorial was intended to be "ironic", but that "not many people understand irony today."<ref>Gore, Leada (February 21, 2019). "[https://www.al.com/news/2019/02/goodloe-sutton-writer-of-kkk-editorial-not-sorry-says-hed-do-it-all-over-again.html Goodloe Sutton, writer of KKK editorial, not sorry, says he'd 'do it all over again']" ({{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190222053000/https://www.al.com/news/2019/02/goodloe-sutton-writer-of-kkk-editorial-not-sorry-says-hed-do-it-all-over-again.html |date=February 22, 2019}}). [[AL.com]].</ref> =====Current Klan organizations===== A list is maintained by the [[Anti-Defamation League]] (ADL):<ref name=ADLKKKlist>{{cite web |title = Ku Klux Klan – Extremism in America – Active Groups (by state) |website = adl.org |publisher = [[Anti-Defamation League]] |access-date = March 15, 2011 |year = 2011 |url = http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/active_group_2006.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110212042824/http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/kkk/active_group_2006.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=4&item=kkk |archive-date = February 12, 2011 }}</ref> * Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, prevalent in [[Texas]], [[Oklahoma]], [[Arkansas]], [[Louisiana]], and other areas of the Southern U.S. * Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan<ref name=adl-ak-kkk /> * [[Imperial Klans of America]]<ref>{{cite news | url=http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27665247 | title=No. 2 Klan group on trial in Ky. teen's beating | agency=Associated Press | date=November 11, 2008 | access-date=November 22, 2008 | df=mdy-all | archive-date=October 4, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131004232318/http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27665247/ | url-status=live }}</ref> * [[Knights of the White Camelia#Legacy|Knights of the White Camelia]]<ref>{{cite web |title=White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan – Home page |website=wckkkk.org |publisher=White Camelia Knights of the Ku Klux Klan |access-date=March 15, 2011 |year=2011 |url=http://www.wckkkk.org/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110208125116/http://www.wckkkk.org/ |archive-date=February 8, 2011 }}</ref> * Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by national director and self-claimed pastor [[Thomas Robb (Ku Klux Klan)|Thomas Robb]], and based in [[Harrison, Arkansas|Harrison]] and [[Zinc, Arkansas|Zinc]], [[Arkansas]].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/Klan-vs-Rhino-Times.htm |title=Arkansas Klan Group Loses Legal Battle with North Carolina Newspaper |publisher=[[Anti-Defamation League]] |date=July 9, 2009 |access-date=August 15, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100412051638/http://www.adl.org/main_Extremism/Klan-vs-Rhino-Times.htm |archive-date=April 12, 2010 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=https://kkk.bz/frequently-asked-questions/ |title=FAQ{{mdash}}The Knights Party |website=The Knights Party | language=en-US |archive-url=https://archive.today/20190923170746/https://kkk.bz/frequently-asked-questions/ |archive-date=September 23, 2019 |access-date=March 16, 2021 |url-status=usurped}}</ref> It claims to be the largest Klan organization in America today.<ref>{{Cite news |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/knights-ku-klux-klan|title=Knights of the Ku Klux Klan |work=Southern Poverty Law Center|access-date=September 30, 2018|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181001070104/https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/knights-ku-klux-klan |archive-date=October 1, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> * [[Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan]], a North Carolina-based group headed by Will Quigg,<ref>{{cite news |first=Robert |last=Tait |title=The KKK leader who says he backs Hillary Clinton |newspaper=[[The Daily Telegraph]] |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12192975/The-KKK-leader-who-says-he-backs-Hillary-Clinton.html |date=March 14, 2016 |access-date=March 15, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314215153/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/12192975/The-KKK-leader-who-says-he-backs-Hillary-Clinton.html |archive-date=March 14, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> is currently thought to be the largest KKK chapter.<ref>{{cite news |first=Max |last=Blau |title='Still a racist nation': American bigotry on full display at KKK rally in South Carolina |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |url=https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/19/kkk-clashes-south-carolina-racism |date=July 19, 2015 |access-date=March 15, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160317204601/http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jul/19/kkk-clashes-south-carolina-racism |archive-date=March 17, 2016 |url-status=live}}</ref> * [[White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan]] Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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