Secondly, we must clearly understand the so-called freedom and equality in the United States The false appearance of peace.
I hope everyone will have a correct understanding of the Ku Klux Klan~~
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK for short) is a non-governmental organization that pursues white supremacy in the history and present of the United States. It is an American racist. representative organization.
Introduction
The Ku Klux Klan was formed in 1866 by veterans of the defeated Confederate Army in the Civil War. In the early days of its establishment, the Ku Klux Klan's goal was to restore the Democratic Party's power in the southern United States and to oppose the policies implemented by the federal army in the South to improve the treatment of old black slaves. In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant promulgated the Ku Klux Klan and Enforcement Act, which forcibly banned this political organization.
The second organization to bear this name was founded in 1915 by William Simmons on the top of Stone Mountain near Atlanta. It was a for-profit organization whose purpose was to win the relative advantage of white Protestants over blacks, Roman Catholics, Jews, Asians, and other immigrants. Although the group promoted racism and committed lynchings and other acts of violence, it operated openly in the United States, with 4 million members at its peak in the 1920s, including politicians at all levels of government. The organization hit a low point during the Great Depression and lost many members to draft or volunteer service in World War II.
The group's name, the Ku Klux Klan, has been used by many other groups, including those who opposed the Civil Rights Act and promoted racial disparity in the 1960s. Today, dozens of organizations in the United States and other countries still use all or part of the word as their names.
History
The Early Ku Klux Klan
Klan Leader Forrest
Three Arrested Klansmen Members (Mississippi, 1871) The earliest Ku Klux Klan was formed by six estranged Confederate veterans on December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee, shortly after the Civil War. The original purpose was to stage a satirical performance and hold some kind of commemorative ceremony. From 1866 to 1867, members of the group began disrupting black prayer meetings and breaking into black homes in the middle of the night to seize guns. These operations were in part inherited from Tennessee's previous vigilante groups such as the Yellow Jackets and Red Hats. In 1867, the Ku Klux Klan held a convention in Nashville, promulgated a charter drafted by former Confederate Army Brigadier General George Gordon, and began to develop into a national organization. The Ku Klux Klan began to develop into a national organization. A few weeks later, Natan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate army general who had been involved in the slave trade, was elected as the first national leader.
The main goal of the Ku Klux Klan was to oppose Constitutional Reconstruction. After the Civil War, Southern states were undergoing dramatic social and political changes. Local whites saw this as a threat to their racial dominance and attempted to resist the change. As Congress passed bills to achieve racial equality, the Democratic Party, which represented white southerners, was unable to pass legislation to maintain the status that whites had held. In addition, the Klan hoped to control the political and social status of freed blacks. This mainly includes restricting black people’s rights to education, economic development and voting rights. Therefore, violence became the best means by which the Klan could achieve its goals. However, the Klan's violent targets were not limited to African Americans. Southern rioters and guerrillas also frequently became innocent victims. As a result, the Ku Klux Klan became a violent tool of the Democratic Party.
In addition, with the end of the Confederate government's rule, local whites of Caucasian descent regained their social status and began to implement segregation policies.
Forrest said in a newspaper interview that the Ku Klux Klan has 550,000 male members across the country. Although he does not belong to the organization himself, he supports the organization very much and can within 5 days Calling out 40,000 Klan members. He also claimed that the Ku Klux Klan's biggest enemies were not black people, but "Carpetbaggers" (implying Northerners who immigrated to the South after the Civil War) and "Scalawags" (implying Confederates and partisan whites). *and partisan whites). In fact, this statement is not entirely a lie. The Klan also targeted these white groups, especially teachers who came to the South with the Freedmen's Committee after the war. Many of these teachers had been active abolitionists before the war and were active in the Underground Railroad movement. Many Southerners believed that local blacks were encouraged by these Northerners to vote for the **** and the party.
In fact, the national organization led by Forrest did not have much binding power on local Klan members, who had considerable autonomy. One Klan official declared: "The so-called Director General is in name only; I have no authority over the young men who are most actively engaged in violent activities such as revenge and lynching, which are beyond the purposes of the Klan." In 1869, Forrest declared that "the activities of the organization have exceeded their original great patriotic purposes and become criminal acts endangering public safety" and ordered the disbandment of the Ku Klux Klan. However, due to the lack of credible communication channels between the organizations, The order had little effect, and as a result, many Klan groups continued to operate in the absence of a central authority. As Forrest publicly denied his Klan membership, many believed the order was just that. In order to protect themselves from legal sanctions
In 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant enacted the "Klan Act and Enforcement Act." ), declared the Klan an illegal organization, and the government had the power to forcibly outlaw its activities. Hundreds of Klan members were sentenced to fines or prison terms, and habeas corpus was restricted in parts of South Carolina. In 1882, the Klan was banned. Act was ruled unconstitutional, but the Klan had come to an end, although they had achieved some of their goals, such as depriving blacks of their political rights.
The Second Klan
"The Birth of a Nation" poster
The Lynching of Frankenstein
In 1928, the Ku Klux Klan marched on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Second The Ku Klux Klan was formed during World War I and is generally associated with the founding of President Woodrow Wilson and Griffith's famous film The Birth of a Nation (1915). "The Birth of a Nation" (1915). President Wilson commented after watching the film: "It is like history written in lightning. My only regret is that this film is adapted from perfection." The original author of Thomas Dixon's two novels "The Clansman" and "Leopard Spots" hopes to "completely change the minds of northerners by recreating the beautiful history of the Democratic Party." The film describes the area where the Ku Klux Klan was successful as the American Midwest. , when in fact it was the American South. Many white people at the bottom of society viewed this film believing that their poverty was caused by black or Jewish bankers, a propaganda technique similar to that of Nazi Germany which led to the Ku Klux Klan. It became popular across the United States. At a preview screening in Los Angeles, actors dressed as Klansmen were hired to advertise, and later at the official premiere in Atlanta, regrouped Klansmen took to the streets to cheer in some locations. , the crazy southern audience even fired at the stage screen
Another important event that led to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan was the lynching of Jewish factory owner Leo Frank.
Local newspapers at the time reported a sensational news: In a Jewish-owned factory, the boss Leo Frank committed a sex crime against his employee Mary Phagan and murdered her. Frank was convicted of murder in a highly questionable trial in Georgia (a violent crowd gathered in the courtroom, and neither the defendant nor defense attorneys were present when the jury announced the outcome). Frank's appeal was also dismissed (with Superior Court Judge Oliver Wendell Helms dissenting because he considered the trial inconsistent with due process). The consul commuted Frank's sentence to life in prison, but a group calling themselves the "Knights of Mary Phagan" snatched Frank from prison and hanged him in a lynching. Ironically, evidence from the murder revealed that the real killer was a black man with a criminal record, Kim Conley. Kornley, a janitor at the factory, was found washing a blood-stained shirt after the incident.
For many Southerners who believed in Frank's guilt, the case had an unusual connection to "The Birth of a Nation." Because they associated the victim, Pagan, with Flora, the woman in the movie who jumped off a cliff to avoid being raped by a black man, the Klansmen who rallied again after the incident added " Words like "anti-Semitic", "anti-Catholic" and "anti-immigrant".
The Frank trial was exploited by Georgia politician and publisher Thomas Watson, who later became a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and was elected to the Senate. In 1915, the new Ku Klux Klan was formed at a mountaintop meeting by members of the older generation of Ku Klux Klansmen and the Knights of Mary Phagan. In 1915, a group of older generation Ku Klux Klansmen and members of the Knights of Mary Phagan gathered on the top of the mountain to announce the birth of the new Ku Klux Klan.
The new Ku Klux Klan was also a for-profit organization that participated in fraternal organizations that were popular at the time. The difference from the early Ku Klux Klan is that the background of the old Ku Klux Klan is the American Democratic Party and southern states, while the members of the new Ku Klux Klan come from both the Democratic Party and the Communist Party (the proportion of the latter is slightly lower) , influence spread across the United States, and even had a great impact on the politics of some states.
After that, the New Klan fell into a low ebb due to its involvement in the rape and murder of David Stephenson. Stephenson, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and 14 other states (titled Grand Dragon), was accused in a sensational case of raping and murdering young schoolteacher Madge Oberholzer. Madge Oberholtzer). (The victim was beaten so many times by Stephenson that she was heard saying she had been "torn to pieces by cannibals"). The second generation of the Klan began to decline in the 1930s and disbanded in 1944. Since then, the Ku Klux Klan's name has been used by a number of independent groups.
The Ku Klux Klan used cross-burning to create terror in the 1920s and 1930s. A faction of the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Legion, was rampant in the Midwestern United States. Instead of the white robes worn by ordinary Klansmen, they wore black pirate outfits. The Black Legion was the most violent and bloody branch of the Ku Klux Klan, notorious for attacks and assassinations of ****tivists, or socialists.
After World War II, American folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy conducted in-depth research on the Ku Klux Klan and provided information about the organization to the Superman Radio program, and even Code words were provided, and eventually Superman Radio launched a special program about the Ku Klux Klan. Kennedy attempted to demystify the Klan, and his interpretation of Klan rituals and code words had a negative impact on the organization's reputation.
In some incidents, Klan targets began to fight back.
In 1958 in North Carolina, Klansmen burned crosses at the home of two Lumbee Indians who were friendly with whites and held a nighttime Klan rally nearby, only to find themselves Surrounded by hundreds of armed Indians.
Eventually a shootout broke out and the Klan members were forced to retreat.
The Later Ku Klux Klan
After World War II, several groups using the Ku Klux Klan name were identified as resistance groups to the American civil rights movement in the 1960s. In 1963, two Ku Klux Klan members bombed a church in Alabama where a civil rights group was holding a rally. The incident resulted in the deaths of four girls and aroused great public outrage. Ultimately, it led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
In 1964, the FBI launched a "counterintelligence program" in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy the Ku Klux Klan. The significance of this program in the civil rights movement was manifold. Because in this operation, intelligence agents used infiltration, disinformation, and violence to fight violence. They not only attacked far-left and far-right organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Weathermen, but also attacked Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The murder of Viola Liu best illustrates this duality. Liu Izzo, a white Southern woman, was traveling south from her home in Detroit with four other members to attend a civil rights movement meeting. Izzo Liu was shot to death in a car on the highway by four Ku Klux Klan members, one of whom was an undercover FBI agent. Despite the above-mentioned duplicity of FBI operations, newspaper reporter Jerry Thompson, who infiltrated the Klan in 1979, publicly stated that the counterintelligence program was very successful in destroying the Klan organization. Two rival factions within the Klan accused each other of being undercover FBI agents, and eventually the leader of the Klan, Bill Wilkinson, was found to be working for the FBI. .
Violence at a 1977 Ku Klux Klan rally in Alabama During this period, boycotts of the Ku Klux Klan also began to expand. Thompson reported that during his time with the Klan, his car was shot at and he himself was publicly screamed at by black children. A Ku Klux Klan rally was also disrupted by black soldiers at a nearby military base. The Klan's actions were often met with hostile protests, sometimes involving violence.
In 1981, Michael Donald was lynched. The disadvantage of the Ku Klux Klan in litigation prompted people to constantly seek judicial means to combat the development of the Ku Klux Klan. For example, the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald led to a judicial trial that ultimately led to the collapse of the United Ku Klux Klan of America. Thompson noted that in the face of millions of dollars in civil damages from the Southern Legal Center, many Klan leaders who did not care about criminal arrest had to curb their behavior to save the cost of such legal cases. But litigation was also exploited by the Ku Klux Klan, such as Thomson's book being canceled due to a Klan defamation lawsuit.
The Ku Klux Klan can also morph into groups that target other people of color, such as Christian Identitarians, neo-Nazis, and skinheads.
Political Impact
The second generation of the Ku Klux Klan became famous, and its influence expanded from the South to the Midwest, as well as northern states and even Canada. In its heyday, most of the organization's members migrated to the Midwestern states. Through many elected local politicians, the Ku Klux Klan controlled the governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon. The organization's publications have even claimed that Mr. Trump and the party's former president, Warren G. Harding, were also members of the Klan, but so far there is no official evidence sufficient to prove this. Ku Klux Klan delegates played such an important role at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York that it became known as the "Klanbake." The convention climaxed in a confrontation between William McAdoo, who had a background in the Ku Klux Klan, and Al Smith, the Catholic mayor of New York. After several days of haggling and debate, the two candidates chose compromise and reconciliation.
On July 4, 1924, thousands of Klansmen rallied in New Jersey and burned crosses and effigies of Smith to celebrate their victory over the Forum platform.
In 1920, the Ku Klux Klan reached its peak with more than 4 million members, including many politicians.
In 1924, Harry Truman paid $10 to join the Ku Klux Klan, but at a meeting, Klan officials asked Truman not to hire any more Catholic officials if he was re-elected as county judge. But Truman refused because many of his comrades were Catholics. Eventually, he was forced to quit the organization and return his dues. (After becoming President of the United States, Truman did a lot of work to protect civil rights, which earned him the cynicism of many Ku Klux Klansmen). In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the Ku Klux Klan was influential in the 1929 provincial election. They defeated the Liberal government, allowing the Conservatives, led by James T.M. Anderson, to control the provincial government for the next five years. Another former Ku Klux Klan member with national influence in the United States was Democratic Senator and later Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, but he later severed ties with the organization. Early in Black's political career, he defended a Ku Klux Klan member in the assassination of Alabama Catholic priest James Coyle, who was ultimately acquitted by a Klan-controlled jury. David Duke served as the national leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan until 1978 and served as Louisiana's state secretary and party state representative before breaking away from the Klan organization in 1980. . West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd also joined the Ku Klux Klan in his 20s and earned the nickname Kleagle. In 1958, at age 41, Byrd defended the Ku Klux Klan in a Senate campaign. Afterward, he said joining the Ku Klux Klan was the biggest mistake of his life.
Contemporary Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan believes that the Nazi Holocaust was a lie fabricated by the Zionist movement. Although the Ku Klux Klan is often called an extreme right-wing organization in American politics, today , the organization of the Ku Klux Klan only exists in individual and scattered forms, and its supporters probably do not exceed a few thousand. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization, noted in its 2002 report "Extremism in America": "Today, there is no such organization as the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. There are only a few small, scattered regional groups. organizations, and they are declining". But they also say the group's supporters are still trying to legitimize the Klan's teachings and are unlikely to disappear anytime soon.
Some of the larger Klan organizations still operating include:
The Church of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States
The Ku Klux Klan Empire in the United States
White Camel Knights
There are also some smaller organizations.
In 2003, relevant organizations estimated that there were 5,500 to 6,000 Klan members in the United States, belonging to approximately 158 scattered organizations, two-thirds of which were in the former Confederate states. The remaining one-third is mainly distributed in the central and western regions.
Currently, those who call themselves the Ku Klux Klan do not disclose their identities. They often use "AYAK" (Are You a Ku Klux Klan?) to secretly identify themselves to another potential member. If the person is also a Klansman, the answer is usually "AKIA" (I am a Klansman).
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also provides legal assistance to various Ku Klux Klan organizations to ensure that they are protected by the freedom of speech provided for by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Ku Klux Klan in Art
The Ku Klux Klan is often synonymous with extremism in art. They appear in the British musical "Jerry Springer's Opera".
They appear in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind, but are seen as symbols of justice.