Bronze-level articleKu Klux Klan

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*[[Vigrid]], a monotheistic, pseudo-pagan Norwegian version of the KKK
  
 
==Footnotes==
 
==Footnotes==

Revision as of 23:40, 29 April 2011

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The Ku Klux Klan (abbreviated "KKK"[1]) is an American Christian, racist, white supremacist organization, known for their lynching activities (at least historically), their sinister robes and pointy hoods (to hide identity), and other trademarks such as burning crosses.

Contents

Origins

The first Klan was started after the American Civil War, to frighten any Southern African Americans who decided to exercise their newly-won rights, as well as Northern "carpetbaggers" who were seen as exploiting the Civil War victory. A number of similar movements sprang up in the South during this era, adopting Klan tactics and sometimes insignia. Even the Jesse James gang, bandits who regarded themselves as Confederate loyalist guerrillas, wore Klan robes and hoods during a train robbery in 1873.

In Margaret Mitchell's epic Civil War novel Gone With the Wind, some of the story's heroes participate in the Ku Klux Klan after the war, even riding out in Klan robes to take retaliation on a Yankee shantytown. In the movie adaptation, all mention of the Klan was omitted and the raid was made in plain clothes.

During the 1870s, the Klan and its allies spearheaded the insurrection that helped to end Reconstruction. After Reconstruction ended, so did the Ku Klux Klan.

Revival of the KKK

From the end of Reconstruction until the 1920s, the KKK was mostly dormant. Older members would occasionally don the costume in an effort to get together a lynch mob, but it did not act as an organized force.

However, around 1915 some leaders came together and re-formed the KKK. They expanded their ambitions and became a force across the United States. (In fact, many of the most important chapters were in the Mid-West, rather than the South.) In many states, one could not be elected to the state house or the governor's mansion without at least the tacit endorsement of the KKK.

On top of this, they also expanded the targets of their hate. Rather than focusing on African-Americans, as they had in the past, they also targeted Catholics, immigrants, Jews, and feminists.

After the 1929 stock market crash and several public scandals involving the KKK, membership imploded and the Klan was near defunct by 1930. This iteration of the KKK managed to last until 1944, when they disbanded.

However, the Klan started up again in response to the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s. This iteration of the Klan, while nowhere near as large as the 1920s version, carried out many lynchings and other acts in opposition to desegregation and voting rights in the South. This version also became fodder for the FBI's COINTELPRO program and for the Superman radio show when moles within the organization began to submit private information to the FBI (as well as leaking the most ridiculous information to the media.) By the late 1960s the Klan was again on life support and probably would have disappeared entirely if not for one David Duke, who together with a few other Klan leaders tried reviving the Klan during the 1970s by shedding the white sheets and putting on suits and ties.

More recently

The era of the organized Klan is over. There are many smaller groups who now claim to be the "true" KKK, but few have any power. Occasionally, members of these smaller groups will engage in either hate-spewing or even violence, but this is nothing like the hold that the KKK held on the South in the late 1800s or the whole nation in the early 1900s.

The small groups today sometimes use the term "fifth era Klan", which is dubious at best. This is in reference to the first era (Reconstruction), second era (1920s), and third era (1950s-60s), but whether there is an actual "fourth" and "fifth" era (as distinct from merely the pathetic remains of the third era limping along on life support) is questionable. Usually their claim is the period when David Duke tried resuscitating the Klan during the 1970s is the "fourth era", and the "fifth era" started in the early 1980s when the Klan adopted Christian Identity and became part of the openly neo-Nazi extreme right aligned with Aryan Nations and like groups. To give some idea: Klan membership in 1926 at the peak of the second era stood at 6,000,000. In 1980 ("fourth era"), it stood at 5000. Today it is about 3000.

Some Klan groups are now claiming a "sixth era" which presumably has something to do with the Internet ("OMGlookzorz U can join teh Klan right here on our website just give us ur kredit kard number heah heah") and which they think will revive it again, but hopefully it will prove to be that the Klan ceases to exist entirely. They should get a Klue and Klose their doors for good, because anyone at this point who still thinks parading around in funny white sheets and burning crosses is meaningful activity needs to seriously get a real life.

Public officials and the Klan

There has been one Klan member on the Supreme Court. Justice Hugo Black was both a member and appointed during the hey-day of the Second Klan. However, he later came to regret his association and became a consistent voice for civil rights.

Also, one former Klan member has been elected to the Senate, Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Even more so than Black, however, Byrd publicly and repeatedly repented, sponsored a great deal of civil rights legislation, and even publicly endorsed a black man for United States President. He was also the longest serving Senator ever, beating Ted Kennedy.

A well-known member is David Duke, who won a seat on the Louisiana state legislature back in the 1989, even though the Republican Party's biggest names threw their support to his opponent[2] (which doesn't really enhance Louisiana's reputation).

The Klan and pop culture

Most often in pop culture, the Klan is depicted as generic villains, of the sort that few people could really identify with. However, there are several appearances of the Klan in pop culture that are more interesting.

The serious

  • In the early epic silent film The Birth of a Nation (1915), by noted film-maker D. W. Griffith, a young white woman was kidnapped by freed slaves in the South under Reconstruction, and rescued by the Knights of the KKK. This was intended as an allegory of what happened to the South under Reconstruction. The film was a smash success, in part because of the message but also because it was a revolution in cinematography. President Woodrow Wilson publicly praised the film as an important message to the generations. However this praise is often overemphasized, as it is commonly accepted among historians that Wilson was tricked, and his lesser known dislike for the KKK was often kept quiet and under wraps, such as a letter he wrote to Senator Morris Sheppard of Texas, stating that "no more obnoxious or harmful organization has ever shown itself in our affairs".[3] The movie is considered to have been a large part of the impetus for reforming the Klan in the 1920s. Due to his advances in the art of film-making, Griffith is still remembered as a genius, but the movie itself is almost never shown today.
  • In 1937, when the Klan was still popular and powerful in many areas of the United States, Warner Brothers made Black Legion starring Humphrey Bogart. The film is a thinly disguised cautionary tale of the Klan and its recruiting methods. It was one of the few anti-bigotry movies[4] to emerge during the height of the studio era. Jack Warner had the studio alter as many references to the Klan as possible[5] because the studio's lawyers were concerned that the Klan might sue for defamation.
  • The Ku Klux Klan also appeared positively (or at least neutrally) in Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell's epic novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction, published in 1936. After Scarlett O'Hara is attacked by shantytown-dwellers, some of the boys ride out in Klan robes and hoods to take revenge, and end up fighting Union soldiers instead. The 1939 film adaptation whitewashed over the Klan reference, including the same scene but minus the white robes.
  • In the 1950s, the makers of the Superman radio serials were approached by a man who had infiltrated the KKK. He asked them to create a long running series where Superman fought the KKK, and he offered up all of the secrets of the Klan for use by the writers. The writers, tired of writing about Nazis and Communists, took him up on it. Secret Klan members were horrified to hear their kids talking about beating up the Klan. Others were just horrified to hear people snickering over the stupid code-words used within the Klan.[6] Some consider this the blow that destroyed the Second Klan.
  • The FBI Story (1959), whose script was vetted personally by J. Edgar Hoover, also had a sequence about investigations into Klan activities.
  • Mississippi Burning (1988) depicts the FBI's investigation into the Klan killings of three civil rights workers in 1964 Mississippi.

The humorous

  • In Blazing Saddles (1974), Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid encounter two Klan members. "Lookie what I got here," the Kid says. Bart then says "Where the white women at?" The Klan members then follow Bart and the Kid behind a boulder where the Bart and the Kid beat them up and steal their Klan uniforms.
  • In Forrest Gump (1994), Gump tells that his namesake ancestor[7] helped create the 19th century Klan.
  • In O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) there is a segment involving lots of sheet wearers.
  • In Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, the Klan is depicted as a group of drunken rednecks. One of them even lights himself on fire.

KKK and religion

The form of religion promoted by the KKK is called Christian Identity, which is a bullshit religion that uses Biblical quotes to justify segregation or extermination of so-called "lesser races". Fundamentalist Christians (including Christian Reconstructionists) call them a cult, which is odd, since they are as racist as can be without openly advocating segregation. They are American men who enjoy dressing up in costumes and doing things together. A lot like the Masons and Shriners in this respect, but different. Dressing up doesn't excuse racism and murder.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Not to be konfused with the German turbine manufacturer.
  2. GOP Condemns Duke" Newsday. Long Island, N.Y.: Feb 25, 1989. pg. 09
  3. Arthur S. Link, Papers of Woodrow Wilson 68:298
  4. Nearly all of which came from Warner Brothers.
  5. i.e., the white robes of the Klan became the black robes of the legion
  6. For example, the secret book of rituals was called a Kloran. Seriously.
  7. Nathan Bedford Forrest?
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