Ку -клукс-клан ( / ˌ k uː k l ʌ k s ˈ k l æ n , ˌ k j uː -/ ), [e] обычно сокращается до KKK или Klan , является названием нескольких исторических и современных американских белых супремасистов , крайне правых террористических организаций и групп ненависти . Различные историки, включая Фергуса Бордевича , характеризовали Klan как первую террористическую группу Америки. [19] [20] [21] [22] Их основными целями, в разное время и в разных местах, были афроамериканцы , евреи и католики .
Три отдельные группы, называющие себя Ку-клукс-кланом, существовали в непересекающиеся периоды времени. Каждая состояла из местных отделений с небольшим или отсутствующим центральным руководством. Каждая отстаивала реакционные позиции, такие как белый национализм , антииммиграция и — особенно в более поздних итерациях — нордизм , антисемитизм , антикатолицизм , правый популизм , антикоммунизм , гомофобия , антиатеизм и исламофобия . Первый Клан, основанный ветеранами Конфедерации в конце 1860-х годов, нападал и убивал политически активных чернокожих людей и их союзников на Юге . [23] Второй вариант Ку-клукс-клана возник в конце 1910-х годов и был первым, кто использовал сжигание крестов и белые мантии с капюшонами. Ку-клукс-клан 1920-х годов имел общенациональное членство в миллионах человек и отражал срез коренного белого англоговорящего и протестантского населения. [24] Третий клан сформировался в середине 20-го века, в основном как реакция на растущее движение за гражданские права . Он использовал убийства и взрывы для достижения своих целей. Все три движения призывали к «очищению» американского общества и все считаются крайне правыми экстремистскими организациями. В каждую эпоху членство было тайным, а оценки общего числа были сильно преувеличены как союзниками, так и врагами.
Первый Клан, созданный после Гражданской войны , был определяющей организацией эпохи Реконструкции . Федеральные правоохранительные органы начали принимать меры против него около 1871 года. Клан стремился свергнуть республиканские правительства штатов на Юге, особенно используя запугивание избирателей и целенаправленное насилие против афроамериканских лидеров. Клан был организован в многочисленные независимые отделения по всему Югу Соединенных Штатов. Каждое отделение было автономным и крайне секретным в отношении членства и планов. Члены делали свои собственные, часто красочные, костюмы: мантии, маски и остроконечные шляпы , призванные устрашать и скрывать их личности.
Второй клан возник в 1915 году как небольшая группа в Джорджии . Он внезапно начал расти после 1920 года и процветал по всей стране в начале и середине 1920-х годов, включая городские районы Среднего Запада и Запада . Черпая вдохновение из немого фильма Д. У. Гриффита 1915 года «Рождение нации» , в котором мифологизировалось основание первого клана, он использовал маркетинговые приемы и популярную братскую организационную структуру . Укоренившись в местных протестантских общинах, он стремился поддерживать превосходство белой расы , часто занимал позицию сторонников сухого закона и выступал против евреев , одновременно подчеркивая свое несогласие с предполагаемой политической властью папы и католической церкви . Этот второй клан процветал как в южных, так и в северных штатах; он финансировался за счет вступительных взносов и продажи своим членам стандартного белого костюма. В отделениях не было взносов. Он использовал слова на букву «К», которые были похожи на те, что использовал первый Ку-клукс-клан, добавив сжигание крестов и массовые парады для запугивания других. Он быстро пришел в упадок во второй половине 1920-х годов.
Третье и нынешнее проявление Ку-клукс-клана возникло после 1950 года в форме локализованных и изолированных групп, которые используют название Ку-клукс-клана. Они сосредоточились на оппозиции движению за гражданские права , часто прибегая к насилию и убийствам для подавления активистов. Это проявление классифицируется как группа ненависти Антидиффамационной лигой и Южным центром по борьбе с бедностью . [25] По состоянию на 2016 год [update]Антидиффамационная лига оценивает общее количество членов Ку-клукс-клана по всей стране примерно в 3000 человек, в то время как Южный центр по борьбе с бедностью оценивает общее количество членов в 6000 человек. [26]
Второе и третье воплощения Ку-клукс-клана часто ссылались на ложное мифологизированное восприятие « англосаксонской » крови Америки , возвращаясь к нативизму 19-го века . [27] [ уточнить ] Хотя члены Ку-клукс-клана клянутся поддерживать «христианскую мораль», христианские конфессии широко осуждают их. [28]
Первый Клан был основан в Пуласки, штат Теннесси , 24 декабря 1865 года [29] шестью бывшими офицерами армии Конфедерации : [30] Фрэнком МакКордом, Ричардом Ридом, Джоном Лестером, Джоном Кеннеди, Дж. Кэлвином Джонсом и Джеймсом Кроу. [31] Он начинался как братский общественный клуб, вдохновленный, по крайней мере, частично, тогда в значительной степени несуществующей организацией « Сыны Мальты» . Он заимствовал части церемонии посвящения из этой группы с той же целью: «нелепые посвящения, сбивание с толку общественного любопытства и развлечение для членов были единственными целями Клана», по словам Альберта Стивенса в 1907 году. [32] [ указать ] Руководство по ритуалам было напечатано Лапсом Д. МакКордом из Пуласки. [33] Происхождение капюшона неизвестно; Возможно, он был заимствован из испанского капюшона капироте [34] или его можно проследить до южных празднований Марди Гра . [35]
Согласно «Энциклопедии братств» (1907), «Начиная с апреля 1867 года, происходила постепенная трансформация. ... Члены создали настоящего Франкенштейна. Они играли с машиной силы и тайны, хотя и организованной на совершенно невинных принципах, и обнаружили, что их охватывает убеждение, что за всем этим что-то должно стоять — что, в конце концов, есть серьезная цель, работа для ку-клукс-клана». [32] [ указать ]
У KKK не было организационной структуры выше уровня отделения. Однако на Юге были похожие группы, которые ставили перед собой схожие цели. [36] Отделения KKK пропагандировали превосходство белой расы и распространились по всему Югу как повстанческое движение в сопротивлении Реконструкции. Ветеран Конфедерации Джон В. Мортон основал отделение KKK в Нэшвилле, штат Теннесси . [37] Будучи тайной группой мстителей , KKK преследовал вольноотпущенников и их союзников; он стремился восстановить превосходство белой расы угрозами и насилием, включая убийства. «Они преследовали белых лидеров Севера, сторонников Юга и политически активных чернокожих». [38] В 1870 и 1871 годах федеральное правительство приняло Законы о принудительном исполнении , которые были предназначены для преследования и пресечения преступлений KL. [39]
Первый Ку-клукс-клан имел неоднозначные результаты в плане достижения своих целей. Он серьезно ослабил политическое руководство черных посредством использования убийств и угроз насилия, и вытеснил некоторых людей из политики. С другой стороны, он вызвал резкую ответную реакцию с принятием федеральных законов, которые историк Эрик Фонер называет успехом с точки зрения «восстановления порядка, оживления морального духа южных республиканцев и предоставления возможности черным осуществлять свои права как граждан». [40] Историк Джордж К. Рэйбл утверждает, что Ку-клукс-клан был политическим провалом и поэтому был отвергнут лидерами Демократической партии Юга. Он говорит:
Клан потерял силу отчасти из-за внутренних слабостей; отсутствия центральной организации и неспособности его лидеров контролировать преступные элементы и садистов. Что еще более важно, он потерял силу, потому что не смог достичь своей главной цели – свержения республиканских правительств штатов на Юге. [41]
После подавления Ку-клукс-клана возникли похожие повстанческие военизированные группы, которые были явно направлены на подавление голосования республиканцев и отстранение республиканцев от власти: Белая лига , которая началась в Луизиане в 1874 году; и Красные рубашки , которые начались в Миссисипи и создали отделения в Каролинах. Например, Красным рубашкам приписывают помощь в избрании Уэйда Хэмптона губернатором Южной Каролины. Их описывали как действующее военное крыло Демократической партии и приписывают помощь белым демократам в восстановлении контроля над законодательными собраниями штатов по всему Югу. [42] [ указать ]
В 1915 году Уильям Джозеф Симмонс основал второй Ку-клукс-клан на вершине Стоун-Маунтин в Джорджии . В то время как Симмонс опирался на документы оригинального Ку-клукс-клана и воспоминания некоторых выживших старейшин, возрожденный Ку-клукс-клан был в значительной степени основан на чрезвычайно популярном фильме « Рождение нации» . Ранний Ку-клукс-клан не носил белые костюмы и не сжигал кресты; эти аспекты были представлены в книге Томаса Диксона «Человек клана: Исторический роман о Ку-клукс-клане» , на которой основан фильм. Когда фильм был показан в Атланте в декабре того же года, Симмонс и его новые члены ку-клукс-клана маршировали в театр в мантиях и остроконечных капюшонах — многие на лошадях в мантиях — точно так же, как в фильме. Эти массовые парады стали еще одной отличительной чертой нового Ку-клукс-клана, которой не было в первоначальной организации эпохи Реконструкции. [43]
Начиная с 1921 года, она приняла современную бизнес-систему использования штатных, оплачиваемых рекрутеров и она привлекала новых членов как братская организация, многие примеры которой процветали в то время. Национальная штаб-квартира получала прибыль за счет монополии на продажу костюмов, в то время как организаторы получали оплату за счет вступительных взносов. Она быстро росла по всей стране в период процветания. Отражая социальную напряженность, разделяющую городскую и сельскую Америку, она распространилась на все штаты и была видна во многих городах.
Писатель У. Дж. Кэш в своей книге 1941 года «Разум Юга» охарактеризовал второй Клан как «анти-негритянский, анти-инопланетный, анти-красный, анти-католический, анти-еврейский, анти-дарвиновский, анти-современный, анти-либеральный, фундаменталистский, чрезвычайно моральный [и] воинствующий протестантский. И суммируя эти страхи, он сфокусировал их на традиции прошлого, и прежде всего на древнем южном образце высокой романтической театральности, насилия и массового принуждения козла отпущения и еретика». [44] Он проповедовал «стопроцентный американизм» и требовал очищения политики, призывая к строгой морали и лучшему обеспечению соблюдения сухого закона . Его официальная риторика была сосредоточена на угрозе католической церкви , используя антикатолицизм и нативизм . [7] Его призыв был направлен исключительно на белых протестантов; он выступал против евреев, чернокожих, католиков и недавно прибывших иммигрантов из Южной и Восточной Европы, таких как итальянцы , русские и литовцы , многие из которых были евреями или католиками. [45]
Некоторые местные группы угрожали насилием торговцам ромом и тем, кого они считали «отъявленными грешниками»; эпизоды насилия обычно происходили на Юге. [46] Красные рыцари были воинствующей группой, организованной в противовес Ку-клукс-клану, и в ряде случаев жестоко реагировали на провокации Ку-клукс-клана. [47]
Второй Клан был формальной братской организацией с национальной и государственной структурой. Во время возрождения второго Клан в 1920-х годах его рекламой занималась Ассоциация южной рекламы . В течение первых шести месяцев общенациональной кампании по набору членов Ассоциации количество членов Клан увеличилось на 85 000 человек. [48] [ указать ] На пике своего развития в середине 1920-х годов количество членов организации составляло от трех до восьми миллионов человек. [49]
В 1923 году Симмонс был смещен с поста лидера Ку-клукс-клана Хирамом Уэсли Эвансом . С сентября 1923 года существовало две организации Ку-клукс-клана: одна, основанная Симмонсом и возглавляемая Эвансом, имевшая силу в основном на юге Соединенных Штатов, и отколовшаяся группа во главе с Великим Драконом Д. К. Стивенсоном, базирующаяся в Эвансвилле, штат Индиана , с членами, в основном, на Среднем Западе Соединенных Штатов. [50]
Внутренние разногласия, преступное поведение лидеров — особенно осуждение Стивенсона за похищение, изнасилование и убийство Мэдж Оберхольцер — и внешнее противодействие привели к краху членства обеих групп. К 1930 году численность основной группы сократилась примерно до 30 000 человек. Она окончательно сошла на нет в 1940-х годах. [51] Организаторы Ку-клукс-клана также действовали в Канаде , особенно в Саскачеване в 1926–1928 годах, где члены Ку-клукс-клана осуждали иммигрантов из Восточной Европы как угрозу «англосаксонскому» наследию Канады. [52] [53]
Название «Ку-клукс-клан» использовалось многочисленными независимыми местными группами, выступавшими против движения за гражданские права и десегрегации , особенно в 1950-х и 1960-х годах. В этот период они часто заключали союзы с южными полицейскими управлениями, как в Бирмингеме, штат Алабама ; или с офисами губернаторов, как с Джорджем Уоллесом из Алабамы . [54] [ указать ] Несколько членов групп Ку-клукс-клана были осуждены за убийство при гибели борцов за гражданские права в Миссисипи в 1964 году и детей при взрыве баптистской церкви на 16-й улице в Бирмингеме в 1963 году.
Правительство США по-прежнему считает Ку-клукс-клан «подрывной террористической организацией». [55] [56] [57] [58] В апреле 1997 года агенты ФБР арестовали четырёх членов Истинных рыцарей Ку-клукс-клана в Далласе за сговор с целью совершения ограбления и за сговор с целью взрыва завода по переработке природного газа . [59] В 1999 году городской совет Чарльстона, Южная Каролина , принял резолюцию, объявляющую Ку-клукс-клан террористической организацией. [60]
Существование современных групп Ку-клукс-клана находится в состоянии постоянного упадка из-за различных факторов: от негативного отношения американской общественности к имиджу, платформе и истории группы, проникновения и преследования со стороны правоохранительных органов, конфискаций гражданских исков и восприятия радикальными правыми Ку-клукс-клана как устаревшего и немодного. Южный центр правовой защиты бедности сообщил, что в период с 2016 по 2019 год количество групп Ку-клукс-клана в Америке сократилось со 130 до всего лишь 51. [61] В отчете Антидиффамационной лиги за 2016 год утверждается, что в Соединенных Штатах существует чуть более 30 активных групп Ку-клукс-клана. [62] Оценки общего коллективного членства варьируются от примерно 3000 [62] до 8000. [63] Помимо активного членства, у Ку-клукс-клана есть «неизвестное количество соратников и сторонников». [62]
Название, вероятно, было образовано путем объединения греческого слова kyklos (κύκλος, что означает круг) с словом clan . [64] [65] Ранее это слово использовалось для других братских организаций на Юге, таких как Kuklos Adelphon .
Шесть ветеранов Конфедерации из Пуласки, штат Теннесси , создали оригинальный Ку-клукс-клан 24 декабря 1865 года, вскоре после Гражданской войны , во время Реконструкции Юга. [66] [67] Группа была известна в течение короткого времени как «Клан Ку-клукс-клан». Ку-клукс-клан был одной из ряда тайных, связанных клятвой организаций, применявших насилие, среди которых были Южный крест в Новом Орлеане (1865) и Рыцари Белой Камелии (1867) в Луизиане . [68]
Историки обычно классифицируют Ку-клукс-клан как часть повстанческого насилия после Гражданской войны, связанного не только с большим количеством ветеранов среди населения, но и с их попытками контролировать резко изменившуюся социальную ситуацию, используя внесудебные средства для восстановления превосходства белых. В 1866 году губернатор Миссисипи Уильям Л. Шарки сообщил, что беспорядок, отсутствие контроля и беззаконие были широко распространены; в некоторых штатах вооруженные банды солдат Конфедерации бродили по своему усмотрению. Ку-клукс-клан использовал публичное насилие против чернокожих и их союзников в качестве запугивания. Они сжигали дома, нападали и убивали чернокожих , оставляя их тела на дорогах. [69] В то время как расизм был основным убеждением Ку-клукс-клана, антисемитизм таковым не был. Многие видные южные евреи полностью отождествляли себя с южной культурой, что привело к примерам еврейского участия в Ку-клукс-клане. [70]
На встрече 1867 года в Нэшвилле, штат Теннесси , члены Клана собрались, чтобы попытаться создать иерархическую организацию с местными отделениями, которые в конечном итоге подчинялись бы национальному штабу. Поскольку большинство членов Клана были ветеранами, они привыкли к такой военной иерархии, но Клану никогда не приходилось работать в рамках этой централизованной структуры. Местные отделения и группы были весьма независимы.
Бывший бригадный генерал Конфедерации Джордж Гордон разработал Prescript , который поддерживал убеждения сторонников превосходства белой расы. Например, заявителя следует спросить, поддерживает ли он «правительство белого человека», «восстановление избирательных прав и эмансипацию белых людей Юга и восстановление прав южан». [72] Последнее является ссылкой на Ironclad Oath , которая лишала права голоса белых людей, которые отказывались поклясться, что они не поднимали оружие против Союза.
Генерал Конфедерации Натан Бедфорд Форрест был избран первым великим магом и утверждал, что является национальным лидером Ку-клукс-клана. [30] [73] В интервью газете 1868 года Форрест заявил, что основная оппозиция Ку-клукс-клана была Лояльным лигам , республиканским правительствам штатов, таким людям, как губернатор Теннесси Уильям Ганнауэй Браунлоу и другим « саквояжникам » и « проходимцам ». [74] Он утверждал, что многие южане считали, что чернокожие люди голосуют за Республиканскую партию, потому что их обманывают Лояльные лиги. [75] Один редактор газеты в Алабаме заявил: «Лига — не более чем ниггерский Ку-клукс-клан». [76]
Несмотря на работу Гордона и Форреста, местные подразделения Ку-клукс-клана никогда не принимали Prescript и продолжали действовать автономно. Никогда не было иерархических уровней или государственных штаб-квартир. Члены Ку-клукс-клана использовали насилие для урегулирования старых личных распрей и местных обид, поскольку они работали над восстановлением общего доминирования белых в разрушенном послевоенном обществе. Историк Элейн Франц Парсонс описывает членство:
Снятие маски Ку-клукс-клана выявило хаотичное множество античерных групп мстителей, недовольных бедных белых фермеров, партизанских отрядов военного времени, перемещенных политиков-демократов, нелегальных производителей виски, принудительных реформаторов морали, садистов, насильников, белых рабочих, боящихся конкуренции со стороны черных, работодателей, пытающихся навязать трудовую дисциплину, обычных воров, соседей с многолетними обидами и даже нескольких вольноотпущенников и белых республиканцев, которые объединились с белыми демократами или имели собственные преступные планы. Действительно, все, что у них было общего, помимо того, что они были в подавляющем большинстве белыми, южными и демократическими , было то, что они называли себя, или их называли, членами Ку-клукс-клана. [77]
Историк Эрик Фонер заметил: «По сути, Ку-клукс-клан был военной силой, обслуживающей интересы Демократической партии, класса плантаторов и всех тех, кто желал восстановления превосходства белых. Его цели были политическими, но политическими в самом широком смысле, поскольку он стремился повлиять на властные отношения, как государственные, так и частные, во всем южном обществе. Он стремился обратить вспять взаимосвязанные изменения, охватившие Юг во время Реконструкции: разрушить инфраструктуру Республиканской партии, подорвать государство Реконструкции, восстановить контроль над чернокожей рабочей силой и восстановить расовое подчинение во всех аспектах жизни Юга. [78] С этой целью они работали над ограничением образования, экономического развития, избирательных прав и права хранить и носить оружие чернокожих людей. [78] Вскоре Ку-клукс-клан распространился почти на все южные штаты, начав царство террора против лидеров республиканцев, как черных, так и белых. Среди политических лидеров, убитых во время кампании, были конгрессмен Арканзаса Джеймс М. Хайндс , три члена законодательного органа Южной Каролины и несколько человек, которые работали в конституционных конвентах». [79]
В интервью 1933 года Уильям Селлерс, родившийся рабом в Вирджинии, вспоминал послевоенные «рейды Ку-клукс-клана, молодых белых людей округа Рокингем , которые заходили в хижины недавно освобожденных негров или ловили какого-нибудь негра, работавшего за тридцать центов в день, по дороге домой с работы... и жестоко избивали его, оставляя жить или умереть». [80] Кажущееся случайным избиение, призванное навести на мысль о прежнем состоянии рабства, было широко распространенным аспектом раннего Ку-клукс-клана; например, в 1870–71 годах в городке Лаймстоун (ныне округ Чероки ), Южная Каролина, из 77 задокументированных нападений «четыре были застрелены, шестьдесят семь избиты и шести отрезали уши ». [81]
Члены Ку-клукс-клана носили маски и мантии, скрывавшие их личности и добавлявшие драматизма их ночным поездкам, выбранному ими времени для нападений. Многие из них действовали в маленьких городах и сельской местности, где люди в противном случае знали друг друга в лицо, а иногда все еще узнавали нападавших по голосу и манерам. «То, что люди боятся или стыдятся делать открыто и днем, они делают тайно, в масках и ночью». [83] Ночные наездники Ку-клукс-клана «иногда утверждали, что они призраки солдат Конфедерации, чтобы, как они утверждали, напугать суеверных чернокожих. Мало кто из вольноотпущенников воспринимал такую чушь всерьез». [84]
Ку-клукс-клан нападал на чернокожих членов Лояльных лиг и запугивал южных республиканцев и работников Бюро вольноотпущенников . Когда они убивали чернокожих политических лидеров, они также брали глав семей, а также лидеров церквей и общественных групп, потому что эти люди играли много ролей в обществе. Агенты Бюро вольноотпущенников сообщали о еженедельных нападениях и убийствах чернокожих.
«Вооруженная партизанская война убила тысячи негров; политические беспорядки были инсценированы; их причины или поводы всегда были неясны, их результаты всегда были определенными: негров было убито в десять-сто раз больше, чем белых». Люди в масках стреляли в дома и сжигали их, иногда вместе с жильцами внутри. Они выгоняли успешных черных фермеров с их земель. «В целом, можно сообщить, что в Северной и Южной Каролине за 18 месяцев, закончившихся в июне 1867 года, было совершено 197 убийств и 548 случаев тяжких нападений». [85]
Насилие со стороны клана подавляло голосование черных, и предвыборные кампании были смертоносными. Более 2000 человек были убиты, ранены или иным образом травмированы в Луизиане в течение нескольких недель до президентских выборов в ноябре 1868 года. Хотя в приходе Сент-Лэндри было зарегистрировано республиканское большинство в 1071 человек, после убийств ни один республиканец не голосовал на осенних выборах. Белые демократы отдали все голоса прихода за оппонента президента Гранта. Ку-клукс-клан убил и ранил более 200 черных республиканцев, охотясь и преследуя их по лесам. Тринадцать пленников были выведены из тюрьмы и расстреляны; в лесу была найдена полузакопанная куча из 25 тел. Ку-клукс-клан заставил людей голосовать за демократов и выдал им сертификаты об этом. [86]
На выборах губернатора Джорджии в апреле 1868 года округ Колумбия отдал 1222 голоса за республиканца Руфуса Буллока . К ноябрьским президентским выборам запугивание Ку-клукс-клана привело к подавлению республиканского голосования, и только один человек проголосовал за Улисса С. Гранта . [87]
Ку-клукс-клановцы убили более 150 афроамериканцев в округе Джексон, Флорида , и сотни других в других округах, включая Мэдисон, Алачуа, Колумбию и Гамильтон. Записи Бюро вольноотпущенников Флориды предоставили подробный отчет об избиениях и убийствах вольноотпущенников и их белых союзников со стороны ку-клукс-клановцев. [88]
Более мягкие столкновения, в том числе против белых учителей, также имели место. В Миссисипи , согласно расследованию Конгресса:
Одна из этих учительниц (мисс Аллен из Иллинойса), чья школа находилась в порту Коттон-Гин в округе Монро , была посещена... между часом и двумя часами ночи в марте 1871 года примерно пятьдесятю мужчинами верхом и в масках. Каждый мужчина был одет в длинную белую мантию, а его лицо закрывала свободная маска с алыми полосами. Ей приказали встать и одеться, что она тут же и сделала, а затем впустила в свою комнату капитана и лейтенанта, которые в дополнение к обычной маскировке имели длинные рога на головах и своего рода устройство спереди. У лейтенанта в руке был пистолет, и он и капитан сели, в то время как восемь или десять мужчин стояли внутри двери, а крыльцо было заполнено. Они обращались с ней «джентльменски и тихо», но жаловались на большой школьный налог, говорили, что она должна прекратить преподавать и уйти, и предупредили ее, чтобы они никогда не давали второго уведомления. Она вняла предупреждению и покинула округ. [89]
К 1868 году, через два года после создания Клана, его активность начала снижаться. [90] Члены Клана прятались за масками и мантиями, чтобы избежать преследования за внештатное насилие. Многие влиятельные южные демократы опасались, что беззаконие Клана даст федеральному правительству повод сохранить свою власть над Югом, и они начали выступать против него. [91] Были сделаны нелепые заявления, например, заявление Джорджиан Б. Х. Хилла о том, что «некоторые из этих безобразий были на самом деле совершены политическими друзьями убитых партий». [90]
Ветераны армии Союза в горном округе Блаунт, штат Алабама , организовали «анти-Ку-клукс-клан». Они положили конец насилию, угрожая членам Ку-клукс-клана репрессиями, если они не прекратят избивать юнионистов и сжигать черные церкви и школы. Вооруженные черные люди сформировали собственную оборону в Беннетсвилле, Южная Каролина , и патрулировали улицы, чтобы защитить свои дома. [92]
Национальные настроения собрались, чтобы расправиться с Ку-клукс-кланом, хотя некоторые демократы на национальном уровне сомневались в том, что Ку-клукс-клан действительно существует, или считали, что он был создан нервными южными республиканскими губернаторами. [93] [ уточнить ] Многие южные штаты начали принимать антиклановские законы. [94]
В январе 1871 года сенатор-республиканец от Пенсильвании Джон Скотт созвал комитет Конгресса, который взял показания у 52 свидетелей о зверствах Ку-клукс-клана, собрав 12 томов. В феврале бывший генерал Союза и конгрессмен Бенджамин Франклин Батлер из Массачусетса представил Закон о гражданских правах 1871 года (Закон Ку-клукс-клана). Это усилило враждебность, которую южные белые демократы питали к нему. [95] Пока законопроект рассматривался, дальнейшее насилие на Юге пошатнуло поддержку его принятия. Губернатор Южной Каролины обратился к федеральным войскам с просьбой помочь ему в сохранении контроля над штатом. В здании суда Меридиана, штат Миссисипи , произошли беспорядки и резня , из которой чернокожий представитель штата сбежал в лес. [96] Закон о гражданских правах 1871 года позволил президенту приостановить действие habeas corpus . [97]
В 1871 году президент Улисс С. Грант подписал законопроект Батлера. Закон о Ку-клукс-клане и Закон о принудительном исполнении 1870 года использовались федеральным правительством для обеспечения соблюдения положений о гражданских правах для отдельных лиц в соответствии с конституцией. Ку-клукс-клан отказался добровольно распуститься после Закона о Ку-клукс-клане 1871 года, поэтому президент Грант издал указ о приостановке действия habeas corpus и разместил федеральные войска в девяти округах Южной Каролины, применив Закон о восстании 1807 года . Члены ку-клукс-клана были задержаны и привлечены к ответственности в федеральном суде. Судьи Хью Леннокс Бонд и Джордж С. Брайан председательствовали на судебных процессах по делу Ку-клукс-клана в Южной Каролине в Колумбии, Южная Каролина, в декабре 1871 года . [98] Обвиняемым дали от трех месяцев до пяти лет тюремного заключения со штрафами. [99] В составе присяжных в федеральном суде было больше чернокожих, чем в местных или государственных, поэтому у них была возможность участвовать в процессе. [97] [100] Сотни членов Ку-клукс-клана были оштрафованы или заключены в тюрьму во время подавления, «как только национальное правительство стало проводить политику военного вмешательства, целые народы, которые отвергали власть слабого «радикального» правительства штата, стали кроткими». [81]
Лидер Клана Натан Бедфорд Форрест хвастался, что Клан был общенациональной организацией из 550 000 человек и что он мог собрать 40 000 членов Клана в течение пяти дней. Однако у Клана не было списков членов, отделений и местных офицеров, поэтому наблюдателям было трудно судить о его членстве. [101] Он произвел сенсацию драматизмом своих замаскированных вылазок и многочисленными убийствами.
В 1870 году федеральное большое жюри определило, что Ку-клукс-клан является « террористической организацией» [102] [ указать ] и вынесло сотни обвинительных заключений за преступления насилия и терроризма. Члены Ку-клукс-клана были привлечены к ответственности, и многие бежали из районов, которые находились под юрисдикцией федерального правительства, особенно в Южной Каролине. [102] Многие люди, официально не принятые в Ку-клукс-клан, использовали костюмы Ку-клукс-клана, чтобы скрыть свою личность при совершении независимых актов насилия. Форрест призвал к роспуску Ку-клукс-клана в 1869 году, утверждая, что он «извращается от своих первоначальных благородных и патриотических целей, становясь вредоносным, а не служащим общественному спокойствию». [103] Историк Стэнли Хорн утверждает, что «в целом конец Ку-клукс-клана был скорее в форме неоднородного, медленного и постепенного распада, чем формального и решительного роспуска». [104] Репортер из Джорджии писал в 1870 году: «Правдивое утверждение по этому делу заключается не в том, что Ку-клукс-кланы — это организованная банда лицензированных преступников, а в том, что люди, которые совершают преступления, называют себя Ку-клукс-кланами». [105]
Во многих штатах должностные лица не хотели использовать черную милицию против Ку-клукс-клана из-за страха, что расовая напряженность может усилиться. [100] Республиканский губернатор Северной Каролины Уильям Вудс Холден призвал милицию против Ку-клукс-клана в 1870 году, что еще больше усилило его непопулярность. Это, а также широкомасштабное насилие и мошенничество на выборах привели к тому, что республиканцы потеряли большинство в законодательном собрании штата. Недовольство действиями Холдена способствовало тому, что белые законодатели-демократы объявили ему импичмент и отстранили его от должности, но у них было много причин для этого. [106]
Операции Ку-клукс-клана прекратились в Южной Каролине [91] и постепенно сошли на нет по всему остальному Югу. Генеральный прокурор Амос Таппан Акерман возглавил преследование. [107]
Фонер утверждает, что:
К 1872 году очевидная готовность федерального правительства применить свою законную и принудительную власть сломала хребет Ку-клукс-клану и привела к резкому снижению насилия по всему Югу. Так закончилась карьера Ку-клукс-клана в период Реконструкции. [108]
В середине 1870-х годов появились новые группы повстанцев, местные военизированные организации, такие как Белая лига , Красные рубашки , клубы сабель и стрелковые клубы, которые запугивали и убивали черных политических лидеров. [109] Белая лига и Красные рубашки отличались своей готовностью культивировать публичность, работая напрямую над свержением республиканских чиновников и восстановлением контроля над политикой.
В 1882 году Верховный суд постановил в деле Соединенные Штаты против Харриса , что Закон о Ку-клукс-клане был частично неконституционным . Он постановил, что полномочия Конгресса в соответствии с Четырнадцатой поправкой не включают право регулировать частные заговоры. Он рекомендовал лицам, которые стали жертвами, искать защиты в государственных судах, которые были совершенно несимпатичны к таким апелляциям. [110]
Костюмы Ку-клукс-клана, также называемые « регалиями », исчезли из употребления в начале 1870-х годов, [111] после того, как Великий Волшебник Форрест призвал к их уничтожению в рамках роспуска Ку-клукс-клана. Клан был распущен как организация к 1872 году. [112]
В 1915 году вышел фильм «Рождение нации» , мифологизирующий и прославляющий первый Ку-клукс-клан и его начинания. Второй Ку-клукс-клан был основан в 1915 году Уильямом Джозефом Симмонсом в Стоун-Маунтин , недалеко от Атланты, с пятнадцатью «членами-уставами». [113] Его рост был основан на новой антииммигрантской, антикатолической , запретительной и антисемитской повестке дня, которая отражала современную социальную напряженность, особенно недавнюю иммиграцию. Новая организация и отделения приняли регалии, показанные в «Рождении нации» ; членство держалось в тайне, носившие маски на публике.
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 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.[114]
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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.[29]
The Second Klan saw threats from every direction. According to historian Brian R. Farmer, "two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers".[115] 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".[116] 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".[117] 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.[118][specify] 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.[29]
New Klan founder William J. Simmons joined 12 different fraternal organizations and recruited for the Klan with his chest covered with fraternal badges, consciously modeling the Klan after fraternal organizations.[119] Klan organizers called "Kleagles" 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.[120][121][122]
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.[123][specify] 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, and Houston in the South. Close to half of Michigan's 80,000 Klansmen lived in Detroit.[124]
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;[125] indeed, the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers.
One notable exception was the Pillar of Fire Church, based in Zarephath, New Jersey.[127] Founder Alma Bridwell White was a vocal Klan supporter who repeatedly endorsed the organization, allowing it to hold meetings and even cross burnings at its churches.[128] White's pro-Klan writings were collected in her books The Ku Klux Klan in Prophecy, Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty, and Heroes of the Fiery Cross.[129]
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.[130]
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.[131] 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."[132]
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.[133][134] Anti-Catholicism was a main concern of the Alabama Klan, and 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.[135]
In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office over to two professional publicists, Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Young Clarke.[136] 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 and new sexual freedoms. It emphasized anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant and later 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.[137][specify]
By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population were members.[137][specify] 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 Republicans and Democrats, as well as 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".[138] Sociologist Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties:
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.[139]
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.[123][specify]
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.[137][specify]
Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition.[140] The historian Prendergast says that the KKK's "support for Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation".[141] 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.[142]
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.[118][specify]
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 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.[143]
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:
Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.[144]
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.
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.[145] 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 hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism.[146][specify] In his novel The Clansman, Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used fiery crosses from 'the call to arms' of the Scottish Clans,[147] 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.[148]
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.[48][specify]
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.[149]
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.[150] The Klan also moved north into Canada, especially Saskatchewan, where it opposed Catholics.[151][specify]
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.[152] In 1924 it supported Republican Edward Jackson in his successful campaign for governor.[153]
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.[154] 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.[155][156]
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 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.[157] 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.[157]
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 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 planters, who had long dominated the state.[158][specify] 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".[159] 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.[160] 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.[161]
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 Jewish Americans, including the lynching of Leo Frank in Atlanta, and to the Klan's campaign to 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 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.[118][specify] 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".[153] 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.[162] 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:
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.[163]
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.[164] 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]".)[165] Hall won a Pulitzer Prize for the crusade, the 1928 Editorial Writing Pulitzer, citing "his editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance".[166][167] 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 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.
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[168] and the NAACP in its Crisis magazine,[169] 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 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.[169] 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.[170][171]
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."[172]
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.[172] 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 came to North Carolina to organize textile workers and pushed back against racial discrimination there, taunting the KKK, resulting in the 1979 Greensboro massacre.[173][174]
According to Professor Jon Schamber, Rev. Philip E. J. Monson branched off from the teachings of British Israelism and began to develop Christian Identity Theology in the 1910s.[175] 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.[175]
In 1939, after experiencing several years of decline due to the Great Depression, the Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the national organization to James A. Colescott, an Indiana veterinary physician, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta 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.[182]
After World War II, the 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 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.[183] In the 1950s Kennedy wrote a bestselling book about his experiences, which further damaged the Klan.[184][specify]
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.[185][specify][186]
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.[187] 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."[188]
Pegram says this original interpretation:
...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.[189]
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.[190][191] 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.[192]
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."[193][specify]
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."[194] Member were primarily Baptists, Methodists, and members of the Disciples of Christ, while men of "more elite or liberal" Protestant denominations such as Unitarians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and Lutherans, were less likely to join.[195]
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.[118][specify]
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, 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."[196][specify]
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.[197][198]
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.[158][specify]
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".[199]
In 1944, the second KKK was disbanded by Imperial Wizard James A. Colescott after the IRS levied a large tax liability against the organization.[200] In 1946, Samuel Green reestablished the KKK at a ceremony on Stone Mountain.[201] His group primarily operated in Georgia. Green was succeeded by Samuel Roper as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was succeeded by Eldon Edwards in 1950.[202] 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 Davis was elected to follow Edwards as national leader.[203] 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.[204][205][206]
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.[207] The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan formed in 1964 after splitting from the Original Knights.[208] 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.[208] The FBI reported that Roy Davis's Original Knights was the largest faction and had about 1,500 members. Robert Shelton of Alabama was leading a faction of 400–600 members.[208] 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.[207][209]
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".[54][specify]
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.[54][specify] 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.[54][specify] 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 and demonstrably biased verdicts and sentences.[54]
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.[210]
Among the more notorious murders by Klan members in the 1950s and 1960s were:
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".[217] In a 1958 incident in North Carolina, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee 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.[218]
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.[54][specify]
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;[219] 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.[220]
After federal legislation was passed prohibiting legal segregation and authorizing enforcement of protection of voting rights, KKK groups began to oppose court-ordered busing to desegregate schools, affirmative action, and the more open immigration authorized in the 1960s. In 1971, KKK members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in Pontiac, Michigan.[221][222] 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.[223]
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.[224] The Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area.[173] Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks, and attacked marchers.
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 informants. William Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was revealed to have been working for the FBI.[225][specify]
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. 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.
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.[226][227][228] In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial.[229]
After 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.[230] It was the first time since 1913 that a white man had been executed in Alabama for a crime against an African American.[231]
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.[232] 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.[232][231]
In 1995, Don Black and Chloê Hardin, the ex-wife of the KKK grand wizard David Duke, began a small bulletin board system (BBS) called Stormfront, which has become a prominent online forum for white nationalism, Neo-Nazism, hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the early 21st century.[233][234][235]
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-Nazis. Some KKK groups have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the look and emblems of white power skinheads.[236][237][238]
The modern KKK is not one organization; rather, it is composed of small independent chapters across the United States.[239] 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".[240] 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".[241] 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 Midwest.[240][242][243]
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 groups, and a decline in the number of young racist activists who are willing to join groups at all.[244]
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".[245]
A 2016 analysis by the SPLC found that hate groups in general were on the rise in the United States.[245] 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."[62]
Recent KKK membership campaigns have stimulated people's anxieties about illegal immigration, urban crime, civil unions, and same-sex marriage.[246] 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."[247] The Klan has produced Islamophobic propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers.[248]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as their right to field political candidates.[249]
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.[250] Sutton expressed no regret and said that the editorial was intended to be "ironic", but that "not many people understand irony today."[251]
A list is maintained by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):[252]
Aside from the Ku Klux Klan in Canada, there have been various attempts to organize KKK chapters outside the United States in places such as: Asia, Europe and Oceania, with negligible results.[260]
In apartheid South Africa in the 1960s, some far-right activists copied KKK actions, for example by writing "Ku Klux Klan Africa" on the ANC Cape Town offices or by wearing their costumes. In response, American Klan leader Terry Venable attempted to establish a branch at Rhodes University.[261]
In the 1970s, Rhodesia had a Ku Klux Klan, led by Len Idensohn, attacking Ian Smith for his perceived moderation.[262][263]
In Mexico, the KKK endorsed and funded the Calles government during the 1920s Cristero War with the intention of destroying Catholicism there.[264] On 1924 vigilantes claimed to have organized themselves into a Klan against "criminals", publishing a program of "social epuration".[265]
In São Paulo, Brazil, the website of a group called Imperial Klans of Brazil was shut down in 2003, and the group's leader was arrested.[266]
The Klan has also been established in the Canal Zone.[260]
Klan was present in Cuba, under the name of Ku Klux Klan Kubano, directed against both West Indian migrant workers and Afro-Cuban and using the fear of the 1912 Negro Rebellion.[260][267]
During the Vietnam War, klaverns were established on some US military bases, often tolerated by military authorities.[268][269]
In the 1920s, the Klan briefly existed in Shanghai.[260][270]
Recruitment activity has also been reported in the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, "klaverns" were established in the Midlands, the following decade saw visits by leading Klansmen, and the 1990s saw recruitment drives in London, Scotland and the Midlands and huge internal turmoil and splintering: for example a leader, Allan Beshella, had to resign after a 1972 conviction for child sex abuse was revealed.[271][272] In 2018, Klan-clad far-right activists marched in front of a Northern Irish mosque.[273]
In Germany, a KKK-related group, Ritter des Feurigen Kreuzes ("Knights of the Fiery Cross"), was established in 1925 by returning naturalized German-born US citizens in Berlin who managed to gather around 300 persons of middle-class occupations such as merchants and clerks. It soon saw the original founders being removed by internal conflicts, and mocking newspapers about the affair. After the Nazis took over Germany, the group disbanded and its members joined the Nazis.[274][260][275] On 1991, Dennis Mahon, then of Oklahoma's White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, reportedly helped to organize Klan groups.[272] Another German KKK-related group, the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, has organized and it gained notoriety in 2012 when the German media reported that two police officers who held membership in the organization would be allowed to keep their jobs.[276][277] In 2019, the German authorities conducted raids against a possibly dangerous group called National Socialist Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Deutschland.[278][279][280]
In 2001, David Duke came to Moscow to network with local anti-Semitic Russian nationalists. Duke said that Russia was "the key to white survival" and blamed most of the events of the 20th century Russian history on the Jews.[281][282]
In the 1920s, the Klan was rumoured to exist in Lithuania and Czechoslovakia.[260]
In Australia in the late 1990s, former One Nation member Peter Coleman established branches throughout the country,[283][284] and circa 2012 the KKK has attempted to infiltrate other political parties such as Australia First.[285] Branches of the Klan have previously existed in New South Wales[285] and Victoria,[285] as well as allegedly in Queensland.[286] Unlike in the United States, the Australian branches did not require members to be Christian, but did require them to be white.[285]
A Ku Klux Klan group was established in Fiji in 1874 by white American and British settlers wanting to enact White supremacy, although its operations were quickly put to an end by the British who, although not officially yet established as the major authority of Fiji, had played a leading role in establishing a new constitutional monarchy, the Kingdom of Fiji, that was being threatened by the activities of the Fijian Klan, which owned fortresses and artillery. By March, it had become the "British Subjects' Mutual Protection Society", which included Francis Herbert Dufty.[287][288][289][290]
In the 1920s, the Klan had been rumoured to exist in New Zealand.[260]
Membership in the Klan is secret. Like many fraternal organizations, the Klan has signs that members can use to recognize one another. In conversation, a member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) to surreptitiously identify themselves to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting.[291]
Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words[292][220] beginning with "Kl", including:
All of the above terminology was created by William Joseph Simmons, as part of his 1915 revival of the Klan.[293] The Reconstruction-era Klan used different titles; the only titles to carry over were "Wizard" for the overall leader of the Klan and "Night Hawk" for the official in charge of security.
The imperial kludd was the chaplain of the Imperial Klonvokation and he performed "such other duties as may be required by the imperial wizard".
The imperial kaliff was the second-highest position, after the imperial wizard.[294]
The Ku Klux Klan has utilized a variety of symbols over its history.
The Primary symbol used by the clan for the past century has been the Mystic Insignia of a Klansman, commonly known as the Blood Drop Cross, a white cross on a red disk with what appears to be a blood drop in the middle. It was first used in the early 1900s, with the symbol in the center originally appearing as a red and white yin-yang which in the subsequent years, lost the white part and was reinterpreted as a "blood drop".[295]
The Triangular Ku Klux Klan symbol is made of what looks like a triangle inside a triangle, similar to a Sierpiński triangle, but in fact represents three letter Ks interlocked and facing inward, referencing the name of the group. A variation on this symbol has the K's facing outwards instead of inwards. It is an old Klan symbol that has also been resurrected as a modern-day hate symbol.[296]
Although predating the Klan, in modern times the symbol of the burning cross has become almost solely associated with the Ku Klux Klan and has become one of the most potent hate symbols in the United States.[297] Burning crosses did not become associated with the clan until Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, and its film adaptation, D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation inspired members of the second Klan to take up the practice.[298] In the modern day the symbol of the burning cross is so associated with racial intimidation that it is used by many non-Klan racist elements and has spread to locations outside the United States.[297]
In 1985, the KKK began creating wanted posters listing personal information for abortion providers (doxing before the Internet age) ... Groups like the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan trafficked in rhetoric that mirrored that of the anti-abortion movement—with an anti-Semitic twist: 'More than ten million white babies have been murdered through Jewish-engineered legalized abortion since 1973 here in America and more than a million per year are being slaughtered this way.'
Police in Virginia are investigating a series of violently antisemitic and homophobic flyers targeting a local school board that were distributed by a white supremacist group affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Flyers denouncing the school board in Fairfax, Va., as 'Jew-inspired, communist, queer-loving sex fiends violating the words of the Holy Bible' were discovered on Wednesday
50 Klansmen, skinheads and supporters proclaimed gays and lesbians should receive the death penalty.
A report to the World-Telegram today from Atlanta, Georgia, says that the Ku Klux Klan has resumed functioning there, with all its trappinge burning crosses, hoods and other KKK rituals – and quotes Grand Dragon Samuel Greens as stating that "we are not fighting Jews because of their religion. We are fighting the kikes, and-there are as many kikes among the Protestants as among the Jews." Active in the Klan revival is J.B.Stoner of Chattanooga who last year sent a petition to Congress reading: "I request, urge and petition you to pass a resolution recognizing the fact that the Jews are children of the devil and that, consequently, they constitute a grave danger to the United States of America."
one of the nation's first terrorist groups
Historians have suggested a combination of reasons for the eventual decline of the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction period: 1)growth of public sentiment in the South against activities of masked terrorists
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{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location (link)Kenneth T. Jackson, in his The Ku Klux Klan in the City 1915–1930, reminds us that 'virtually every' Protestant denomination denounced the KKK, but that most KKK members were not 'innately depraved or anxious to subvert American institutions', but rather believed their membership in keeping with 'one-hundred percent Americanism' and Christian morality.
To Captain Morton performed the ceremonies which initiated Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest into the KKK.
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.
The Assembly Hall was filled in the evening, with about 100 klanswomen and a few klansmen in robes. The first speaker of the evening was Bishop White. She gave a fiery message on the topic of race and social equality....She expressed hope that the Klan would do its part in keeping the blood of America pure.
White's words and Clarke's imagery combined in various ways to create a persuasive and powerful message of religious intolerance.
Bishop White's transformation from minister to Klan propagandist is detailed in voluminous autobiographical and political writing. [Bishop] White's anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and racist message fit well into the Klan's efforts to convince white Protestant women that their collective interests as women....were best served by joining the Klan.
I believe in white supremacy.
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 ...
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. ...
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
Because there are multiple Ku Klux Klan organizations, there are multiple official websites. Following are third-party lists of such organizations:
