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The Klu Klux Klan (KKK) was a group or organization that took over many different social aspects in the 1920s to present day. The KKK is an organization that anyone can join that fought violently for what they think is right in society. The effect that the KKK brought for society was awful they brought fear, lynching’s, and death to most people in the US ever since they started in 1889. This brought change to many minorities at the time because they were scared for there life and were forced out of there homes and a lot of them killed because of their skin color or beliefs. The KKK tried to stop culture and growth of minorities because they believed that there race or beliefs are the best and were not scared to show it to the people. During the 1920s the US was happy and patriotic for our country because of post war, this brought many beliefs and grow of mass culture. With this growth of mass culture and beliefs the growth of the KKK began too to stop some of these movements and cultures. In the 1920s the KKK would destroy, harm, or kill anyone or anything that was against their beliefs, like African American cultures, Woman rights, and against some religions. The KKK still exists in todays time but they are a lot less violent and harmful to social classes and beliefs.  Things that the KKK would disagree with or protest in todays time would be African American rights, and presidents.  Although the KKK is a lot less permeant in todays time they are still a organized group and would go against rights they don’t believe in. Though out time since the 1920s the KKK has killed and harmed tons of people for what they believe or there skin color, and have caused a great affect to society today.

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The Ku Klux Klan’s second uprising began in 1915 when white supremacists wanted to restore white power and authority in the United States of America. The new wave of the KKK was created by William Simmons. Simmons new focus was on ‘Americanism’ which created hate towards minority groups like African-Americans and Hispanics. A great impact to the Klan’s rising was the Great Migration which was when African-Americans moved north after slavery was abolished. African-Americans began working jobs and moving into neighborhoods which created tension. Many white people got nervous about African-Americans working with them and lost the security they thought they had in their jobs. A lot of the threatened whites learned about the KKK’s message and joined to help their own cause. By 1920, the Klan had over 4 million members across the US. The reason for the massive expansion can be contributed to Edward Clark and Elizabeth Taylor who were both hired by Simmons to recruit. Simmons gave the recruiters $8 out of every $10 initiation fee. The Klan received the most attention when it marched down Pennsylvania Avenue. It is estimated that there was over 50,000 men and women dressed in white robes marching in the nation’s capital. By marching in Washington D.C., the Klan received plenty of attention nationwide causing their message to expand nationwide. Overall around the time of the 1920s, the KKK was able to grow membership and spread it’s message across the US.

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1.       Kleagle- officer of the Ku Klux Klan whose main role is to recruit new members

2.       Grand Wizard- international head of the Invisible Empire

3.       Carpetbaggers- a person from the northern states who went to the South after the Civil War to profit from the Reconstruction.

4.       Scalawags- southern whites who supported Reconstruction and the Republican Party, after the American Civil War.

5.       Bolshies- anti-radical and anti-immigration communists

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This Primary source is another poster that was used by the Ku Klux Klan this poster is like a recruiting poster. The poster Is to draw in people who are Anti- Jews, Negros, Catholic, Foreigner, and Labor. This poster is trying to organize people to join the KKK and go against these rights. The KKK Is trying to get people to come and join their organization to fight rights they don’t believe about. They list out all the things that they are against to get more people to join there Klan. The Klan is trying to get as many people as they can for their organization because the more the people the more the power.

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This primary document from the KKK telling Negros to watch out.  The KKK was very violent to the blacks and wanted them to either be killed or back into slavery. KKK would post this poster in towns and places around the world to tell African Americans to watch out for them. The posters are saying that Negros are meant to be in the south and all in one place away from them.  KKK members are telling African Americans to all go to Alabama because that is a good place for Negros to live in and the Ku Klux Klan is watching out for people that are outside of Alabama. The Ku Klux Klan doesn’t want to live with or be around African Americans and don’t believe I social equality.

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This photograph is an invitation to a KKK celebration. The event will host people of all ages and will take place in Girard, Illinois. The KKK used events like this to hope to spread their message and expand in members. I think that it is horrible that they will host children and spread their messages and beliefs onto a brainwashed younger generation. The event is encouraging Klansmen to wear their white robes and decorate a float. The flyer mentions that everybody is welcome but one can infer that only white people were truly welcome to this event. The event will give prizes to the best decorated or racist floats.

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This website provides us with facts and stories of the KKK and there beliefs in the early 1900's. They explain their motives to there beliefs and who they are against.

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Sections

At the end of the American Civil War radical members of Congress attempted to destroy the white power structure of the Rebel states. The Freeman's Bureau was established on 3rd March, 1865. The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves.

Attempts by Congress to extend the powers of the Freemen's Bureau was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson in February, 1866. In April 1866, Johnson also vetoed the Civil Rights Bill that was designed to protect freed slaves from Southern Black Codes (laws that placed severe restrictions on freed slaves such as prohibiting their right to vote, forbidding them to sit on juries, limiting their right to testify against white men, carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations).

The election of 1866 increased the number of Radical Republicans in Congress. The following year Congress passed the first Reconstruction Act. The South was now divided into five military districts, each under a major general. New elections were to be held in each state with freed male slaves being allowed to vote. The act also included an amendment that offered readmission to the Southern states after they had ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and guaranteed adult male suffrage. Johnson immediately vetoed the bill but Congress re-passed the bill the same day.

Nathan Forrest
The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites. Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

James L. Alcorn pointed out in a letter to Elihu Washburne, that the end of slavery had not really helped their situation: "Can it be possible that the Northern people have made the negro free, but to be returned, the slave of society, to bear in such slavery the vindictive resentments that the satraps of Davis maintain today towards the people of the north? Better a thousand times for the negro that the government should return him to the custody of the original owner, where he would have a master to look after his well being, than that his neck should be placed under the heel of a society, vindictive towards him because he is free."

At first the main objective of white supremacy organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. After white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with.

Colonel George W. Ashburn served in the Union Army during the American Civil War. At the end of the conflict, Ashburn returned to Columbus, Georgia and was appointed a judge by the military Governor, George G. Meade. Ashburn was the author of the provisions in the new Constitution that assured civil rights to blacks. He worked with the Freedmens Bureau and alongside African American leaders such as Henry McNeal Turner. On 21st March, 1868, Nathan Forrest, the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, held a meeting in Columbus. Nine days later he was assassinated by a group of masked men.

The Ku Klux Klan At Work: The Assassination Of G. W. Ashburn, Frank Leslie's Illustrated (1868)

As soon as he heard of the murder, General Meade implemented martial law in Columbus, removing the mayor from office, and ordering the immediate arrest of all suspects. The trial of twenty prominent white residents of Columbus began on 29th June, 1868. On 21st July, Georgia agreed to ratify the 14th Amendment in exchange for General Meade's termination of the prosecution of the murder. All the men were freed and the case was closed.

Radical Republicans in Congress such as Benjamin Butler urged President Ulysses S. Grant to take action against the Ku Klux Klan. In 1870 he instigated an investigation into the organization and the following year a Grand Jury reported that: "There has existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering."

Ku Klux Klan Act
Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act and it became law on 20th April, 1871. This gave the president the power to intervene in troubled states with the authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in countries where disturbances occurred. However, because its objective of white supremacy in the South had been achieved, the organization practically disappeared.

Thomas Nast, Harper's Weekly (24th October 1874)

The Ku Klux Klan was reformed in 1915 by William J. Simmons, a preacher influenced by the book, The Ku Klux Klan (1905) by Thomas Dixon and the film of the book, Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) became the main opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. To show that the members of the organization would not be intimidated, it held its 1920 annual conference in Atlanta, considered at the time to be one of the most active Ku Klux Klan areas in America.

Hiram W. Evans
After the First World War the Ku Klux Klan also became extremely hostile to Jews, Roman Catholics, socialists, communists and anybody they identified as foreigners. In November 1922 Hiram W. Evans became the Klan's Imperial Wizard. Under his leadership the organization grew rapidly and in the 1920s Klansmen were elected to positions of political power. This included state officials in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon and Maine. By 1925 membership reached 4,000,000. Even on the rare occasions they were arrested for serious crimes, Klansmen were unlikely to be convicted by local Southern juries.

Ku Klux Klan initiation ceremony in Georgia (May, 1946)

After the conviction of the Klan leader, David C. Stephenson, for second-degree murder, and evidence of corruption by other members such as the governor of Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, membership fell to around 30,000. This trend continued during the Great Depression and the Second World War and in 1944 the organization. was disbanded.

KKK and the Civil Rights Movement
In the 1950s the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in a revival in Ku Klux Klan organizations. The most of important of these was the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led by Robert Shelton. In the Deep South considerable pressure was put on blacks by klansmen not to vote. An example of this was the state of Mississippi. By 1960, 42% of the population were black but only 2% were registered to vote. Lynching was still employed as a method of terrorizing the local black population.

Bill Mauldin, United Feature Syndicate (1947)

On Sunday, 15th September, 1963, a white man was seen getting out of a white and turquoise Chevrolet car and placing a box under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Soon afterwards, at 10.22 a.m., the bomb exploded killing Denise McNair (11), Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14) and Cynthia Wesley (14). The four girls had been attending Sunday school classes at the church. Twenty-three other people were also hurt by the blast.

A witness identified Robert Chambliss, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, as the man who placed the bomb under the steps of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. He was arrested and charged with murder and possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit. On 8th October, 1963, Chambliss was found not guilty of murder and received a hundred-dollar fine and a six-month jail sentence for having the dynamite.

In 1964 the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organized its Freedom Summer campaign. Its main objective was to try an end the political disenfranchisement of African Americans in the Deep South. Volunteers from the three organizations decided to concentrate its efforts in Mississippi. The three organizations established 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start.

Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs. So also were the homes of local African Americans involved in the campaign. That summer 30 black homes and 37 black churches were firebombed. Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st June, 1964. These deaths created nation-wide publicity for the campaign.

The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing was unsolved until Bill Baxley was elected attorney general of Alabama. He requested the original Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the case and discovered that the organization had accumulated a great deal of evidence against Chambliss that had not been used in the original trial. In November, 1977 Chambliss was tried once again for the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing. Now aged 73, Chambliss was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.

KKK in the 1980s
In 1981 the trial of Josephus Andersonan, an African American charged with the murder of a white policeman, took place in Mobile. At the end of the case the jury was unable to reach a verdict. This upset members of the local Ku Klux Klan who believed that the reason for this was that some members of the jury were African Americans. At a meeting held after the trial, Bennie Hays, the second-highest ranking official in the Klan in Alabama said: "If a black man can get away with killing a white man, we ought to be able to get away with killing a black man."

On Saturday 21st March, 1981, Bennie Hays's son, Henry Hays, and James Knowles, decided they would get revenge for the failure of the courts to convict the man for killing a policeman. They travelled around Mobile in their car until they found nineteen year old Michael Donald walking home. After forcing him into the car Donald was taken into the next county where he was lynched.

A brief investigation took place and eventually the local police claimed that Donald had been murdered as a result of a disagreement over a drugs deal. Donald's mother, Beulah Mae Donald, who knew that her son was not involved with drugs, was determined to obtain justice. She contacted Jessie Jackson who came to Mobile and led a protest march about the failed police investigation.

Thomas Figures, the assistant United States attorney in Mobile, managed to persuade the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to look into the case. James Bodman was sent to Mobile and it did not take him long to persuade James Knowles to confess to the killing of Michael Donald.

In June 1983, Knowles was found guilty of violating Donald's civil rights and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Six months later, when Henry Hays was tried for murder, Knowles appeared as chief prosecution witness. Hays was found guilty and sentenced to death.

With the support of Morris Dees and Joseph J. Levin at the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), Beulah Mae Donald decided that she would use this case to try and destroy the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Her civil suit against the United Klans of America took place in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Michael Donald and ordered it to pay 7 million dollars. This resulted the Klan having to hand over all its assets including its national headquarters in Tuscaloosa.

After a long-drawn out legal struggle, Henry Hayes was executed on 6th June, 1997. It was the first time a white man had been executed for a crime against an African American since 1913.

On 17th May, 2000, the FBI announced that the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Bombing had been carried out by the Ku Klux Klan splinter group, the Cahaba Boys. It was claimed that four men, Robert Chambliss, Herman Cash, Thomas Blanton and Bobby Cherry had been responsible for the crime. Cash was dead but Blanton and Cherry were arrested. In May 2002 the 71 year old Bobby Cherry was convicted of the murder of Denise McNair, Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley and was sentenced to life in prison.

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Primary Sources

(1) In 1868 the Ku Klux Klan drew up a series of questions for people who wanted to join its organisation.

Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Radical Republican Party?

Did you belong to the Federal Army during the late war, and fight against the South during the existence of the same?

Are you opposed to Negro equality, both social and political?

Are you in favor of a white man's government in this country?

Can it be possible that the Northern people have made the negro free, but to be returned, the slave of society, to bear in such slavery the vindictive resentments that the satraps of Davis maintain today towards the people of the north? Better a thousand times for the negro that the government should return him to the custody of the original owner, where he would have a master to look after his well being, than that his neck should be placed under the heel of a society, vindictive towards him because he is free.

(3) President Ulysses S. Grant ordered a Federal Grand Jury investigation into the Ku Klux Klan. The report was published in 1871.

There has existed since 1868, in many counties of the state, an organization known as the Ku Klux Klan, or Invisible Empire of the South, which embraces in its membership a large proportion of the white population of every profession and class. The Klan has a constitution and bylaws, which provides, among other things, that each member shall furnish himself with a pistol, a Ku Klux gown and a signal instrument. The operations of the Klan are executed in the night and are invariably directed against members of the Republican Party. The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering.

There were numerous large bands of organized marauders called the Ku Klux Klan, who were dressed in fantastic uniforms, and who rode at night and inflicted unnumbered and horrible outrages upon the negro so that he could not dare to come to the polls. Indeed, the men of the South seemed to think themselves excused in these outrages because they wanted to insure a white man's government in their States.

I desired that Congress should pass laws, which, with their punishments and modes of execution, would be sufficiently severe under the circumstances to prevent those outrages entirely, or at least to punish them.

A bill was reported by that special committee. By the bill this murdering of negroes of Ku Klux riders at night was to be deemed conspiracy, and punished by fine and imprisonment. But the prisoner would first have to be convicted by a Southern jury, and upon these juries other members of the Ku Klux could serve if their own cases were not on trial. That bill was passed, and the government made great show of enforcing it.

An organizer of the Ku Klux Klan was in Emporia the other day, and the men whom he invited to join his band at $10 per join turned him down. Under the leadership of Dr. J. B. Brickell and following their own judgment after hearing his story, the Emporians told him that they had no time for him. The proposition seems to be: Anti-foreigners, Anti-Catholics, Anti-Negroes.

There are, of course, bad foreigners and good ones, good Catholics and bad ones, and all kinds of Negroes. To make a case against a birthplace, a religion, or a race is wickedly un-American and cowardly. The whole trouble with the Ku Klux Klan is that it is based upon such deep foolishness that it is bound to be a menace to good government in any community. Any man fool enough to be Imperial Wizard would have power without responsibility and both without any sense. That is social dynamite.

American institutions, our courts, our legislators, our executive officers are strong enough to keep the peace and promote justice and goodwill in the community. If they are not, then the thing to do is to change these institutions and do it quickly, but always legally. For a self-constituted body of moral idiots, who would substitute the findings of the Ku Klux Klan for the processes of law to try to better conditions, would be a most un-American outrage which every good citizen should resent.

It is to the everlasting credit of Emporia that the organizer found no suckers with $10 each to squander here. Whatever Emporia may be otherwise, it believes in law and order, and absolute freedom under the Constitution for every man, no matter what birth or creed or race, to speak and meet and talk and act as a free, law-abiding citizen. The picayunish cowardice of a man who would substitute Klan rule and mob law for what our American fathers have died to establish and maintain should prove what a cheap screw outfit the Klan is.

The greatest achievement so far has been to formulate, focus, and gain recognition for an idea - the idea of preserving and developing America first and chiefly for the benefit of the children of the pioneers who made America, and only and definitely along the lines of the purpose and spirit of those pioneers. The Klan cannot claim to have created this idea - it has long been a vague stirring in the souls of the plain people. But the Klan can fairly claim to have given it purpose, method, direction, and a vehicle.

When the Klan first appeared, the nation was in the confusion of sudden awakening from the lovely dream of the melting pot, disorganized and helpless before the invasion of aliens and alien ideas. After ten years of the Klan it is in arms for defense. This is our great achievement. The second is more selfish; we have won the leadership in the movement for Americanism. Except for a few lonesome voices, almost drowned by the clamor of the alien and the alien minded "Liberal," the Klan alone faces the invader.

This is not to say that the Klan has gathered into its membership all who are ready to fight for America. The Klan is the champion, but it is not merely an organization. It is an idea, a faith, a purpose, an organized crusade. No recruit to the cause has ever been really lost. Though men and women drop from the ranks, they remain with us in purpose and can be depended on fully in any crisis. Also, there are many millions who have never joined but who think and feel and - when called on - fight with us. This is our real strength, and no one who ignores it can hope to understand America today.

Other achievements of these ten years have been the education of the millions of our own membership in citizenship, the suppression of much lawlessness and increase of good government wherever we have become strong, the restriction of immigration, and the defeat of the Catholic attempt to seize the Democratic Party. All these we have helped, and all are important.

The outstanding proof of both our influence and our service, however, has been in creating, outside our ranks as well as in them, not merely the growing national concentration on the problems of Americanism but also a growing sentiment against radicalism, cosmopolitanism, and alienism of all kinds. We have produced instead a sane and progressive conservatism along national lines. We have enlisted our racial instincts for the work of preserving and developing our American traditions and customs. This was most strikingly shown in the elections last fall when the conservative reaction amazed all politicians - especially the La Follette rout in the Northwest. This reaction added enormously to the plurality of the President, the size of which was the great surprise of the election.

The Klan, therefore, has now come to speak for the great mass of Americans of the old pioneer stock. We believe that it does fairly and faithfully represent them, and our proof lies in their support. To understand the Klan, then, it is necessary to understand the character and present mind of the mass of old-stock Americans. The mass, it must be remembered, as distinguished from the intellectually mongrelized "Liberals."

These are, in the first place, a blend of various peoples of the so-called Nordic race, the race which, with all its faults, has given the world almost the whole of modern civilization. The Klan does not try to represent any people but these.

There is no need to recount the virtues of the American pioneers; but it is too often forgotten that in the pioneer period a selective process of intense rigor went on. From the first, only hardy, adventurous, and strong men and women dared the pioneer dangers; from among these, all but the best died swiftly, so that the new Nordic blend which became the American race was bred up to a point probably the highest in history. This remarkable race character, along with the new-won continent and the new-created nation, made the inheritance of the old-stock Americans the richest ever given to a generation of men.

(7) Boston Blackwell, aged 98 from North Little Rock, Arkansas, interviewed as part of the Federal Writers Project in 1937.

Them Ku Kluxers was terrible - what they done to people. Oh, God, they was bad. They come sneaking up and run you out of your house and take everything you had. They was rough on the women and children. People all wanted to stay close by where soldiers was. I sure knowed they was my friend.

Now you wants to know about this voting business. I voted for General Grant. Army men come around and registered you before voting time. It wasn't no trouble to vote them days; white and black all voted together. All you had to do was tell who you was vote for and they give you a colored ticket. All the men up had different colored tickets. If you voted for Grant, you get his color. It was easy. They was colored men in office, plenty. Colored legislators, and colored circuit clerks, and colored county clerks. They sure was some big officers colored in them times. They was all my friends. This here used to be a good county, but I tell you it sure is tough now. I think it's wrong - exactly wrong that we can't vote now. The Jim Crow law, it put us out. The Constitution of the United States, it give us the right to vote. It made us citizens, it did.

In the early days of their marriage, when my grandparents were struggling to establish a foothold, Grandmother often stayed alone in the farm near Chapel Hill. Grandfather was working in his brickyard in Durham, twelve miles away, until he was able to build the family home there, and their children were often in Durham helping him. It was a time when the Ku Klux Klan in Orange County sought to run coloured farmers off their land, and Grandmother's isolated cabin in the woods was an easy target.

Late at night she would be awakened by the thudding of horses' hooves as night riders, brandishing torches and yelling like banshees, swept into the clearing and rode round and round her cabin, churning the earth outside her door. She never knew when they might set fire to the place, burning her to death inside, and some nights she was so terrified that she would get out of bed in the middle of the night, creep through the woods to the roadway, and trudge the twelve miles to Durham, preferring the dark, lonely but open road to the risk of being trapped at the farm.

(12) R. A. Patton, writing about the activities of the Ku Klux Klan in Current History (1929)

A lad whipped with branches until his back was ribboned flesh: a Negress beaten and left helpless to contract pneumonia from exposure and dies; a white girl, divorcee beaten into unconsciousness in her home; a naturalized foreigner flogged until his back was pulp because he married an American woman; a Negro lashed until he sold his land to a white man for a fraction of its value.

(13) Adapted from the Kloran, the Ku Klux Klan book of rules (c. 1915)

(1) Is the motive prompting your ambition to be a Klansman serious and unselfish?
(2) Are you a native born, white, gentile American?
(3) Do you esteem the United States of America and its instructions above all other government, civil, political, or ecclesiastical, in the whole world?
(4) Do you believe in clannishness, and will you faithfully practice same towards Klansman?
(5) Do you believe in and will you faithfully strive for the eternal maintenance of white supremacy?

The whispering campaign against Al Smith (Democratic Presidential Candidate in 1928) because of his religion began immediately after his nomination. Not only in the South but throughout the country, the rumour spread - and some labeled it as verified truth - that if a Catholic were elected President, the Pope would soon arrive from Rome and move into the White House.... The Ku Klux Klan sent speakers all over the South and into selected Northern areas to point out the danger of putting a Papist into the White House.

During the strike the KKK would come into the Labour Temple with guns, and break up meetings. Very frequently, they were police in hoods. The picket lines would hold hands, and the KKK would beat them up and cart them off. When the strike was lost, the Tampa paper published a full page, in large type; the names of all members of the strike committee. They were indicted for conspiracy and spent a year in jail. None of them got their jobs back.

Mississippi: The white farmer has not always been the lazy, slipshod, good-for-nothing person that he is frequently described as being. Somewhere in his span of life he became frustrated. He felt defeated. He felt the despair and dejection that comes from defeat. He was made aware of the limitations of life imposed upon those unfortunate enough to be made slaves of sharecropping. Out of his predicament grew desperation, out of desperation grew resentment. His bitterness was a taste his tongue would always know.

In a land that has long been glorified in the supremacy of the white race, he directed his resentment against the black man. His normal instincts became perverted. He became wasteful and careless. He became bestial. He released his pent-up emotions by lynching the black man in order to witness the mental and physical suffering of another human being. He became cruel and inhuman in everyday life as his resentment and bitterness increased. He released his energy from day to day by beating mules and dogs, by whipping and kicking an animal into insensibility or to death. When his own suffering was more than he could stand, he could live only by witnessing the suffering of others.

(18) Dr. E. P. Pruitt, Grand Dragon of the Federated Klans of Alabama, speech in Georgia (1954)

The Klan don't hate nobody! In fact, the Klan is the good nigger's best friend. If the n****** will devote his energies to becoming a better, more useful n******, rather than the dupe of Northern interests who have caused him to misconstrue his social standing, he will reap the rewards of industry, instead of the disappointments of ambition unobtainable!

Southern whites, occupying that super-position assigned them by the Creator, are justifiably hostile to any race that attempts to drag them down to its own level! Therefore let the n****** be wise in leaving the ballot in the hands of a dominant sympathetic race, since he is far better off as a political eunuch in the house of his friends, than a voter rampant in the halls of his enemies!

(19) After joining the Ku Klux Klan, Stetson Kennedy was able to informally interview Cliff Carter, the Night Hawk of the Klan.

The Kloran of the Klan defines a Klavalier as the soldier of the Klan. We take our name from the cavalier - a courtly, polite, cultured and very courageous and skillful soldier of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

As the Military Department of the Invisible Empire, we Klavaliers also serve as the secret police of the KKK and are entrusted with carrying out all "direct-line" activity. We are a militant army, serving our country in peacetime as the U.S. Army does in wartime! Our country was founded by a white Protestant nation, and we intend to maintain it as such! Any attempt to influence its affairs by inferior racial minorities or persons owing allegiance to foreign prelates or potentates will not be tolerated!

All hyphenated groups - whether they be Negro-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Catholic-Americans, Italian-Americans or whatever must become American-Americans, or leave the country! The Ku Klux Klan is an American-American organization. As the Army of the Klan we Klavaliers are dedicated to saving America for Americans!

In 1957 the Klan moved into Monroe and Union County (N.C.). Their numbers steadily increased to the point wherein the local press reported 7500 at one rally. They became so brazen that mile-long motorcades started invading the Negro community.

These hooded thugs fired pistols from car windows. On one occasion they caught a Negro woman on the street and tried to force her to dance for them at gun point. Drivers of cars tried to run Negroes down. Lawlessness was rampant. Instead of cowing, we organized an armed guard. On one occasion, we had to exchange gunfire with the Klan.

Each time the Klan came on a raid they were led by police cars. We appealed to the President of the United States to have the Justice Department investigate the police. We appealed to Governor Luther Hodges. All our appeals to constituted law were in vain.

(21) Leaflet circulated by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in 1964.

Here are Twenty Reasons WHY you should, if qualified, join, aid and support the White Knights of the KU KLUX KLAN of Mississippi:

1. Because it is a Christian, fraternal and benevolent organization.

2. Because it is a democratic organization, governed by its members.

3. Because it is a democratic and just organization.

4. Because it is a working organization which not only talks but ACTS.

5. Because it is a very secret organization and no one will know that you are a member.

6. Because it is a legal organization and no one can be prosecuted for being a member.

7. Because it is a politically independent organization, and is not pledged to any political party.

8. Because it is a Pro-American organization that opposes any thing, person or organization that is Un-American.

9. Because it is an organization that is sworn to uphold the lawful Constitution of the United States of America.

10 Because it is composed of native-born, white, gentile and protestant American citizens who are sound of mind and of good moral character.

11. Because the goals of the KKK are the total segregation of the races and the total destruction of communism in all its forms.

12. Because the KKK has twice saved this nation from destruction as history clearly records.

13. Because there comes a time in the life of every man when he has to choose between the right or wrong side of life.

14. Because there are today many alien forces entering the United States of America bent upon its destruction.

15. Because it informs its members, and an informed citizen is a good citizen.

16. Because a Christian-like brotherhood among men must be revived in America.

17. Because on of the goals of the KKK is States' Rights and complete State Sovereignty.

18. Because neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals will save out nation, for patriots always save a nation.

19. Because it is clear now that if communism is to be defeated in America, it will be done in the South and primarily in Mississippi.

20. Because the KKK needs you today to help fight America's battles.

June 6 will be a sad day for Alabamians, whether their skins are white, black or brown. On that day -- the previous night, really, at 12:01 a.m. - the state of Alabama will electrocute Henry Francis Hays for beating a black man to death 16 years ago, and then hanging his body from a tree.

The execution will rip the scab from the old, deep, nasty wound of racism, which in the 20th-century South alternately heals and festers. It will fester again this week as residents of the Heart of Dixie re-live the brutal death of 19-year-old Michael Donald.

It is a story of contrasts: The murderer, a white man, grew up in a home filled with hate and violence. The victim was reared by a loving mother and doting older siblings.

Henry Hays knew what he was about that night, when he and a friend set out to kill a black man. Michael Donald, on the other hand, was innocently walking up the street on a spring evening in Mobile to buy some cigarettes, when fate delivered him into the white men's hands.

Most vivid, though, is the contrast between fiction and reality. Michael Donald was murdered -- beaten to death with a tree limb -- not in the 1930s or '40s, even in the 1960s, but in 1981. Such things weren't supposed to happen almost 30 years after the Supreme Court declared "separate but equal'' unconstitutional, and nearly 20 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Nor were they supposed to happen in Mobile, which in the 1960s had somehow managed to avoid the racial violence that erupted in Selma and Birmingham.

Black men kidnapped and beaten, their bodies strung up in a tree? That was something that happened on the dark back roads of Dallas County or over in the Mississippi Delta, not in Alabama's second-largest city.

But hate crimes aren't constrained by time, place or suppositions. The reality is that Michael Donald died just 16 years ago at the hands of two Ku Klux Klansmen. So what if his death came years after lynchings were supposed to have ceased, and in a place not known for such things?

Barely out of childhood, he was a tragic, latter-day victim of a time when it was safer to be white -- when to be a black girl or woman was to invite sexual violence, and to be a black boy or man was to evoke daily disrespect, laced always with the potential for a fatal confrontation.

In the early hours of Friday morning, Henry Hays will pay for ending Michael Donald's life that day in 1981. He claims that he is innocent -- death row residents generally say that - but the evidence shows otherwise. Yet Hays is also a victim, albeit in a much different way than Donald.

Reared by an abusive father who beat his sons mercilessly, he was steered into a life of brutality and hate -- a life that one day included membership in the KKK. Hays learned little about love and less about tolerance.

Death penalty advocates tout execution as a deterrent to crime, and maybe it is in some respects. Henry Hays' death, though, will serve mostly as a sad commentary on a society that in 1997 - less than three years from the turn of the century - is having to electrocute a man for murdering another man, solely because of the color of his skin.

A former Ku Klux Klansman was convicted yesterday of the murder of four black girls in the 1963 church bombing in Alabama that acted as a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, was convicted of first-degree murder after the jury of nine whites and three blacks had deliberated for less than a day. He will spend the rest of his life in prison.

The court found that Cherry had been one of a group of Klansmen who plotted to bomb the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, which was at the centre of local civil rights protests. Two other former Klansmen have been convicted and a fourth died before facing trial.

The bomb killed Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley, all 14. Their deaths came days after local schools were desegregated.

During the week-long trial, relatives of the dead girls listened as some members of Cherry's own family gave evidence against him.

The former truck driver became a suspect immediately after the bombing but until 1995, when the case was reopened, it had seemed that he would escape trial. But members of Cherry's family, with whom he had fallen out, came forward to tell investigators that he had boasted of taking part in the bombing.

During the trial, his granddaughter, Teresa Stacy, told the court: "He said he helped blow up a bunch of niggers back in Birmingham." His ex-wife, Willadean Brogdon, told the court that he had confessed to her that he had lit the fuse to the dynamite that caused the explosion.

During the early 60s in Birmingham, black people were attacked by whites with little danger of facing punishment, and Cherry was active in violent attacks against civil rights activists.

He had boasted of punching the civil14 rights leader Rev Fred Shuttlesworth with knuckle dusters, saying that he had "bopped ol' Shuttlesworth in the head". He also boasted of a splitting open a black man's head with a pistol.

Cherry, who had moved to Mabank in Texas, denied involvement and pleaded not guilty, but clandestinely recorded tapes showed that he was associated with the other convicted former Klansmen, Thomas Blanton Jr and Robert "dynamite Bob" Chambliss.

Cherry had been a demolitions expert in the Marines.

The case had been closed more than three decades ago after the FBI director at the time, J Edgar Hoover, had said it would be impossible to get a guilty verdict because of the existing climate of racism.

Student Activities
Economic Prosperity in the United States: 1919-1929

Women in the United States in the 1920s

Volstead Act and Prohibition

The Ku Klux Klan
Subjects The Middle Ages
The Normans

The Tudors
The English Civil War Industrial Revolution
First World War

Russian Revolution
Nazi Germany

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A detailed account of the history of the Ku Klux Klan. The first branch of the KKK was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army.

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Members of the KKK went through a small town in North Carolina celebrating after Donald Trump won the presidency. There was no violence in the state of North Carolina even with anti-KKK protests in North Carolina's capital.

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Police in Roxboro, North Carolina, will hold a press conference Monday to address community concerns after a band of KKK members drove through the small town Saturday celebrating President-elect Donald Trump 's victory in the recent election.

The parade was originally going to take place in Pelham, 40 minutes away from Roxboro. But organizers moved the event after protesters gathered in Pelham Saturday morning to confront the Klansmen, according to The News & Observer.

Two men were also arrested on Friday night after a stabbing at a KKK meeting in Caswell County, where Pelham is located.

Close up photo of one of approximately 30 cars in KKK's "victory parade" this afternoon in Roxboro. pic.twitter.com/ElnU3KTgoI
- Natalie A. Janicello (@natalie_allison) December 3, 2016

Local police and state troopers blocked several intersections in a bid to keep the peace as the parade of vehicles waving American, Confederate and KKK flags zipped through the town of some 8,000 people. Men and women shouted "White power!" and "Hail victory!" Only a handful of bystanders watched. The parade was over in minutes, officials said.

IT'S HAPPENING. KKK just came through Roxboro. Battle flags & shouting "WHITE POWER!" pic.twitter.com/rcjHbmUUiR
- Natalie A. Janicello (@natalie_allison) December 3, 2016

Roxboro Police Chief David Hess explained that there was nothing officials could do to stop the car parade. But he acknowledged that the presence of the KKK provoked furious emotions that could erupt into violence.

"I and the City of Roxboro do not condone the beliefs of the KKK," Hess said, according to WNCN, a local CBS affiliate.

"My heart is heavy that our community was chosen by the KKK to spread their message," the chief, who is white, said in a statement posted to Twitter.

"We owe it to the community to make sure limited exposure and potential acts of violence are minimized. I, nor you, want anyone regardless of color being physically hurt," he said.

Amanda Barker, an "imperial kommander" of the Loyal White Knights who is married to the founder of the group, told the Times-News that the car parade was a celebration of Trump's victory.

"Actually we have the same views," she said, referring to the president-elect. "A lot of white Americans felt the same way, especially about the wall, immigration and the terrorism coming here. I think Donald Trump is going to do some really good things and turn this country around."

A group spokesman told the newspaper later that members were going to spend the rest of the day "fellowshipping."

Plans for the traditional Klansmen cross burning were still up in the air, according to Barker, and it was not known if members actually set fire to a cross Saturday.

Hundreds of people, meanwhile, demonstrated against the KKK in North Carolina's capital of Raleigh.

The state's Democratic Party issued a statement calling the Klan car parade " horrifying," WRAL-TV reported.

The demonstration comes after "months of toxic and divisive rhetoric that belittled many in our state," party chairwoman Patsy Keever said. "We must all stand together in rejecting these hateful actions, which includes listening to and valuing those in our communities who feel targeted."

Klansmen distributed recruitment flyers in the Roxboro area in May, a campaign inspired by then-candidate Trump to crack down on undocumented immigrants.

The local group, which claims to have 50 active members, is opposed to LGBT rights, interracial relationships and immigration, a spokesman told local TV station WTVD.

When David Duke, former KKK grand wizard, first expressed support for Trump earlier this year, Trump said he didn't know the man. "Just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? " Trump said on CNN, then later blamed a faulty earpiece for his bizarre response to the question about Duke.

Trump later disavowed support from Klansmen.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified The News & Observer, which is based in Raleigh, as the Charlotte News Observer.

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Ku Klux Klan Members Drive Through North Carolina Town To Celebrate Trump Victory

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Police in Roxboro, North Carolina, will hold a press conference Monday to address community concerns after a band of KKK members drove through the small town Saturday celebrating President-elect Donald Trump 's victory in the recent election. The parade was originally going to take place in Pelham, 40 minutes away from Roxboro.

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This website shows us the early facts about the Ku Klux Klan in the 17th and 18th centuries . The website provides us with a summary of how the clan works and what they do.

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Following the Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan emerges to suppress and victimize newly freed slaves.

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This website talks about the rise of the KKK in the 1920s. The website mentions the Great Migration of African-Americans moving north after slavery is abolished.

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Find a summary, definition and facts about the 1920’s KKK for kids. Causes of the rebirth and resurgence of the 1920’s KKK. Information about the 1920’s KKK for kids, children, homework and schools.