Ku Klux Klan

The Klan was founded as the militant terrorist arm of the Democrat Party.^[1]

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the traditional militant terrorist wing of the Democrat Party.^[2] It was founded by Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest along with James R. Crowe and Frank O. McCord (all Democrats) in 1865, December 24, in Pulaski, Tennessee, and became known as "the invisible empire of the South" in which members represented themselves as ghosts of the Confederate dead returning to terrorize African Americans and Republicans (about 1300 white Republicans were killed and lynched by KKK), as confirmed also by Democrat historian Eric Foner.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} In 2014, ironically, the Klan recognized diversity and opened its doors to Jews, homosexuals, blacks and people of Hispanic origin.^[9]

Violent leftists, who founded the Klan and have been loyal Democrats since its original inception, are now appealing to groups they had previously persecuted.^[10] The rise of the Ku Klux Klan was the beginning of a long history of Democrat election fraud that continued into the modern era.

History[edit]

The first victims (yellow line) were Republican carpetbaggers; once they were driven out the Democrats turned on Blacks (blue line).
Source: Historical Statistics of the U.S., and is based on the 1952 Negro year Book.

See also: History of Democrat racism

The Klan had three incarnations in the USA. Several prominent Democrats were members of the KKK including Democrat Robert Byrd, who was a U.S. Senator from West Virginia for more than 50 years and who had led his local KKK chapter, and Democrat Hugo Black, who was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court by FDR and became the Justice most hostile to classroom prayer and Christianity in public life. Despite the Democrat-KKK connection, however, liberals (who falsely claim that the pre-1964 Democrats were a "conservative" party when they were mostly left-leaning New Dealers, including a number of Southern segregationists) similarly falsely claim the KKK to be a "right-wing" organization when the Klan supported gun control^[11][12] and opposed school choice.^[13]

The Klan beginning in the 1860s was a violent effort by white Southern Democrats to fight Republican Reconstruction efforts and recognizing full citizenship rights of Blacks after the Civil War. Reconstruction was ended as a political compromise to resolve the exceedingly close presidential election of 1876. Owing to this, the Klan Democrats often targeted those belonging to the Republican Party with death.

The second Klan flourished nationwide for a few years in the 1920s as state and district organizers profited handsomely by signing up millions of members, selling them distinctive white-robe costumes. The Klan voiced strong support for prohibition, opposed sexual immorality and promoted racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and immigration restriction. Dramatic scandals inside the organization and lack of organizational structure caused the Klan to collapse quickly in the late 1920s. By 1928 it was practically defunct.

The third Klan comprised unrelated hate groups that sprang up in the South in the 1960s to fight integration, but it largely fell apart with the defeat of President Jimmy Carter in 1980.^[14]

First Klan[edit]

Leaders of the Democratic Party. The Butcher Forrest is Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan.
Library of Congress^[15]

See also: Insurrection Act#Posse Comitatus Act

The first KKK was a movement of Democrats who opposed Reconstruction. It was founded in 1865 by members of the Democrat Party to inflicting violence against black leaders and white Republicans.^[16] Its purpose was to take control and return Democrats to power. One of the founders, and the first "Grand Wizard," was former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Attempts were made to break up the Klan by President Ulysses S. Grant and the U.S. Army using the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act).

Republicans stripped white males who engaged in rebellion against the United States of the vote, and gave it to Blacks. Newly freed Blacks held local, state and federal elected and non-elected positions as Republicans. The white males who were deprived of the vote were also barred from holding any civil service position and were universally Democrats. This disenfranchisement created enormous resentment among Democrats, so they formed the Ku Klux Klan to engage in voter intimidation and suppression.

The Ku Klux Klan started attacking Black Republican conventions. At the Republican convention in Louisiana, the Klan joined with New Orleans police and New Orleans' Democrat mayor. The New Orleans Republican convention was attacked. 40 Blacks and 20 whites were killed. Another 150 were wounded. In 1868, the Democrats put out push cards in South Carolina listing what they called the 'radical' members of the South Carolina legislature. A push card is about the size of a baseball card. The cards had the pictures of 63 legislators they wanted to kill. 50 of the legislators were Black and 13 were white. All 63 were Republicans. On the back of the was the name of the legislator.

"'Tis but a change of banners." A political cartoon depicting the KKK and the Democrat Party as continuations of the Confederacy

In 1872 Congress held hearings on the Klan. Democrat leaders from Democrat States admitted under oath unequivocally that the Klan belonged to the Democrat party and their propose was to restore control in Southern states to the Democratic party. The Congressional Hearings make up 13 volumes. Black congressmen John Roy Lynch and Richard Cain went to Congress armed for fear of Klan attacks. Blacks testified that they instructed by the Klan and Democrats that, if they would stop voting the Republican ticket and would agree to vote the straight Democrat ticket, all the violence against Blacks would stop.

By 1876, the situation had become ungovernable for Republicans.^[17] The Republicans had been able to pass the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments which guaranteed Blacks basic equality and civil rights, but eventually had to declare an amnesty for whites who engaged in rebellion. Reconstruction ended, and Republicans withdrew from social engineering which had divided the country so deeply and stirred up such bitterness and hatred among Democrats toward both Blacks and Republicans. Reconstruction earned Republicans the undying hatred of Democrats.^[18][19]

African Americans in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments dominated by white Democratic legislatures; neither the legislatures, law enforcement or the courts worked to protect freedmen.^[20] As Democrats regained power in the late 1870s, they struggled to suppress black voting through intimidation and fraud at the polls. Paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts acted on behalf of the Democrats to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments,^[21] with provisions for poll taxes,^[22] residency requirements, literacy tests,^[22] and grandfather clauses that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor white people. The disfranchisement also meant that black people could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters; those who could not vote were excluded from the political system.

According to the BrainPOP movie about Reconstruction, the first iteration of the KKK began to decline during the presidency of Rutherford B. Hayes.

Second Klan[edit]

Oregon Klansman in the 1920s.

The second KKK in the 1920s was less violent with a membership that reached hundreds of thousands—possibly millions—of men in every state. It was mostly a Ponzi scheme, whereby the organizers took all the money (for initiation fees and costumes). When they had organized an area they moved on, leaving local chapters without money or leadership. No prominent American admitted he was a member at the time, but state organizers claimed vast powers. There is a possibility that some local Klans in the deep South engaged in violence against blacks, but historians are unsure; allegations of systematic violence were common but have not been verified. In recent years historians have found enough records to show that local chapters were primarily discussion groups, often with speakers who denounced Catholics, Jews, crime and violation of the prohibition laws.

In Oregon during 1922, the Klan and their ally Gov. Walter M. Pierce successfully pushed to end school choice with the Compulsory Public Education Act,^[23][24] which required all children in the state to attend public schools where their minds could not be free from indoctrination.^[25][26][27] It effectively shut down private Catholic schools, which the KKK despised.^[28] The measure was supported by the public school establishment and opposed by blacks, Catholics, Jews, Lutherans, and Adventists. It was struck down three years later by the unanimous Supreme Court decision in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, with the opinion notably stating:^[25]

At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, the big fight was over a resolution denouncing the Klan; party elder statesman and three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan, spoke for two hours in opposition to the plank condemning the Klan by name.^[29] After furious debate, the resolution failed by a vote of 542.85 in favor to 546.15 opposed.^[30] The soaring temperatures gave the convention the name, the Klanbake. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the KKK claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible voters, approximately 4–5 million people.^[31] The Klan split within the Democratic party over cultural issues, especially Prohibition, which facilitated Republican landslides in 1920, 1924 and 1928. A series of scandals rocked the KKK's reputation and the group somewhat faded after the 1924 Democratic National Convention.

In 1937 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Alabama Senator Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Black was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and built his career campaigning at Klan meetings. In Korematsu v. United States, Black voted to uphold President Roosevelt's mass arrests and incarceration of Japanese men, women, and children based on race.^[32]

Despite historical revisionism, FDR and Truman were in bed with the Klan.^[33]

Third Klan[edit]

The third Klan currently exists and comprises a few thousand members in local chapters. There is no real organization, and the group sponsors vehement hate talk as well as occasional violent threats and actions. It is racist and aims at the suppression of African-American, Jewish, homosexual, and Catholic interests. The current Klan presents itself as a "Christian" organization, but all denominations have rejected it as inherently non-Christian. Some Klansmen today practice Christian Identity, which has also been condemned by every other Christian denomination.

Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd joined the Klan in the 1940s and was unanimously elected to the rank of Exalted Cyclops for his inborn leadership skills.^[34][35] He repeatedly expressed his desire for the Klan to expand to its previous size and power, once remarking in a letter that "The Klan is needed today as never before and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia" and "in every state in the nation." ^[36]

Ku Klux Klan rally, unknown location, August, 1951

Byrd commented on the 1945 controversy raging over the idea of racially integrating the military. In his book When Jim Crow Met John Bull, Graham Smith referred to a letter written that year by Byrd, when he was 28 years old, to fellow Klansman Sen. Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, in which Byrd vowed never to fight:

Ronald Reagan starred as the crusading district attorney battling the Klan in this 1951 film.^[38]

Democrats tried to block passage of the bi-partisan 1964 Civil Rights Act by filibustering for 75 hours, led by a 14-hour and 13-minute speech by the Exalted Cyclops Sen. Byrd.^[39] The law was intended to block Republican gains in the South followed by buying off Blacks with Great Society welfare and affirmative action programs. By the 1960s the Klan was so thoroughly infiltrated by FBI informers, the joke existed that a Klan cell of 6 members often consisted of 5 FBI informants and one klansman. In 1981 when the Republicans took control of the Senate for the first time in 28 years, the Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd was again elected Democrat Senate Leader to oppose Ronald Reagan.

David Duke was a Democrat at the time of his official membership with the Klan and founded the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP). Duke quit the Klan and the Democrat party and was elected to the Louisiana state legislature. When Duke registered to run for higher office in a Republican primary, the Republican National Committee disavowed Duke and repudiated his racist views.^[40]

21st Century[edit]

The teaching of Black history has led to a new appreciation of the Democratic party's role in relationship to Blacks.

By the 1990s there were fewer than 10,000 members of the Klan. Many so-called "chapters" or "hate groups," as measured by the Southern Poverty Law Center's newsletter Klanwatch, consisted of a single individual. The threat emanating from the Klan was often exaggerated to serve as a fundraising tool for anti-racist watchdog organizations. Chat rooms and discussion boards were set up by anti-racist watchdog groups in the hopes of baiting in a young person to identify who may be susceptible to extremist recruiting. These chat rooms and discussion groups also served the dual purpose of making the Klan threat appear larger than it actually was for fundraising purposes.

Biden: "My children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle."^[41]

During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the KKK (along with former Klansman David Duke), in possible collusion with the Democrat Party, pretended to "support" Donald Trump for President as part of a strategy to discredit Trump and make sure he would lose the election by making a false connection between the KKK and the Republicans (as the Democrats do as their usual^[42]). However, because the Republicans have always opposed the KKK and despise what it stands for,^[43] and because the Democrat-KKK connection is public knowledge despite the efforts of Democrats and liberals (particularly in the mainstream media) to bury and deny this historic fact,^[44] the KKK scheme to try to discredit Trump by publicly pretending to endorse him backfired as he rejected the "endorsement" and the public saw through the KKK's ruse, leading KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg, who formerly pretended to support Trump, to show his and his organization's true colors, and those of the Democrats, by now publicly supporting Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton.^[45] Hillary, who has her own history of racism and whose mentor, late Democrat senator Robert Byrd, was himself a longtime KKK leading member,^[34] did not reject the KKK's campaign endorsement of her, which was one of the contributing factors toward her downfall in the election as Trump won the presidency, ultimately making the Democrat-KKK scheme against him fruitless. In multiple George Soros funded protests against Trump, many liberals dressed themselves in KKK robes and pretended to "support" Trump, holding signs that said "KKK wants Trump" and "Make America White Again" while the DNC created an attack ad claiming that the KKK is "actively supporting" Trump.^[46]

Bibliography[edit]

• Newton, Michael, and Judy Ann Newton. The Ku Klux Klan: An Encyclopedia. (1991).
• Alexander, Charles. “Kleagles and Cash.” . The Business History Review. (1965) Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 348–367
• Chalmers, David. Hooded Americanism. (1987), an older survey
• Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, (2002).
• Feldman, Glenn. Politics, Society, and the Klan in Alabama, 1915-1949. (1999).
• Fryer, Jr. Roland G. and Steven D. Levitt. "Hatred and Profits: Getting under the Hood of the Ku Klux Klan," National Bureau of Economic Research, September 2007, abstract; full text online
• George, John, and Laird Wilcox. American Extremists: Militias, Supremacists, Klansmen, Communists & Others (1996) 443 pgs. online edition
• Glaeser, Edward L. “The Political Economy of Hatred.” Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2005. Vol. 120, No. 1, pp. 45–86. abstract, goes well beyond the KKK
• Goldberg, Robert Alan. Hooded Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado. (1981).
• Horn, Stanley F. Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871, (1939)

Horn, born in 1889, was a Southern historian who was sympathetic to the first Klan, which, in a 1976 oral interview,^[47] he was careful to distinguish from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days."

• Jackson, Kenneth T. The Ku Klux Klan in the City, 1915-1930. (1992)
• MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. (1994)
• McVeigh, Rory. “Power Devaluation, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Democratic National Convention of 1924.” Sociological Forum 2001. 16(1):1-30.
• Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (1991). online edition
• Parsons, Elaine Frantz, "Midnight Rangers: Costume and Performance in the Reconstruction-Era Ku Klux Klan." The Journal of American History 92.3 (2005): 811–36. in History Cooperative
• Pegram, Thomas R. "Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition Enforcement." Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive era 7.1 (2008): online.
• Rhodes, James Ford. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 to the McKinley-Bryan Campaign of 1896. Volume: 7. (1920)
• Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (1995).
• Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. (1987); a highly negative account of all three Klans, based on extensive research but not familiar with recent scholarship.

See also[edit]

• Star and Crescent
• White supremacy
• Joe Biden
• Birth control and racism

References[edit]

Critical external links[edit]

• The History of the Original Ku Klux Klan - by an anonymous author sympathetic to the original Klan ^{[Dead link]}
• W. S. Simkins, "Why the Ku Klux," 4 The Alcalde (June 1916): 735–748. online; Simkins (1842-1929) was an organizer of the KKK in Florida in 1868, and a law professor when he wrote this memoir.
• Full text of the Klan Act of 1871
  • simplified version
• Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era (New Georgia Encyclopedia)
• Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century (New Georgia Encyclopedia)