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Out of this fear came an organisation called the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan had first been formed after the American Civil War but now it re-emerged. The Klan also believed in the idea of America’s Exceptionalism – but they took that myth and turned it into something frightening and violent. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head V: The Lordly Ones ***** BBC 2021
The Klu Klux Klan and the racial segregation that was so dramatically challenged during the mid-twentieth century freedom movement was produced not during slavery but rather in an attempt to manage free black people who would have been far more successful in pushing forward democracy for all. Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures & Continuities, 2013
By force and terror, to prevent all political action not in accord with the views of the members, to deprive coloured citizens of the right to bear arms and of the right to a free ballot, to suppress the schools in which coloured children were taught, and to reduce the coloured people to a condition closely allied to that of slavery. Ulysses S Grant, House of Representatives address 1872
The early Klan did its work through pamphleteering, lynching, shooting, burning, castrating, pistol-whipping, and a thousand forms of intimidation. They targeted former slaves and any whites who supported the blacks’ right to vote, acquire land, or gain an education. Steven J Levitt & Stephen J Dubner, Freakonomics
The Ku Klux Klan lay largely dormant until 1915, when D W Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation (originally titled The Clansman) helped spark its rebirth. Griffith presented the Klan as crusaders for white civilisation itself, and as one of the noblest forces in American history. ibid.
As wartime anxiety gave way to postwar uncertainty, Klan membership flourished. ibid.
Yes, the Klan was a secret society, revelling in passwords and cloak-and-dagger ploys, but its real power lay in the very public fear that it fostered, exemplified by the open secret that the Ku Klux Klan and the law-enforcement establishment were brothers in arms. ibid.
A slick money-making operation, at least for those near the top of the organisation. ibid.
[Stetson] Kennedy is best known for taking on the Klan in the 1940s. In his book The Klan Unmasked (originally published in 1954 as I Rode With the Ku Klux Klan). Kennedy describes how he adopted a false identity to infiltrate the Klan’s main chapter in Atlanta, was chosen to serve as a ‘klavalier’ (a Klan strong-arm man) and repeatedly found himself at the centre of astonishing events, all the while courting great personal risk. ibid.
[Ben] Green is not the only person to have concluded that Kennedy has bent the truth. ibid.
Pike was a Tennessee Ku Klux Klan judicial officer. A known Satanist, Pike indulged in phallic worship and the occult. He wore a satanic baphomet symbol around his neck, and used his bracelet to summon Lucifer. Pike used the KKK to keep blacks out of the Masonic lodges. Ring of Power, 2008
In August 1924 Imperial Wizard Hirum Wesley Evans organised a parade of 40,000 Klan members down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument. This event proved the Klan had achieved power, not just in the South and mid-West but on a national level. News report, cited Ring of Power
The Klan was able to claim a membership of no fewer than five million people. Its objects of hatred had now broadened from blacks to include Roman Catholics, Jews, all foreigners and organised labour. The Klan became an integral part of Southern life. Great Crimes & Trials: Ku Klux Klan
It was just a matter of survival ... of existing from one day to the next. I remember going to sleep as a girl and hearing the Ku Klux Klan ride at night and hearing a lynching and being afraid the house would burn down. Rosa Parks
It’s not appropriate to joke about the Ku Klux Klan. Mitt Romney
Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of anti-black vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whisky distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freemen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen. Elaine Frantz Parsons
One sweltering July night in 1927 Smith and her troop were performing under a tent in Concord, North Carolina. When a member of the band slipped out for a breath of fresh air, he spotted half a dozen members of the Ku Klux Klan headed their way. The musician ran inside and told Bessie to run. Bessie wouldn’t hear of it. She stormed out of the tent, ran toward the Klansman instead, shaking her fist and cursing. ‘I’ll get the whole damn tent out here!’ she shouted. ‘You just pick up them sheets and run.’ Faced with Bessie Smith and a tent full of her loyal fans the Klansmen fled. Smith returned to the bandstand and began again to sing. Ken Burns, Jazz: The Gift 1924-1929, PBS 2001
They’re America’s oldest terrorist group. Once believed to be a relic of the past, today the Ku Klux Klan is reawakened. Fuelled by fear and rage against the changing face of America. Some Klan factions are joining forces with other violent white supremacists, taking up arms and transforming into a modern militia in a desperate fight to preserve centuries of white rule in America. Ku Klux Klan
By the 1920s Klan membership was over four million. Early Klan members developed secret handshakes, language and a book of rules called The Kloran, adding to the Klan’s mystery. ibid.
We can be very violent. And we can be very deceptive. And we will do whatever we have to do to survive. Ron Edwards, Imperial Wizard, Imperial Klans of America
These Klan groups they talk about white people as the ‘most endangered species in the world’. Mark Potok, Director SPLC Intelligence Project
The Ku Klux Klan has been Nazified. Mark Potok
America’s first real terrorist organisation. Its legacy was passed down from father to son and has one major goal: white power. An extreme new generation has taken on the KKK’s radical message. They are the Imperial Klans of America – the IKA – the new face of the Ku Klux Klan. Gangland s5e2: Klan of Killers, History 2009
Thirty-four chapters now claim the Klan’s mantle. One of the KKK’s strongest factions is the Imperial Klans of America – the IKA. ibid.
The IKA is structured as a paramilitary organisation. ibid.
It was founded in 1865 by veterans of the Confederate Army in Tennessee. ibid.
By 1974 the KKK’s numbers had plummeted to 1,500. ibid.
The new Klan believes its ultimate enemy is a shadow government run by a Jewish group called Zog. ibid.
The SWA or Supreme White Alliance. The SWA has over three hundred registered members. ibid.
They are the original domestic terrorists. Violent insurgents responsible for the deaths of countless men, women and even children. And underneath the white hood and flowing robes are secrets, secrets so dangerous, so controversial, and so frightening they have been kept hidden from the public. America’s Book of Secrets s2e3: Ku Klux Klan, History 2013
It takes cover in the very body of American law that protects First Amendment rights and freedoms – the very freedoms it is actively seeking to destroy. ibid.