1 Boring Old Man

^{Klan March on Washington in 1925 [400,000]}

Ku Klux Klan

The first Klan was founded in 1865 by Tennessee veterans of the Confederate Army. Groups spread throughout the South. Its purpose was to restore white supremacy in the aftermath of the American Civil War. The Klan resisted Reconstruction by assaulting, murdering and intimidating freedmen and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871 the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes. Prosecution and enforcement suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations such as the White League and the Red Shirts started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing Republican voting and running Republicans out of office. These contributed to white Democrats regaining political power in the southern states.

In 1915, the second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly in a period of postwar social tensions, where industrialization in the North attracted numerous waves of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites. In reaction, the second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism. Some local groups took part in lynchings, attacks on private houses, and carried out other violent activities. The Klan committed the most numerous murders and acts of violence in the South, which had a tradition of lawlessness.

The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization included about 15% of the nation’s eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions and external opposition brought about a sharp decline in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. The Klan’s popularity fell further during the Great Depression and World War II.

The name Ku Klux Klan has since been used by many independent groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor’s offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of KKK-affiliated groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and the assassination of NAACP organizer Medgar Evers, and three civil rights workers in Mississippi. Today, researchers estimate that there may be 150+ Klan chapters with 5,000–8,000 members nationwide. The U.S. government classifies them as hate groups, with operations in separated small local units.

No, I don’t think it’s the Klan that marched on Washington last weekend, but it’s the same idea – in particular, the threatening signs like "We came unarmed [this time]." It’s a trend in the American body politic that has been with us from the beginning, one that we Southerners know more intimately than others, but is operative throughout the country. For some it’s an identification with some pure race [Aryran Nation], with others it’s White Power [Skinheads], but it comes in the more subtle forms like we saw this weekend.