White Clothes in Black History of the USA. History of the Ku Klux Klan
White robes are the traditional attire of the Ku Klux Klan.
This article - story hatred in America, hatred, not the natural competition and discord that exists in the political life of any democratic country, hatred, savage, irrational, and murderous, which throughout American history has driven men to extremes of violence against men because of their race, nationality, religion, or way of life. And since 1865, the Ku Klux Klan has been just such a vehicle for hatred...
A small introduction
In the indictment against former United States President Donald Trump and his role in the violent attack on the Capitol, Special Counsel Jack Smith accused him of knowingly conspiring to, quote:
"to injure, harass, threaten, or intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of any right or privilege guaranteed to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States."
This quote from the prosecutor is taken from a series of laws passed back in the 1870s and called the Ku Klux Klan Laws (Ku Klux Klan Act), which are formally known as the Enforcement Acts (Enforcement Act), because they authorized the federal government to enforce the Civil War amendments, sometimes called the Reconstruction Amendments (Reconstruction Amendments), which brought freedom to black slaves and guaranteed them equal protection of the laws and the right to vote.
The former president faces four charges, one of which dates back to a dark time in American history when the Ku Klux Klan attempted to disrupt the 1872 presidential election by murdering and intimidating newly enfranchised black former slaves. So what kind of organization was this that suddenly grew from a social group into a terrorist organization that reached its peak at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, numbering some six million people?
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Map: Union and Confederate States, 1861-1865
Throughout the history of the United States, the Klan itself has had three periods, each differing in influence, power, and methods: the first Ku Klux Klan existed from 1865 to 1871, primarily in the South; the second Ku Klux Klan was revived throughout the country in the early 1910s and lasted until the Great Depression; and the third Ku Klux Klan emerged after World War II, as a reaction to the civil rights movement for national minorities, when that movement was at its peak. In the 1970s, the Klan revived again, but did not reach its former level of influence.
Southern blacks on a cotton plantation. Photo: Benjamin West Kilburn (Benjamin W. Kilburn). Photo source: Library of Congress
And we must begin here with the era of Reconstruction in the South (1865-1877) - immediately after the end of the Civil War, when the American South was going through a difficult period, and the federal government was trying to integrate the southern states with four million recently freed black slaves from the Confederacy into a single federal state - the United States.
Negro Family. Cumberland Landing, Virginia (Cumberland Landing, Virginia), 1862. Photo source: Library of Congress
In a speech given by Lincoln on April 11, outlining plans for Reconstruction, he declared that both free blacks and former slaves deserved the right to vote, but three days later he was assassinated and his successor was left to implement plans for Reconstruction of the South (Reconstruction of the South) into life.
Reconstruction of the South
The Whittaker family, 1874. Photo: James A. Palmer (James A. Palmer). Photo source: Library of Congress
Reconstruction (1865–1877), the period following the Civil War, is perhaps the most controversial era in the history of the United States. It was also a time when the entire country, and especially the South, was forced to grapple with the legacy of slavery, ushering in far-reaching changes in American politics. At the federal level, new laws and amendments to the Constitution forever changed the federal system and clearly defined American citizenship, and in the South, a vibrant black community united with white allies to bring the Republican Party to power and, together, redefine the future purposes and responsibilities of the federal government.
A black soldier named Johnson hangs from a specially constructed crossbar. Accused of attempted rape. Petersburg, Virginia. Photo: Library of Congress
Note. The Republican Party was formed in March 1854 as a coalition of opponents of slavery and staunch supporters of increased federal government power. The party reflected the interests of Northern industrialists and was an opponent of the Democratic Party, which relied on the slave-owning planters of the South. The Republicans had full support throughout New England, New York, a small part of the Midwest, and had considerable influence in the rest of the North, but they had almost no support in the South, where after the end of the Civil War they were roundly condemned as a divisive force. At first, the Republican Party was supported by the Evangelical Protestant denominations - Methodists, Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalists - they were the most determined supporters of the new party. And, conversely, they were opposed by the adherents of the Episcopal Liturgical Churches - Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutheran, who rejected the ideas of the Republican Party and cast their votes for the Democrats. Thus, the election of Republican Lincoln in the presidential election of 1860 became the impetus for the slave states to secede, which led to the outbreak of the Civil War.
Freedmen. Richmond, Virginia. 1865. Photo credit: Library of Congress
After the Civil War, Congress passed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which freed all black slaves in the United States wherever they were, leaving the mass of black Southerners now facing the hardship of having a freed black population surrounded by hostile white forces. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote:
"Because we colored people didn't know how to be free, and the white people didn't know how to have a free colored person around."
A white manager weighs cotton picked by black sharecroppers, circa 1870. Source: Photo Bank Corbis
Note. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This amendment made the emancipation of the slaves a national policy. After its passage by the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865, and became the first of three Reconstruction Amendments passed between 1865 and 1870 following the end of the American Civil War. Congress was given the power to enforce the Amendment through legislation.
A black man driving an oxcart loaded with cotton to the cotton gin. Photo by James A. Palmer (James A. Palmer). Photo source: Library of Congress
After the Civil War, under the protection of the Constitutional Amendments and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 (Civil Rights Act of 1866), people of color enjoyed a period in which they were allowed to vote, participate actively in the political process, purchase land from former owners, seek their own jobs, and use public facilities. But opponents of this progress viewed Reconstruction as a humiliating, even vindictive, imposition of laws from the North, and they soon began to rally against the freedom of their former slaves and to seek ways to undermine the gains for which so many had shed their blood. And within less than a decade, reactionary forces, including the Ku Klux Klan, had reversed the changes wrought by radical Reconstruction in a violent backlash that restored white supremacy in the South.
Freedmen voting in New Orleans, 1867. From the Otto Bettmann Collection (Otto Bettmann)
First Ku Klux Klan
At the time of the Ku Klux Klan's emergence, there were many conspiracy theories floating around to explain its origins. For example, one popular theory claimed that the Klan was originally a secret order of Chinese opium smugglers. Another theory claimed that the Klan was founded by captured Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. And the most outlandish theory of all was that the Klan's origins were attributed to an ancient Hebrew manuscript that mentioned Jews being enslaved by Egyptian pharaohs...
Civil War Veterans
But it wasn't like that. Once upon a time, before the black movement began, in the sleepy little town of Pulaski, Tennessee, there was a plaque on the wall of the local courthouse commemorating the organization of the Ku Klux Klan there on December 24, 1865, by Judge Thomas L. Jones and five others.
As the American historian Julian Bond writes, it was the boredom of small-town life that compelled six young Confederate veterans to gather around a fireplace one December evening in 1865 and form a social club. And that place was the town of Pulaski, Tennessee, near the Alabama border. And when they met again a week later, they were brimming with ideas for their new society. It was to be secret, and to further enhance the effect of mystery, the titles of the various positions in the organization were to have names that sounded as ridiculous as possible. Partly for fun, and partly to avoid any military or political complications.
One of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan
Thus, maintaining secrecy and at the same time giving the organization a certain pomp and ceremony, the head of the organization was called the "Great Magician", who headed a decemvirate of ten "Geniuses". The states themselves were divided into "domains", headed by "Great Tyrants" with their assistants - "Furies". But what to call the society itself?
The founders of the society were determined to come up with something unusual and mysterious, and being well-educated people, they turned to the ancient Greek language. After going through several options for the name of the organization, the word "kuklos" was suggested, from which the English words "circle" and "cycle" were derived. Another member of the society, Captain John B. Kennedy, probably of Scottish or Irish descent and possessing the gift of alliteration, added the Scottish-Gaelic word "clan" to the word "kuklos" - this is how the tribal community of the Irish and Scots was called, but he suggested writing the word clan with the initial English letter "kay" - klan. And after fiddling around with phonetics a little more, they settled on the name "Ku Klux Klan", or otherwise - KKK...
Two Negro children who were probably freed during the Civil War. Photo taken around 1870
The choice of such a name for the organization, although accidental, nevertheless had a significant impact on the early success of the Ku Klux Klan: something about the sound of it aroused people's curiosity and gave the newly formed community a certain aura of mystery, as did its enigmatic initials - FAQ, which would soon acquire such a terrifying significance. And, as one American historian noted, the organization "had a fatal power in the very name of the Ku Klux Klan. Let the reader pronounce the word aloud. It resembles the sound of skeletal bones striking against each other"...
Note. There are other theories about the origin of the name Ku Klux Klan, one of which is that the name of the organization comes from the Latin word cucullus, which means "hood". According to another version, the Ku Klux Klan got its name from the characteristic clicking sound when pulling the bolt of a rifle.
A black family in a field picking cotton
Historians of the organization disagree on the intentions of the six founders, but what is known is that shortly after the founders came up with the name of the Klan, they immediately decided to have a little fun, and, disguised in white sheets, they rode their horses through the quiet streets of rural Pulaski. Their first night ride caused such a stir that the Klansmen decided to adopt the white sheets as the official regalia of the Ku Klux Klan, and to heighten the effect, they donned grotesque masks and tall, pointed hats.
Much of the early reputation of the Ku Klux Klan may have been based on almost thoughtless mischief and meaningless tomfoolery. At first, the Klan's favorite pastime was intimidation: a rider, wrapped in a white sheet and wearing a pointed cap and a mask with slits for the eyes, would ride up to the house of a Negro family at night and demand water. When he was given a bucket from a well, he would drink it and demand more, actually pouring the water through a rubber tube hidden inside that drained into an equally hidden leather bottle hidden under his white robes. After draining several buckets in this manner, the rider would exclaim that he had not had a drink since he died in the field. Battle of Shiloh*. He then rode off into the night, leaving the naive people with the impression that the ghosts of dead Confederates were riding through the countryside.
And if that had been all the Ku Klux Klan had done at the time, it would probably have disappeared as quietly as it had been born, leaving no trace in history, but at some point in early 1866, the Klan took in new members from nearby towns and began to have a terrifying effect on the local black population, and the mischief began to turn to violence. And such terrifying night rides soon became the central core of the Ku Klux Klan - groups of riders in white sheets making nightly visits to black homes, exhorting the terrified residents to behave themselves and threatening them with more visits, but this time with violence, if they did not.
juneteenth — is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of black slaves. On June 19, 1865, Texan slaves in Galveston Bay finally learned of their freedom. This holiday was created during the Reconstruction period and gave blacks across America a day to celebrate their independence. It is celebrated as the official end of slavery in the United States, as Texan slaves were the last to learn of their freedom.
But it did not take long before threats began to turn into violence against the newly freed blacks who insisted on exercising their new rights and freedoms guaranteed to them by the federal government. At first, floggings were used against the black population, but then bloody clashes began to occur between members of the Ku Klux Klan on one side and northern blacks who came to the South and southern white Unionists on the other.
And before its six founders knew what had happened, the Ku Klux Klan had become what they perhaps never intended to be - an instrument of savage and murderous hatred.
Lynched Negroes. Orangeburg, South Carolina, 1897. Photo: Universal History Archive
During the Reconstruction period in the South, the political activities of the newly formed Ku Klux Klan were closely linked to the goals of southern politicians still committed to the idea of white supremacy, and to support this idea, the Klan launched a campaign of terror, violence, and murder targeting both the black population and white voters who advocated racial equality and equal civil rights.
But the organization, which had grown by leaps and bounds, kept a very close eye on the activities of government officials, and if the activities of any of them were contrary to the interests of the white population, the KKK would send them an ominous warning with a proposal to leave the city, which would be carried out immediately in view of the practically inevitable exterminatus.Pyat zernyshek orange" A. Conan Doyle. Remember this story?)
In 1935, American scholar and civil rights activist William E. Burckhardt Du Bois described Ku Klux Klan attacks as "armed guerrilla warfare" and estimated that between 1866 and mid-1867, the Klan was responsible for 197 murders and 548 serious assaults in North and South Carolina alone.
By the summer of 1867, at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the Ku Klux Klan was organized into the so-called "Invisible Empire of the South," and the organization was led by Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate cavalry general, under whom the Klan reached its peak between 1867 and 1870, and as a powerful force, was largely responsible for the restoration of white rule and the old order in the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. In these states, the Klan became the de facto law and an invisible government that state officials could not control.
Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-1877) - Confederate general during the Civil War and as the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Planter and slave trader. Archive: The Print Collector/Getty Images
When Tennessee Governor William G. Brownlow tried to plant informants in the Ku Klux Klan, he found that the organization knew as much about his efforts as he did, and one informant who had tried to join the Klan was found hanging from a tree. Later, another informant was brutally mutilated, and a third was stuffed in a barrel and lowered off a dock into the Cumberland River, where he drowned...
The Klan's reign of terror during the Reconstruction era was largely unopposed by local governments, and by the late 60s, lurid stories of Klan activity were appearing in newspapers across the country, and Reconstruction governors began to realize that they were facing nothing less than a terrorist insurrection, prompting federal intervention. In 1870, the U.S. Congress passed the Force Act (The Force Bill), which allowed Ku Klux Klan members to be prosecuted in federal court and dramatically slowed the activities of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bills passed by Congress authorized then-President Ulysses S. Grant to suspend the institution Habeas Corpus, suppress unrest with force, and impose harsh penalties on terrorist organizations. The president sent federal troops into some areas of the South and appointed commissioners who made hundreds of arrests of Southerners for terrorist activities, and Forrest had no choice but to disband the organization, although some local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan remained active for a time, prompting Congress to pass another tough law, the Ku Klux Klan Act (Ku Klux Klan Act). And by the early 1870s, the Ku Klux Klan had virtually disappeared.
To be reborn in the first half of the 20th century...
The Second Ku Klux Klan
In the second half of the 19th century, memories of the Klan's brief reign of secret power in the South faded considerably, and its bloody atrocities were forgotten by many whites who had once sympathized with its cause. But by the early 20th century, two significant events had occurred in American life that would serve as preparation for the resurgence of a new Klan.
Cross burning is one of the mystical traditions of the Second Clan. Photo: Charles Phelps Cushing. Getty Images
The first such event was mass immigration, which brought more than twenty million people to the United States in a relatively short period, mostly from Eastern Europe, French Canada, and southern Germany, causing considerable resentment among some native-born Anglo-Saxon Americans who felt that the country was overcrowded with foreigners and Catholics.
In this 1926 cartoon, the Ku Klux Klan drives the Roman Catholic Church out of America, along with its "snakes" such as the union of church and state, control of schools, and superstition.
Another important event that paved the way for the return of the Ku Klux Klan was the outbreak of World War I in Europe, which had a painful and disturbing effect on the entire American nation. On the European battlefields, after the entry of the United States into the war, white Americans were once again subjected to unrestrained bloodshed, while black Americans were left to cool their heels on the home front. When Americans returned home from the war, they brought with them suspicion, hatred, and distrust of everything foreign, which eventually led them to reject the League of Nations created by President Woodrow Wilson...
Women of the Salvation Army (Salvation Army) soldiers returning from Europe are greeted with food in lunch boxes
But let's get back to the origins...
So, on Thanksgiving night 1915, a small group of white-hooded men led by William J. Simmons, a veteran of the Spanish-American War and a Methodist preacher, gathered atop Stone Mountain, an imposing granite hill outside Atlanta, Georgia. With a flag fluttering in the wind and a Bible open to the twelfth chapter of "Epistles to the Romans"With a flaming cross lighting up the night sky above them, William Joseph Simmons and his followers proclaimed themselves the new Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, named after the infamous secret order that many of their fathers and grandfathers had belonged to after the Civil War.
William Joseph Simmons in his "Chief Mage" attire. Archive Getty Images
Unable to find their place in the New South and yearning for the provincial and patriarchal world of the American past, the men who formed the Second Klan saw themselves as knights preparing for a holy war between the races. They boasted that they had united in a “an invisible phalanx... to stand impregnable as a tower against any encroachment on the white man's freedom... in the white man's country and under the white man's flag».
The lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who owned a pencil factory in Georgia and was accused of raping Mary Phagan, a worker at the factory. Rather than wait for the court to carry out Frank's death sentence, an angry mob snatched Leo Frank from jail and lynched him in the woods. Archive: Bettmann.
Thus was born the second incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan. The Second Klan, a memorial to the Reconstructionist First Klan and its work in the post-war South, was to operate as a restructured fraternity that would uphold white supremacy and purity, nationalism, and Protestant Christianity. William J. Simmons organized the charter for the new order, inaugurating it by burning a cross atop Stone Mountain.
A massive theatrical initiation ceremony into the Ku Klux Klan with the obligatory burning of a cross at Stone Mountain. Photo: The Washington Post
Simmons' penchant for theatrics, including the adoption of the fiery cross as the Klan's symbol, along with the Order's aggressive public relations campaign, quickly attracted the attention of local and national newspapers. Newspaper reporters eagerly commented on the Klan's political platform, its stated intentions, and its historical ties to the First Klan, which had existed since Reconstruction. Some of the initial newspaper coverage, particularly in the South, was favorable. For example, Columbus Enquirer Sun, published in Georgia, wrote:
"Proof that the noble spirit which animated the members of the famous Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction period still lived among the sons and was evident in the remarkable growth of the organization... The new order seemed to have the potential to reform the region, and perhaps the entire country."
The white robes and masks of the Ku Klux Klan, theatrical initiation ceremonies, burning crosses, and altars draped with American flags all proved very attractive to the media and their readers. But especially gripping was the naturalization ritual, in which a mass of men dressed in white robes swore allegiance to their country and Christianity. But it must be noted that while Simmons clothed the newborn Order in the familiar white robes of its predecessor, he began to develop the Christian nature of the Order, tying it closely to patriotism, and under his dramatic leadership the Order expanded beyond the South to the rest of the United States.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing white robes and hoods, parade down Grace Street in Richmond, Virginia, 1925. This photograph was taken at the intersection of Grace and Fifth Streets, just a few blocks from the Virginia State Capitol. Source: Dementi Studio
These two combinations of religion and nationalism that Simmons promoted were very attractive to white Protestant Americans, who feared that a wave of immigration from Eastern Europe would change established mores and overthrow their social dominance. The Second Klan required its members to be not only white men but also Protestant Christians. Religion became a central element of the Second Klan platform, and Klansmen demonstrated their devotion to their faith through church attendance.
A Ku Klux Klan meeting, probably in Portland, Oregon, in the 1920s. Source: Oregon Historical Society
Note. It is said that after the formation of the Second Ku Klux Klan, Simmons pulled a Colt automatic pistol and cartridge belt out of his coat and, laying it all out on the table in front of him, he plunged a Bowie knife into the table next to weapons And he said: “And now let Nigers, Catholics, Jews and all the others who despise my imperial witchcraft will come out!”
Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. The black men were arrested as suspects accused of robbery, murder, and rape. An angry mob dragged them out of jail, beat them, and then lynched them. Marion, Indiana, 1930. Archive: Universal Images Group
Simmons's visual message was clear: the new Klan was serious. And that meant expanding its list of enemies to include Asians, immigrants, Catholics, bootleggers (after Prohibition), drugs, bribery, nightclubs, premarital and extramarital affairs, and scandalous behavior. The second Klan thus came to represent the American past, cut from a mythical cloth: an America without immigrants, an America ruled by white Anglo-Saxons, and an America that worshiped in unison with an evangelical Christian God.
In this 1920s photo, candidates for membership in the Ku Klux Klan kneel before white-clad Klansmen at a ceremony near the U.S. Capitol. The Klan received fifty candidates for membership that evening. Photo: Underwood & Underwood. Library of Congress.
The revived Klan believed that only people like them could be "real Americans" and were convinced that their country was under the oppression of Catholic immigrants from countries like Italy, Poland, and Ireland, and that these people posed a serious threat to the United States with their alien foreign drinking habits, bars, and late-night dives.
A Ku Klux Klan leader poses in his official regalia in 1921. Ku Klux Klan members typically wore white robes, symbols of "purity" and the "righteousness of Christ," but as the Klan grew larger, the group's leaders began wearing robes of different colors. Photo: Walter Washington Foster.
This revived Ku Klux Klan became known throughout America as a self-proclaimed defender of American values, a magnet for the formation of white Protestant congregations, and a serious potential force in national politics. And while the First Ku Klux Klan had been limited to the South, the Second Klan had become a truly national organization, at its peak numbering perhaps six million members. And for several years, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast, America was engulfed in burning crosses.
A Ku Klux Klan initiation ritual in Georgia. Photo: Ed Clark/Image Collection Shutterstock
Note. The Ku Klux Klan of the first half of the 1915th century, known as the Second Klan, gained nearly six million members faster than the First Klan, largely due to the XNUMX release of the three-hour film The Birth of a Nation, directed by David Griffith, which attracted national attention. The film was imbued with an anti-black bias, admiringly justifying the Ku Klux Klan, showing throughout the plot the image of a noble and honest white man. The blacks, according to the plot, are full of animal rage and are most interested in interracial marriages and forcing white women into sexual relations. Seeing such lawlessness, whites found the Ku Klux Klan to protect their traditional way of life from such abominations. The film's underlying message is that the white-robed killers were, on the whole, fair and just and, by denying blacks the right to vote, restored order and civilization to the South.
The "Grand Dragon" of Fulton County, Georgia, the Ku Klux Klan, an Atlanta doctor named Samuel Green, was surrounded by his aides. Photo: Ed Clark/Image Collection Shutterstock
When talking about the Second Clan, one cannot ignore its active propaganda activities, which could well have been the envy of the Nazi propaganda ministry. Conceived by the Chief Magician and turned into a get-rich-quick scheme, the Ku Klux Klan includes paid lecturers in its structure and earns its existence by selling membership to those wishing to join the organization for $10.
Note. Among the members of the Ku Klux Klan was a small businessman from Kansas City, Harry S. Truman, the future president of the United States. But Truman soon changed his mind and demanded his $10 back.
Newly initiated members of the Ku Klux Klan marched to the great altar of the Ku Klux Klan on Stone Mountain in Georgia. The Klan jubilantly announced that it had accepted 600 new members overnight. Photo: Ed Clark.
One of the simplest and cheapest propaganda ploys for the Ku Klux Klan was to parade in full Klan regalia—white robes, caps, and masks—designed to arouse the curiosity of those not already in the Klan and thus make them want to join. Another propaganda ploy for the Klan was to send its members, dressed in masks and robes, to churches, funerals, hospitals, and other such places, where they would conduct “charity operations,” which involved handing out small amounts of money to families in distress, evangelists, and charities such as orphanages and homes for the aged. And the tactic was wildly successful. By the end of the summer of 1921, nearly 100 people (at $000 a head, before taxes) had become members of the so-called “Invisible Empire.”
A letter from the Ku Klux Klan (Portsmouth), November 16, 1922, urging Klan members to pay a poll tax to vote and describing the upcoming vote as a way to "fight the vile rottenness" in the world
And for a time, the future of the Klan looked very good. But then the first problems began to appear: while the Klan leaders talked of fraternal ideals, patriotism, and Christian morality, some of their members began to take seriously the fiery rhetoric that recruiters used to gather new members and, with them, initiation fees. Violence first broke out in the form of whippings of victims, tar and feather raids, and the use of acid to burn the Klan's letters, "KKK," into the foreheads of blacks, Catholics, and Jews, as well as anyone they considered enemies of America. And some ministers, sheriffs, police officers, mayors, and judges either ignored the violence or secretly participated in it, wearing caps and masks. Few Klan members were arrested, and even fewer were convicted.
New initiates of the Ku Klux Klan (including some Atlanta police officers) kneel before the local "Grand Dragon" during an initiation ritual in Georgia. Photo: Ed Clark.
In September 1921, the newspaper New York World began a series of articles about the Klan, backed by revelations from a former Klan recruiter who reported on some financial manipulations at the Klan's Atlanta headquarters. But even more disconcerting was the story that some of the Klan's leaders had been arrested.not quite fully dressed"during a police raid on a brothel.
Women of the Ku Klux Klan march in the Independence Day parade on McDonald Avenue in downtown Richmond, Virginia, in 1924. Photo: M. L. Cohen/Oakland Museum Collection
The publication of these articles seriously tarnished the moral image of the Klan and caused a serious rift in its ranks. But that was not the worst of it—the newspaper revelations prompted public demands for countermeasures, and Congress responded in October 1921 with hearings on the Klan's activities. When called before Congress, Simmons explained the Klan's secrecy as part of the tradition and fraternal aspect of the organization and disavowed any connection between his Klan and the Reconstruction-era Night Riders. He denied—as Forrest had 50 years earlier—any knowledge of or responsibility for the violence. The committee adjourned without taking action, and the Klan benefited from all the publicity it gave it.
William Joseph Simmons takes part in a congressional investigation of the Ku Klux Klan in 1921. Photo: The Washington Post. Library of Congress
Yet despite the opposition the Klan faced, its members remained committed to their vision of Christianity and Americanism, and to respond to their critics, the Klan's leadership turned to the press, hoping to use its influence over society to defend their ideals and present their own understanding of the benefits of such a movement. William Simmons gave interviews defending the Klan where possible, and pro-Klan Protestant pastors lectured on the "true nature" of the Klan and its greatest benefit to America. The Protestant Christian nature of the Klan was always at the forefront of these debates, and Christianity played a vital role in the development and maintenance of the Order.
Members of the Ku Klux Klan outside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., 1925. Collection Bettmann
Following the newspaper revelations, the Ku Klux Klan entered into prolonged internal strife, and by the fall of 1922, led by Texas dentist Hiram Wesley Evans, six conspirators had drawn up plans to overthrow Simmons, and by early 1923 Evans had become the Imperial Magician.
The little-known youth movement of the Ku Klux Klan (The Junior Ku Klux Klan). Photo: Jay Hirtz and Frederick Lewis. Archive Getty Images
Under the leadership of Hiram Wesley Evans, a dentist with a small practice who quickly rose through the organization, the Klan changed beyond recognition. Just two years later, under Evans's leadership, between 30 and 000 Klansmen marched in triumph down Pennsylvania Avenue in D.C. Some marched in lines as wide as 50 abreast, while others formed K-shaped formations or Christian crosses.
A parade of approximately 30-000 people in which members of the Ku Klux Klan marched down Pennsylvania Avenue in the District of Columbia on August 50, 000. Archive Bettmann
Several were on horseback. Many held American flags. The marching men and women carried banners emblazoned with the names of their home states or local chapters, and their procession lasted more than three hours down Pennsylvania Avenue, which was filled with spectators. The national leaders of the Ku Klux Klan were resplendent in their colorful satin robes, while the rank and file wore white, their regalia adorned with a circular red patch bearing a cross with a drop of blood in the center.
"This is the greatest demonstration this city has ever known."
— she wrote The Washington PostThis media attention only contributed to the growth of a second Ku Klux Klan...
In 1925, when the group marched on Washington, the Ku Klux Klan was estimated to have between four and six million members. Source: The New York Times
The Second Ku Klux Klan, unlike the First, wielded greater influence in elections, helping elect governors in Alabama, California, Oregon, and Indiana. By some estimates, 75 members of the House of Representatives won their seats with the help of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Among them was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black of Alabama...
Women's Ku Klux Klan, an affiliated racist organization for white Protestant women
Under Evans, the Klan began a campaign of terrorism—lynchings, shootings, and floggings were the methods used by the Klan, whose victims included blacks, Jews, Catholics, Mexicans, and Eastern European immigrants. But the Klan's targets were also often white Protestants and women who were considered "immoral" or "traitors" to their race or sex.
A Ku Klux Klan member holds a noose out of his car window during a demonstration in Miami. Archive: Hulton Archives
In Alabama, for example, a divorced woman with two children was flogged for the "crime" of remarrying, then given a jar of Vaseline for the wounds. In Georgia, a woman received 60 lashes for the vague charge of "immorality and not going to church," and when her 15-year-old son came running to her aid, he received the same punishment.
Lynch victims hanged from a tree. The bodies of Dooley Morton (left) and Bert Moore of Lowndes County are shown hanging from a tree after they were lynched by an angry mob of white citizens. They were torn away from the officers who had arrested the men when a white woman identified the pair as those who had attempted to assault her.
But such incidents were not limited to the South. In California, members of the Ku Klux Klan used whips on girls caught in cars with young men, and in Ohio, at the University of Dayton, several bombs were detonated throughout the campus simply because it was a Catholic institution (Dayton had a large Catholic population at the time).
Left photo: A seven-month-old baby is baptized and initiated into the Ku Klux Klan on Long Island, New York, in 1927. Bettmann Archives. Right photo: The children baptized that day were just a few of the thousands of members of the Ku Klux Klan and its auxiliaries: Junior Ku Klux Klan for teenage boys, Tri-K-Club for teenage girls, as well as Ku Klux Kiddies and "cradle clubs" for children and infants were established in the 1920s. And when the Ku Klux Klan's "Invisible Empire" reached the height of its influence, entire families with children took part in the society's rituals. Archive Keystone-France.
And this can continue indefinitely...
The Decline of the Second Clan
Membership and national attention to the Klan peaked in 1923–1924, but the Second Klan began to decline in numbers beginning in 1925 and was in free fall. Historians say there were several factors that contributed to this decline: the 1924 federal immigration laws, the failure of Prohibition, and the scandalous behavior of some Klan leaders, who were convicted of corruption, bribery, embezzlement, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and even murder. The Klan's decline was also largely due to the leadership struggle between Hiram Wesley Evans and William Joseph Simmons.
Hiram Wesley Evans (1881-1966) - Imperial Magician
At the local level, various financial irregularities by individual local chapters and dictatorial behavior by junior Klan leaders also contributed to the exodus of members.
A photograph showing the body of Will Brown after it was burned by a white mob. On September 25, 1919, in Omaha, Nebraska, a young woman named Agnes accused a black man, Will Brown, of raping her. Despite his protestations that he had never laid a finger on Agnes, Brown was arrested and jailed, and that evening the county courthouse was surrounded by a mob of five thousand Ku Klux Klan members who demanded that Brown be handed over to them for their own trial. The newspapers presented this lynching as an example of civil activism worthy of every encouragement. Omaha, Nebraska. Photo: Fireshot Studio
The main argument of this chapter, however, is that the collapse of the Ku Klux Klan was not a sudden phenomenon but a progressive decline. The Klan could no longer maintain a steady recruitment strategy forever, since all potential recruiting pools had been exhausted, and the secret rituals had probably lost their initial appeal, and soon its membership began to decline sharply, and by the second half of the 20s the popularity of the Klan in the public life of the country began to wane.
Note. An interesting episode that characterizes the decline of the Klan is that when Evans tried to repeat the parade in Washington in 1926, only half as many marchers showed up!
A black man accused of assaulting a white woman was captured and promptly hanged. Texas, 1930. Photo: Photo12/UIG
From the second half of the 20s onwards, the Klan came under increasing attack from the clergy, the press and a growing number of politicians, and the final blow to the Klan came in 1927, when a group of rebellious members of the Order from Pennsylvania broke away from the "Invisible Empire".
Americans were beginning to tire of the masks, robes, and burning crosses, and what remained of the Klan's political influence faded as its old friends in power, sensing new political winds, began to leave the organization in droves, and by 1930 the Klan's membership was estimated at only 30.
Protesters stand outside the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum with signs and nooses around their necks, Washington, D.C., December 12, 1934. The demonstration was a reaction to the failure of an anti-crime conference to include lynching on its program. Archive: Bettmann
But that doesn't mean former Klan supporters have disappeared - many have joined pro-Nazi groups such as theSilver Shirts»* and "Black Legion»*, and opposed Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, accusing it of bringing too many Catholics and Jews into government.
But in the South, the Klan, along with far-right groups, continued its violence against any sign of economic success for blacks or those who resisted it. Jim Crow law* Over time, anti-Catholicism declined somewhat, but anti-Black racism and anti-Semitism continued to be core values of these successor groups.
Third Ku Klux Klan
After the Second Ku Klux Klan, which was active in the 20s, there was a brief lull in the country and it was generally disbanded, in particular due to the adoption of Jim Crow laws* in the South, which made the struggle for the legal superiority of the white race unnecessary, since it was enshrined in law.
And when the Supreme Court in 1954 overturned the legal doctrine of "separate but equal»*passed in 1896 and ordered the integration of white and black schools, it provoked the implacable and violent opposition of many whites throughout the South, who were determined to resist the Supreme Court's ruling and continue to uphold segregation. As had been the case with Southern opposition to the federal government since Reconstruction, the tensions and fears that arose after the Supreme Court's decision became the basis for the resurgence of a new Klan...
It all started when auto worker Eldon Edwards founded the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1953, but attracted few members until the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the "separate but equal" doctrine the following year.
Eldon Edward (Eldon Edward/1909-1960) is another leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Television journalist Mike Wallace questions the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan Eldon Lee Edwards in an interview on the channel ABC. Photo: Gary Wagner/Archive Hulton
But as the civil rights movement for people of color gained momentum with the support of the Supreme Court, the organization Edwards had created grew to about 15 members spread across nine states, and by September 000, Edwards had managed to hold one of the largest Klan rallies in recent years, drawing 1956 members to Stone Mountain, the site of the Second Klan's rebirth in 3000.
A black woman watches as robed members of the Ku Klux Klan march through downtown Montgomery, Alabama, Photo: Associated Press, 1956 year
The high-ranking patrons of the Klan can also be judged by the fact that in 1956 a group of senators and congressmen from southern states signed the so-called “Southern Manifesto,” vowing to oppose racial integration by all “legal means.”
Ku Klux Klan parade, Panorama City, California, September 15, 1966
Edward focused primarily on maintaining school segregation. However, his ideology was also strongly anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, and anti-Catholic, and after the landmark Supreme Court decision, racially motivated bombings, beatings, arson, and murder became commonplace throughout the South. Between 1954 and 1958, for example, civil rights groups identified more than 500 such incidents, and because such incidents began to coincide with the rise of Klan membership, many people began to blame the Klan for the increase in violence.
Ku Klux Klan members in North Carolina. Still from the film Klansville USA
Here is an excerpt from the book by R. F. Ivanov and E. V. Lisnevsky “Ku Klux Klan”, which describes in detail the terrorist activities of the Klan:
"Since 1955, the US press has published numerous reports of a sharp increase in Klansmen activity in the South: burning crosses, torchlight processions, explosions, mutilation of blacks, murders. Thus, in the city of Mobile (Alabama) in January 1957, the KKK burned 20 crosses, blew up three houses in one night, carried out armed raids on three black homes, burned down a black home and a school building. That same month, in the city of Montgomery, Klansmen threw a homemade bomb into the home of Reverend R. Abernathy, a close associate of M. L. King, blew up four black churches and the home of Reverend F. Hertz with dynamite sticks, and fired at six buses with colored passengers. In Camden (South Carolina), racists beat a local school employee, G. Hutchison, half to death, and in Wildwood (Florida), they broke into a prison and lynched a black man, J. Woods, who was being held there.”
The Third Ku Klux Klan was active in lynching racial minorities, especially African Americans, whom they feared would dominate Southern politics if given free access to the vote, and those they called civil rights "agitators," who included both Southern blacks and whites who sought racial equality, as well as northern whites who came to the South to register blacks to vote and encourage black turnout at the polls.
About 30 men and women from the Ku Klux Klan showed up at the Amelia County Courthouse in Virginia, west of Richmond, to intimidate blacks who wanted to register to vote. Young black people stood behind them, singing freedom songs and clapping their hands. August 13, 1966.
During the time period in question, the Ku Klux Klan paid less attention to migrants because there was little immigration to the southern regions of the United States, where the Ku Klux Klan was founded, although the Klan was also hostile to the relatively small number of Latino migrants in the South.
Note. The third Ku Klux Klan was not the only organization trying to establish a foothold in the American South. A number of rival organizations became notorious for horrific acts of violence. For example, a splinter group of the American Ku Klux Klan in Alabama was responsible for the 1957 attack on Edward Aaron, a black laborer from Birmingham. Members of the organization kidnapped him, castrated him, and poured hot turpentine on his wounds.
In this photo, Ku Klux Klan members picket a newly desegregated hotel in Albany, Georgia, on January 25, 1964. Source: Everett Collection
One of the peculiarities of the Third Ku Klux Klan was that it was not bureaucratically organized like the Second Klan, but existed as a collection of local organizations, often operating under the guise of sports or gun clubs, with rival leaders but a common agenda, and its cells existed under innocuous names, making it difficult to estimate their numbers.
What must be noted here is that while in the 1920s the Second Klan saw threats to American society in the form of Catholicism, Bolshevism, Jewish dominance of the economy and immorality, and, of course, Negro dominance, by the 1950s the Klan was no longer content with the simple question of race and religion, but proposed that there was a Jewish-Communist-Negro conspiracy to undermine the moral foundations of the United States and to promote racial interbreeding, creating a nation of inferior half-breeds. And when these goals were achieved, the United States would be ripe for absorption by the Bolshevik Soviet Union. Jewish Communists in the United States, who were portrayed as agents of the Soviet Union, were seen as the leaders of this conspiracy and as using people of color as pawns in their evil plans.
The oaths of the Clan members are also curious: “I would rather die than reveal the Clan's secrets.", and in some local cells of the Clan there were even specially prepared coffins on which was written: "This box is prepared for a chatterbox».
But everything has an end: FBI pressure, congressional investigations, and Southern fatigue with violence began to take their toll on the Klan.
And while Klan leaders still raged against blacks, Jews, and other supposed enemies of the nation, more and more of their public activity was limited to rallies and speeches. Some Klan members began to distance themselves from the organization, with some like Klan leader Robert Shelton being convicted and sent to prison, and those who remained active were less inclined to violence and clash with authorities.
Robert Shelton, left, signs programs during a rally in Mississippi in the 1960s. Source: Mississippi Department of Archives and History
One of the leaders and founders of the Third Klan, Edwards, who had been diagnosed with heart disease, died of a heart attack in his native Atlanta on August 1, 1960, but in his last public appearance he stated:
"We have more right to organize than the Communists and the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), we white people are the heirs of this country, and we are not going to give it up."
When Edwards died, the organization he had created split...
The Ku Klux Klan Today
Members of the Ku Klux Klan in Rosedale, Maryland, rally against the Obama administration at Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland in September 2013. Photo: William Thomas Kane/Getty Images
The Ku Klux Klan is America's oldest hate group, and although the number of active Klan cells has declined significantly, they are still trying to regain lost ground.
About 50 Ku Klux Klan members marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, on July 8, 2017, after the city decided to remove a park statue of the Confederate general. France Media Agency
According to estimates from the Southern Poverty Law Center (Southern Poverty Law Center/SPLC), there are currently about 190 groups across the country with between 5000 and 8000 members, divided into small factions that adhere to an anti-immigrant, white supremacist stance (White Supremacist Extremism/WSE), but their approach is highly fragmented, with some groups openly feuding with each other, while others try to enter the mainstream by replacing open hate speech with mere references to racial “pride” or “white rights.”
Members of the National Socialist Movement and the Ku Klux Klan march outside the Capitol building in Frankfort, Kentucky, in April 2012. Photo: Associated Press
In keeping with historical trends, the ADL (Anti-Defamation League/ADL) noted that the groups and activities are mostly concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the country. Mississippi was found to have the most groups with five groups, followed by Alabama with four.
Burning a cross and a swastika. The Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists gathered in Georgia to burn a cross and a Nazi swastika while chanting "white power." August 2016. Photo: Mike Stewart/Associated Press
Today, the Ku Klux Klan continues to promote anti-immigration and anti-Semitic views, advocating for the “cleansing” of American society, and more recently, the Klan has condemned such an activist and social movement as Black Lives Matter (Black Lives Matter).
The Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, was built by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a permanent reminder of the sacrifices that were made to end racial segregation in the South. The names of the 40 people killed because they stood up for civil rights are inscribed on a circular black granite plaque that serves as the centerpiece of the Memorial. Architect: Maya Lin (Maya Lin).
Information
*Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburgh, allowed Union troops to penetrate into the Confederacy's interior. The carnage was unprecedented, with the highest loss of life of any American war to that point. The battle took place on April 6–7, 1862, in southwest Tennessee and resulted in a defeat for the South, ending Confederate hopes of blocking the Union Army's advance into Mississippi and dooming the Confederate military initiative in the West. General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed in the battle, and Confederate morale plummeted and casualties were at their highest.
*"Silver Shirts" — An American fascist organization founded by former Hollywood screenwriter William Dudley Pelley in North Carolina. The organization's name came from the shimmering blue-gray uniforms its members wore. Pelley's goal was to seize power and implement a plan he called "Christian Economy in the United States," a scheme he claimed was neither communist nor capitalist, but in which all property would be owned by the state. Blacks in such a state would be re-enslaved, and Jews would be completely excluded from the life of the state. The Silver Shirts disbanded in 1941 after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
*"Black Legion" (Black Legion) - a far-right terrorist fascist organization that broke away from the Ku Klux Klan and operated in the Midwest (12 states in the central and northeastern United States). Wore black robes with a skull and crossbones. Suspected of killing fifty people. According to the FBI, the organization had 135 members, including the Detroit police chief and a large number of U.S. government officials.
*Jim Crow laws — the name of a racial caste system that operated primarily in the southern and border states from 1877 to the mid-1960s and represented the legitimization of racism. During the time these laws were in effect, black people were reduced to the status of second-class citizens.
*The doctrine of "separate but equal" (Separate but equal) refers to a racist 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed state and local governments to enforce segregation laws. The phrase "separate but equal" comes from a section of the court's decision that held that separate train cars for whites and African Americans were equal, at least as required by the Equal Protection Clause. Following this decision, a slew of state and local segregation laws were passed across the country.
Literature
1. R. F. Ivanov, E. V. Lisnevsky “Ku Klux Klan”
2. Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK
3. Julian Bond Ku Klux Klan
4. Stetson Kennedy I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan
5. Stetson Kennedy The Klan Unmasked
Information