It's the Ku Klux Klan. The most famous Ku Klux Klan member is the Pointed Hat. Look at the lyrics. Is it about race?
Early Ku Klux Klan
Klan leader Forrester
Three captured Klan members (Mississippi, 1871) Earliest The Ku Klux Klan was founded on February 24, 1865, shortly after the end of the American Civil War, by six missing Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee. The original purpose was to perform satirical shows and some kind of commemorative ceremony. From 1866 to 1867, members of the organization began disrupting black prayer meetings and breaking into black homes at night to take away guns. Some of these operations have the shadow of self-defense police groups such as Tennessee's "Yellow Jackets" and "Red Hoods". In 1867, the Ku Klux Klan held a convention in Nashville and announced a charter drafted by former Confederate Army brigadier general George Gordon, and began to develop into a national organization. A few weeks later, former slave-trading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected the first national leader.
The main goal of the Ku Klux Klan was to oppose constitutional reconstruction. After the Civil War, Southern states experienced dramatic social and political changes. Local whites saw this as a threat to their sense of racial superiority, so they tried to resist the change. Because Congress passed laws to achieve racial equality, the Democratic Party, which represented white Southerners, was unable to legislate to preserve the status of whites. Additionally, the Klan wanted to control the political and social status of freed slaves. These mainly include restrictions on black people’s rights to education, economic development and voting. Therefore, violence became the best means for the Ku Klux Klan to achieve its goals. However, the Klan's violent targets were not limited to African Americans. Southern *** and party members often become innocent victims. As a result, the Ku Klux Klan became a violent tool of the Democratic Party. In addition, with the end of the rule of the Confederate government, local Caucasian whites restored their social status and began to implement apartheid policies.
In a newspaper interview, Forrest claimed that the Klan had 550,000 male members nationwide. Furthermore, although he did not belong to the organization, he was very supportive of it and was able to rally 40,000 Klan members within 5 days. He also claimed that the biggest enemies of the Ku Klux Klan were not black people, but "opportunists" (referring to Northerners who immigrated to the South after the Civil War) and "hoodlums" (Southern *** and partisan whites). In fact, this statement is not entirely a lie. The Klan also targeted the white groups mentioned above, especially teachers who came to the South with the Freedmen's Committee after the war. Many of these teachers were active abolitionists before the war and were active in the Underground Railroad movement. Many southerners believed that local blacks were incited by these northerners to vote for the Communist Party.
In fact, the national organization led by Frest does not have much binding force on local Ku Klux Klan members who have a high degree of autonomy. One Klan official declared, "The so-called Director General is a phantom, and I have no authority whatsoever over those young men who are most active in violence beyond the purposes of the Klan." In 1869, Forrest declared "This The activities of the organization have surpassed the original great patriotic purpose and turned into criminal acts endangering public safety," and ordered the disbandment of the Ku Klux Klan. However, the order had little success due to a lack of credible communication channels among local organizations. Therefore, in the absence of a central agency, many Klan organizations are still active in various places. Just as Forrest publicly denied being a Klan member, many believed the order was simply to protect themselves from the law.
In 1871, President Ulysses Grant promulgated the "Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act", declaring the Ku Klux Klan illegal and authorizing the government to forcibly ban its activities. Hundreds of Klansmen were fined or imprisoned, and in some parts of South Carolina, habeas corpus was restricted. These operations were successful, and the Klan almost disappeared from South Carolina. In 1882, the Ku Klux Klan Act was ruled unconstitutional and the Ku Klux Klan lost momentum, but they also achieved some goals, such as denying blacks their political rights.
[edit]
The Second Ku Klux Klan
The Birth of a Nation Poster
Frank is lynched.
1928 Ku Klux Klan marches down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. The second Ku Klux Klan was formed during World War I. It is generally believed that its establishment is closely related to President Woodrow Wilson and the famous film "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) directed by Griffith. After watching the movie, President Wilson commented, "This is like a history written by lightning. My only regret is its perfect truth." This movie is based on Thomas Dickson's two novels "The Clansman" and "The Clansman". Adapted from "Leopard Spots". The original author hopes to "completely change the minds of northerners by recreating a beautiful Democratic history." In this film, the area where the Ku Klux Klan was successful is described as the Midwest, but it should actually be the American South. After watching this movie, many white people at the bottom of society believe that their poverty is caused by black people or Jewish bankers, which is similar to Nazi Germany. The film led to the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. At screenings in Los Angeles, actors dressed as Klansmen were hired to advertise, and then at the official premiere in Atlanta, reunited Klansmen took to the streets to cheer. In some places, enthusiastic Southern spectators even fired at the stage screen.
In this year, another important event that led to the resurrection of the Ku Klux Klan was the lynching of Jewish factory owner Leo Frank. At that time, the local newspaper reported a sensational news: In a Jewish-run factory, the boss Leo? Frank committed a sex crime against his employee Mary Pagan and murdered her. Frank was convicted of murder in a questionable trial in Georgia (due to a violent crowd in the courtroom, neither the defendant nor defense attorneys were present when the jury announced the result). Frank's appeal was also dismissed (Superior Court Judge Oliver Wendell Thomas disagreed because he found the trial inconsistent with legal procedures). The consul commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment, but a group of men calling themselves the "Knights of Marie Pagan" kidnapped Frank from prison and lynched him. Ironically, evidence from the murder revealed that the real killer was King, a black man with a criminal record. Cornray, a janitor at the factory, was found washing a piece of clothing with blood after the crime.
For many Southerners who believed Frank was guilty, the case had unusual connections to the birth of a nation. Because they associate the victim pagan with Flora, a female character who jumps off a cliff to avoid being raped by a black man. After this incident, the Klansmen who gathered again added "anti-Semitism," "anti-Catholicism," and "anti-immigration" to their demands.
The Frank test was adopted by Georgia politician and publisher Thomas Watson. The magazine's editor later became a leader of the Ku Klux Klan and was elected to the Senate. In 1915, some elderly Klansmen and members of the "Knight Mary Pagan" organization held an inaugural meeting on a mountaintop to announce the birth of the new Klan.
At the same time, the new Klan was a for-profit organization that also participated in popular fraternal organizations at the time. Unlike the early Ku Klux Klan, the background of the old Ku Klux Klan was the American Democratic Party and southern states, while the members of the new Ku Klux Klan came from both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Party (the latter proportion was slightly lower). His influence spreads across the United States and even has a great influence on the politics of some states.
After that, the New Klan fell into a low ebb due to its involvement in the David Stephenson rape and murder case. Stephenson was the leader (titled Grand Dragon) of the Ku Klux Klan in Indiana and 14 other states. He was accused of raping and murdering a young female teacher, Maggie Oberholtzer, in a sensational case. The victim was beaten so many times by Stephenson that she was heard saying she had been "bitten by a cannibal". In the 1930s, the second generation of the Klan began to weaken and disbanded in 1944. Since then, the name Ku Klux Klan has been used by a number of independent organizations.
The Ku Klux Klan used cross burning to instill terror.
In the 1920s and 1930s, a faction of the Ku Klux Klan called the Black Legion was active in the American Midwest. Unlike the Klansmen, who usually wore white robes, they wore black pirate costumes. The Black Legion is the most violent and bloody organization of the Ku Klux Klan. They are notorious for attacking and assassinating * * producers or socialists.
After World War II, American folklorist and writer Stetson Kennedy went deep into the Ku Klux Klan to investigate and provided the Superman Radio program with information about the organization and even some secret codes. Finally, the show launched a special segment on the Ku Klux Klan. Kennedy's attempts to unravel the mysteries of the Klan, and his interpretation of Klan rituals and code words, also had a negative impact on the organization's popularity.
In some incidents, Klan targets began to fight back. In 1958, in North Carolina, Ku Klux Klan members burned crosses at the home of two Lumbee Indians who knew white people and held a Klan night rally nearby. As a result, they found themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Indians. In the end, a shootout broke out and the Klan members were forced to retreat.
[edit]
Late Ku Klux Klan
After World War II, several groups using the Ku Klux Klan name were identified as resistance 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 organization was meeting. The incident resulted in the deaths of four young girls and sparked huge public outrage. Ultimately leading to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
From 65438 to 0964, the FBI launched a "counterintelligence plan" in an attempt to infiltrate and destroy the Ku Klux Klan. The significance of this program in the civil rights movement was multifaceted. This is because during the operation, intelligence personnel used methods such as infiltration, disinformation, and violence to fight violence. They were not only used to deal with far-left and far-right organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the "Meteorologists," but were also used to deal with Martin Luther King Jr. Non-violent organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by King. This duality is most typically reflected in the murder of Viola Liu. Liu is a white woman from the south. She and four other members were traveling from their home in Detroit to attend civil rights meetings in the South. Liu was shot to death on the highway by four Klansmen in a car, one of whom was an undercover agent. After the tragedy, the FBI spread rumors that the victim was a ***** producer who abandoned his child in order to have sex with members of the black civil rights movement. Despite the dual nature of the FBI's operations, newspaper reporter Jerry Thompson, who broke into the Klan in 1979, publicly stated that the counterintelligence program was highly successful in destroying the Klan organization. Two opposing factions within the Ku Klux Klan accused each other of being undercover agents for the FBI, and it was eventually discovered that Bill Wilkinson, the leader of one of the Klan Knights, was working for the FBI.
Klan Klan rally violence in Alabama 65438 to 0977 During this period, resistance to the Klan began to expand. Thompson reported that during his time with the Klan, his car was attacked at gunpoint and he was publicly scolded by black children. A Ku Klux Klan rally also descended into chaos when black soldiers at a nearby military base rioted. The Klan's actions were often met with hostile protests, sometimes including violence.
Michael Donald was lynched in 1981. The Klan's disadvantage in court cases has spurred a continued search for judicial means to combat its growth. For example, the 1981 lynching of Michael Donald led to a judicial trial and ultimately the collapse of the United Ku Klux Klan. Thompson noted that many Klan leaders who did not care about criminal arrest had to restrain their behavior in the face of multimillion-dollar civil damages cases brought by the Southern Legal Center to save the cost of handling such legal cases. But litigation was also a tactic used by the Ku Klux Klan. For example, Thomson's book was canceled due to a defamation lawsuit filed by the Ku Klux Klan.
Afterwards, the Ku Klux Klan can also transform into organizations targeting other groups of color, such as "Christian Identity", "Neo-Nazis" and skinheads.
[edit]
Political influence
The second Ku Klux Klan was once famous, and its influence expanded from the South to the Midwest and northern states. Even reached Canada. At its peak, most organizations moved to Midwestern states. Through many elected local politicians, the Klan controlled the governments of Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon. Its publications even claimed that *** and the party's former chairman, Warren Harding, were also members of the Ku Klux Klan, but there has been no official evidence to prove this. Representatives of the Ku Klux Klan played an extremely important role in the Democratic National Convention held in New York from 1924 to 1924, so much so that the convention became known as the "Klanbake." The convention ultimately pitted William McAdoo, who had a Klan background, against New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was Catholic. After several days of negotiations and debate, the two candidates settled on a compromise. Ku Klux Klan representatives reversed course on a democratic forum that would have banned the group's activities. On July 4, 1924, thousands of Klansmen gathered in New Jersey and burned crosses and images of Smith, also celebrating their victory over the Forum Plan.
At its peak in 1920, the Ku Klux Klan had more than 4 million members, many of them politicians. In 1924, Harry Truman paid $10 to join the Ku Klux Klan, but at a meeting, Klan cadres asked Truman not to hire any officials with Catholic backgrounds if he was re-elected as county judge. But Truman refused because many of his comrades were Catholic. In the end, he was forced to withdraw from the organization and his membership fees were refunded. After Truman became the President of the United States, he did a lot to protect civil rights, which made many Ku Klux Klansmen envious. In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in the 1929 provincial election. They defeated the Liberal government, allowing James Anderson's Conservatives to control the provincial government for the next five years. Another former Klan with national influence in the United States was Democratic Senator and later Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who later severed ties with the group. Early in his political career, Black defended a Klansman in the assassination of Catholic priest James Coyle in Alabama and was ultimately acquitted by a Klan-controlled jury. David Duke was the national leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan until 1978. He also served as a member of the Ku Klux Klan and the Klan in Louisiana before leaving the Ku Klux Klan organization in 1980. Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia joined the Ku Klux Klan in his 20s and earned the title Krieger. In 1958, at the age of 41, Bode also defended the Ku Klux Klan in the Senate election. Later, he said that joining the Ku Klux Klan was the biggest mistake of his life.
[Editor]
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 referred to as a far-right organization in American politics, today the Ku Klux Klan organization only exists in a decentralized form, and its supporters may not exceed a few thousand. In the report "Extremism in the United States" published in 2002, the Jewish organization "Anti-Defamation League (ADL)" believed that "Today, there is no such organization as the Ku Klux Klan in the United States. There are only some scattered, regional, small-scale organizations , and it is also declining.” However, they also pointed out that the supporters of this organization are still trying to legitimize the teachings of the Ku Klux Klan and are unlikely to disappear soon.
Some of the large Klan organizations still operating include:
Knights Church of the Ku Klux Klan USA
Ku Klux Klan Empire USA
White Camellia Knights
There are also many smaller groups.
In 2003, relevant organizations estimated that there were approximately 5,500 to 6,000 Ku Klux Klan members in the United States, who belonged to approximately 158 scattered organizations, two-thirds of which were in the former states of the American Confederacy. The remaining one-third is mainly found in the Midwestern United States.
Currently, individuals who consider themselves to be members of the Ku Klux Klan will not disclose their identities. They often use the monogram "AYAK" (Are You a Ku Klux Klan? Are You a Klan?) to secretly express their identity to another possible member. If the other person is also a member of the Ku Klux Klan, they will often answer "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.