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Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

"Ku Klux Klan" is the name of a number of past and present fraternal organizations in the United States that have advocated white supremacy and anti-Semitism; and in the past century, anti-Catholicism, and nativism. The Klan's first incarnation began in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee. Its main purpose was to resist Congressional Reconstruction, and it focused as much on intimidating "carpetbaggers" and "scalawags" as on putting down the Freedmen. It quickly adopted violent methods, and was involved in a wave of 1,300 murders of Republican voters in 1868. A rapid reaction set in, with the Klan's leadership disowning it, and Southern elites seeing the Klan as an excuse for federal troops to continue their activities in the South. The organization was in decline from 1868 to 1870, and was destroyed in the early 1870s by President Ulysses S. Grant's vigorous action under the Civil Rights Act of 1871 (also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act). Civil Rights Act of 1871 The founding in 1915 by William J. Simmons of a second distinct group using the same name was inspired by the newfound power of the modern mass media, via the film The Birth of a Nation and inflammatory and anti-Semitic newspaper accounts surrounding the trial and lynching of accused murderer Leo Frank. This second Klan fought to maintain the dominance of white Protestants over blacks, Catholics, and Jews. This group, although preaching racism and accused of violent activities, operated openly, and at its peak in the 1920s claimed millions of members; if these estimates are to be believed, then something like 15% of the eligible population of the U.S. were members. Many politicians at all levels of government were members, and at its height the organization secretly or openly influenced some state governments, including Oregon and Indiana. Scandals involving rape, murder, and support for the Nazis destroyed its popularity in the late 1920s and by 1928 the Klan was orders of magnitude smaller and weaker. The name "Ku Klux Klan" has since been used by many different unrelated groups, including many who opposed the civil rights movement and desegregation in the 1960s. Today, dozens of organizations with chapters across the United States and other countries use all or part of the name in their titles, but their total membership is estimated to be only a few thousand.

The first Klan

1960ss, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, 1868.]]

Creation

The original Ku Klux Klan was created at a Christmas Eve, 1865 meeting in a law office by six educated, middle-class Confederate veterans who were bored with postwar life in Pulaski, Tennessee. The name was constructed by combining the Greek "kyklos" (circle) with "clan." It was at first a humorous social club centering on practical jokes and hazing rituals. From 1866 to 1867, the Klan began breaking up black prayer meetings and invading black homes at night to steal firearms. Some of these activities may have been modeled on previous Tennessee vigilante groups such as the Yellow Jackets and Redcaps. Redcaps In an 1867 convention held in Nashville, the Klan was formalized as a national organization under a "Prescript" written by George Gordon, a former Confederate brigadier general. The Prescript states as the Klan's purposes:
- First: To protect the weak, the innocent, and the defenseless from the indignities, wrongs and outrages of the lawless, the violent and the brutal; to relieve the injured and oppressed; to succor the suffering and unfortunate, and especially the widows and orphans of the Confederate soldiers.
- Second: To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States ...
- Third: To aid and assist in the execution of all constitutional laws, and to protect the people from unlawful seizure, and from trial except by their peers in conformity with the laws of the land. Stripped of obfuscation and attempts to protect themselves from accusations of treason, this is essentially a statement that the Klan's purpose was to resist Congressional Reconstruction. The word "oppressed," for example, clearly refers to oppression by the Union Army, and "peers" implies that white Southern property holders should be protected from carpetbaggers and "uppity" freedmen. During Reconstruction the South was undergoing drastic changes to its social and political life. Whites saw this as a threat to their supremacy as a race and sought to end this process. (The provisions for Confederate widows and orphans can be seen as an adaptation to the post-Civil War context of the similar provisions for members' families made by many other 19th-century fraternal organizations.) The Prescript also includes a list of questions to be asked of applicants for membership, which confirms the focus on resisting Reconstruction and the Republican Party. The applicant is to be asked whether he was a Republican, a Union Army veteran, or a member of the Loyal League; whether he is "opposed to Negro equality both social and political;" and whether he is in favor of "a white man's government," "maintaining the constitutional rights of the South," "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights," and "the inalienable right of self-preservation of the people against the exercise of arbitrary and unlicensed power." Loyal League] According to one oral report, Gordon went to former slave trader and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest in Memphis and told him about the new organization, to which Forrest replied, "That's a good thing; that's a damn good thing. We can use that to keep the niggers in their place." A few weeks later, Forrest was selected as Grand Wizard, the Klan's national leader.

Activities

The Klan sought to control the political and social status of the freed slaves. Specifically, it attempted to curb black education, economic advancement, voting rights, and the right to bear arms. However, the Klan's focus was not limited to African Americans; Southern Republicans also became the target of vicious intimidation tactics, and a wave of 1,300 murders of Republican voters in 1868, was primarily a political purge rather than a racial conflict. The violence achieved its purpose. For example, in the April, 1868 Georgia gubernatorial election, Columbia County cast 1222 votes for Democrat Rufus Bullock, but in the November presidential election, the county cast only one vote for Republican candidate Ulysses Grant. An 1868 proclamation by Gordon demonstrates several of the issues surrounding the Klan's violent activities.
- Many blacks were veterans of the Union Army, and were armed. From the beginning, one of the original Klan's strongest focuses was on confiscating firearms from Blacks. In the proclamation, Gordon warned that the Klan had been "fired into three times," and that if the blacks "make war upon us they must abide by the awful retribution that will follow."
- Gordon also stated that the Klan was a peaceful organization. Such claims were common ways for the Klan to attempt to protect itself from prosecution.
- Gordon warned that some people had been carrying out violent acts in the name of the Klan. It was true that many people who had not been formally inducted into the Klan found the Klan's uniform to be a convenient way to hide their identities when carrying out acts of violence. However, it was also convenient for the higher levels of the organization to disclaim responsibility for such acts, and the secretive, decentralized nature of the Klan made membership fuzzy rather than clear-cut. By this time, only two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was already beginning to decrease and, as Gordon's proclamation shows, to become less political and more simply a way of avoiding prosecution for violence. Many influential southern Democrats were beginning to see it as a liability, an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South. Georgian B.H. Hill went so far as to claim "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain." Ulysses Grant, September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.]] In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest boasted that the Klan was a nationwide organization of 550,000 men, and that although he himself was not a member, he was "in sympathy" and would "cooperate" with them, and could himself muster 40,000 Klansmen with five days' notice. He stated that the Klan did not see blacks as its enemy so much the Loyal Leagues, Republican state governments like Tennessee governor Brownlow's, and other carpetbaggers and scalawags. There was an element of truth to this claim, since the Klan did go after white members of these groups, especially the schoolteachers brought south by the Freedmen's Bureau, many of whom had before the war been abolitionists or active in the underground railroad. Many white southerners believed, for example, that blacks were voting for the Republican party only because they had been hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. Black members of the Loyal Leagues were also the frequent targets of Klan raids. One Alabama newspaper editor declared that "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan."

Decline and suppression

Forrest's national organization, in fact, had little control over the local Klans, which were highly autonomous. One Klan official complained that his own "so-called 'Chief'-ship was purely nominal, I having not the least authority over the reckless young country boys who were most active in 'night-riding', whipping, etc., all of which was outside of the intent and constitution of the Klan..." Forrest ordered the Klan to disband in 1869, stating that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace." Due to the national organization's lack of control, this proclamation was more a symptom of the Klan's decline than a cause of it. Historian Stanley Horn writes that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment." A reporter in Georgia wrote in January 1870 that "A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux." 1869 Although the Klan was being used more and more often as a mask for nonpolitical crimes, state and local governments seldom acted against it. In lynching cases, whites were almost never indicted by all-white coroner's juries, and even when there was an indictment, all-white trial juries were extremely unlikely to vote for conviction. In many states, there were fears that the use of black militiamen would ignite a race war. When Republican governor Holden of North Carolina called out the militia against the Klan in 1870, the result was a backlash that lost him the upcoming election. Meanwhile, many Democrats at the national level were questioning whether the Klan even existed, or had been imagined by nervous Republican governors in the South. In January 1871, Pennsylvania Republican senator John Scott convened a committee which took testimony from 52 witnesses about Klan atrocities. Many Southern states had already passed anti-Klan legislation, and in February former Union general Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts (who was widely reviled by Southern whites) introduced federal legislation modeled on it. The tide was turned in favor of the bill by the governor of South Carolina's appeal for federal troops, and by reports of a riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse, which a black state representative escaped only by taking to the woods. Benjamin Franklin Butler.]] In 1871 President Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation, the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was used along with the 1870 Force Act to enforce the civil rights provisions of the constitution. Under the Klan Act, federal troops were used rather than state militias, and Klansmen were prosecuted in federal court, where juries were often predominantly black. Hundreds of Klan members were fined or imprisoned, and habeas corpus was suspended in nine counties in South Carolina. These efforts were so successful that the Klan was destroyed in South Carolina and decimated throughout the rest of the country, where it had already been in decline for several years. Prosecutions were led by Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman. The tapering off of the federal government's actions under the Klan Act, ca. 1871–74, went along with the final extinction of the Klan, although in some areas similar activities, including intimidation and murder of black voters, continued under the auspices of local organizations such the White League, Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs. Even though the Klan no longer existed, it had achieved many of its goals, such as denying voting rights to Southern blacks. In 1882, long after the end of the first Klan, the Supreme Court ruled in United States vs. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional, saying that Congress's power under the fourteenth amendment did not extend to private conspiracies. However, the Force Act and the Klan Act have been invoked in later civil rights conflicts, including the 1964 murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; the 1965 murder of Viola Liuzzo; and Bray vs. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, 1991, which became an issue in the 2005 debate on the confirmation of John G. Roberts, Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court.

The second Klan

Creation

debate on the confirmation of John G. Roberts, Jr. The founding of the second Ku Klux Klan in 1915 demonstrated the newfound power of modern mass media. The year saw three closely related events:
- The film The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan.
- Leo Frank, a Jewish man accused of the rape and murder of a young white girl named Mary Phagan, was lynched against a backdrop of media frenzy.
- The second Ku Klux Klan was founded with a new anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic agenda. The bulk of the founders were from an organization calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan, and the new organization emulated the fictionalized version of the original Klan presented in The Birth of a Nation. The Birth of a Nation D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan, which was now a fading memory. Griffith's film was based on the book and play The Clansman and the book The Leopard's Spots, both by Thomas Dixon who said his purpose was "to revolutionize northern sentiment by a presentation of history that would transform every man in my audience into a good Democrat!" The film created a nationwide craze for the Klan. At a preview in Los Angeles, actors dressed as Klansmen were hired to ride by as a promotional stunt, and real-life members of the newly reorganized Klan rode up and down the street at its later official premiere in Atlanta. In some cases, enthusiastic southern audiences fired their guns into the screen. The film's popularity and influence were enhanced by a widely reported endorsement of its factual accuracy by historian and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (see below, under Political Influence) as a favor to an old friend. Much of the modern Klan's iconography, including the standardized white costume and the burning cross, are imitations of the film, whose imagery was itself based on Dixon's romanticized concept of old Scotland rather than on the Reconstruction Klan. Scotland The Birth of a Nation includes extensive quotations from Woodrow Wilson's History of the American People, e.g., "The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation ... until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country." Wilson, on seeing the film in a special White House screening on February 18, 1915, exclaimed, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." Wilson's family had sympathized with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and cared for wounded Confederate soldiers at a church. When he was a young man, his party had vigorously opposed Reconstruction, and as president he resegregated the federal government for the first time since Reconstruction. Given the film's strong Democratic partisan message and Wilson's documented views on race and the Klan, it is not unreasonable to interpret the statement as supporting the Klan, and the word "regret" as referring to the film's depiction of Radical Republican Reconstruction. Later correspondence with the film's director, D.W. Griffith, confirms Wilson's enthusiasm about the film. Wilson's remarks were widely reported and immediately became controversial. Wilson tried to remain aloof from the controversy, but finally, on April 30, he issued a non-denial denial. His endorsement of the film greatly enhanced its popularity and influence, and helped Griffith to defend it against legal attack by the NAACP; the film, in turn, was a major factor leading to the creation of the second Klan in the same year. NAACP In the same year, an important event in the coalescence of the second Klan was the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager. In sensationalistic newspaper accounts, Frank was accused of fantastic sexual crimes and of the murder of a Mary Phagan, a girl employed at his factory. He was convicted of murder after a questionable trial in Georgia (the judge asked that Frank and his counsel not be present when the verdict was announced due to the violent mob of people surrounding the court house). His appeals failed (Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes dissented, condemning the intimidation of the jury as failing to provide due process of law). The governor then commuted his sentence to life imprisonment, but a mob calling itself the Knights of Mary Phagan kidnapped Frank from the prison farm and lynched him. Ironically, much of the evidence in the murder actually pointed to the factory's black janitor, Jim Conley, who the prosecution claimed only helped Frank to dispose of the body. Oliver Wendell Holmes For many southerners who believed Frank to be guilty, there was a strong resonance between the Frank trial and The Birth of a Nation, because they saw an analogy between Mary Phagan and the film's character Flora, a young virgin who throws herself off a cliff to avoid being raped by the black character Gus, described as "a renegade, a product of the vicious doctrines spread by the carpetbaggers." The Frank trial was used skillfully by Georgia politician Thomas E. Watson, the editor for The Jeffersonian magazine at the time and later a leader in the reorganization of the Klan who was later elected to the U.S. Senate. The new Klan was inaugurated in 1915 at a mountaintop meeting led by William J. Simmons and attended by aging members of the original Klan, along with members of the Knights of Mary Phagan. William J. Simmons

Activities

The new KKK was a small operation with fewer than 2000 members until 1920, when it devised a new strategy of growth in which organizers would form chapters and collect large initiation fees that they shared with state and national headquarters. In keeping with its origins in the Leo Frank lynching, the reorganized Klan had a new anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant slant. This was consistent with the new Klan's greater success at recruiting in the U.S. Midwest than in the South. The Second KKK also preached moral regeneration and purification, attacking foreign elements for degrading American morality. The Klan was successful in recruiting throughout the country and in Canada, but the membership turned over rapidly, and since the Klan was a secret society, it is difficult to determine accurate membership numbers. As in the Nazi party's propaganda in Germany, recruiters made effective use of the idea that prospective members' problems were caused by Blacks or by Jewish bankers, or by other such groups. This Klan was operated as a profit-making venture by its leaders, and participated in the boom in fraternal organizations at the time. Organizers signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and bought KKK costumes. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to state or national officials. When the organizer was done with an area he organized a huge rally, often with burning crosses and perhaps a ceremonial presentation of a Bible to a local Protestant minister. He left town with all the money. The local units operated like many fraternal organizations, occasionally bringing in speakers. The state and national officials had little or no control over the locals and rarely or never attempted to forge them into political activist groups. fraternal organization

Political influence

In 1922 [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/EE/fev17.html Hiram Wesley Evans] (1881-1966) of Texas took control of the national organization as "imperial wizard" and kept it until 1939. The second Ku Klux Klan rose to great prominence and spread from the South into the Midwest region and Northern states and even into Canada. At its peak, Klan membership may have been in the millions, but the numbers were always exaggerated by both Klan leaders and opponents. The Klan claimed that President Warren Harding had joined, but historical research has raised doubts about the claim. A number of notable figures in national politics were Klan members in their youth, including Supreme Court justice Hugo Black. As discussed in Notable Ku Klux Klan members in national politics, Harry S. Truman admitted to paying the $10 membership fee to join the Klan, but then backed out. In the 1920s the Klan claimed credit for electing many people, but in many cases there is no clearcut evidence either way. [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/MM/fma91.html Senator Earl Mayfield] of Texas, for example, was claimed by the Klan, but he always avoided the issue. The first Klan was Democratic and Southern, but this Klan, while it still boasted members from the Democratic Party, was Democratic in the South but more Republican in the North. It was popular throughout the country and in parts of Canada, particularly in Saskatchewan where it played a crucial role in bringing to power the Conservative government of James Anderson. However, no prominent national politician in Canada or the US acknowledged membership in the Klan. Some historians, as well as the Klan itself, state that the Klan had vast influence in many state governments, including Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, and Oregon in addition to some of the Southern legislatures. However, it may often be impossible to reach clear conclusions, since Klan membership was typically secret, and even in cases where known Klansmen were in government, there is no way to prove whether or not a particular action was taken at the behest of the Klan. Klan influence was particularly strong in Indiana, where Republican Klansman Edward Jackson was elected governor in 1924. By then, more than 40 percent of the native-born white males in Indianapolis claimed membership in the Klan. Klan-backed candidates took over the City Council, the Board of School Commissioners, and the Board of County Commissioners. However, some historians are skeptical of the level of Klan control, and in many cases it may be difficult to prove anything beyond the fact that a large number of state or local elected officials were Klansmen. In one well-known example from the same year, the Klan decided to make Anaheim, California, into a model Klan city; it secretly took over the city council, but was voted out in a special recall election. Some historians believe the state Klan leaders were primarily interested in collecting money from the organizing drives. The opponents of the Klan consistently argued that they were politically dangerous. Some historians studying the state-by-state situations conclude that the Klan exerted little or no influence on state legislation, with the possible exception of laws in Oregon designed to banish Catholic parochial schools. No major newspaper supported the Klan; indeed, most newspapers strongly opposed it as hostile to American values of an open, democratic society. During the 1920s no major national politician acknowledged he was a member of the Klan. (Some young men who later became national figures did belong briefly, such as Hugo Black.) Hugo Black The Klan was an issue at the 1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. The convention initially pitted California Senator William McAdoo, a dry (supporter of prohibition) against New York Governor Al Smith, a Catholic and outspoken wet (opponent of prohibition). The issue was a resolution denouncing the Klan by name, versus a generic denunciation of unamerican activities. No leading delegate claimed Klan membership. After days of stalemate both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate and the plank condemning the Klan by name lost in a very close vote. In 1923, "Bloody Williamson" in southern Illinois was the scene of pitched battles between rum-running gangsters and Klansmen. the Klan essentially took over Williamson County, Illinois, forcing elected government officials out of office, to be replaced by unelected "Kluxers", as they were called in Illinois. Federal officials apparently deputized the Klan. Large mobs went door to door, searching houses for stocks of bootleg alcohol. This led to the "Klan War" in which local gangsters eventually overpowered the Klan and allowed the restoration of lawfully elected government (Charles Birger and Shelton Brothers Gang) that they controlled. Shelton Brothers Gang

Decline

In many cases, the second Klan's efforts at the local had only short-lived effects, the organizers left town when their main drive was completed. During this period, the Klan was also left with almost no infrastructure or budget. The final collapse took place in different states at different times. The most spectacular episode was a scandal involving David Stephenson, the Grand Dragon of Indiana and fourteen other states, who was convicted of the rape and murder of Madge Oberholtzer in a sensational trial in 1925. The Klan had promoted itself as the enforcer of morality, so the scandals permanently destroyed its main attraction to people. As a result of these scandals, the Klan withered away. Grand Wizard Hiram Evans sold the organization in 1939 to James Colescott, an Indiana veterinarian, and Samuel Green, an Atlanta doctor, but they were unable to staunch the exodus of members. The Klan's image was further damaged by Colescott's association with Nazi-sympathizer organizations, the Klan's involvement with the 1943 Detroit Race Riot, and efforts to disrupt the American war effort during World War II. In 1944 the IRS filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan, and Colescott was forced to dissolve the organization in 1944. The name Ku Klux Klan then began to be used by a number of independent groups. The following table shows the decline in the Klan's estimated membership over time. (The years given in the table represent approximate time periods; years after 1944 represent the total for all groups using the Klan name.) 1944
yearmembership
19204,000,000
193030,000
19702,000
20003,000
Folklorist and author Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan after World War II and provided information, including secret code words, to the writers of the Superman radio program, resulting in a series of four episodes in which Superman took on the Klan. Kennedy intended to strip away the Klan's mystique, and the trivialization of the Klan's rituals and code words likely did have a negative impact on Klan recruiting and membership. Superman

Later Ku Klux Klans

Following the demise of the second era KKK, there were three periods of resurgence, dubbed by some scholars and Klan participants as the third through sixth era Klans. After World War II, the Klan's victims began to fight back. In a 1958 North Carolina incident, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two Lumbee Native Americans who had associated with white people, and then held a nighttime rally nearby, only to find themselves surrounded by hundreds of armed Lumbees. Gunfire was exchanged, and the Klan was routed. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael was preaching Black Power methods to African American communities across Mississippi. He stated that the only way to end terror by Whites such as the Klan was to meet them with armed resistance. As a result, several Blacks had their guns ready when the Klan came to harrass their communities, and that caused the Klan to leave some communities once and for all. A new focus of the postwar Klan was to resist the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In 1963, two Klan members carried out the bombing of a church in Alabama that had been used as a meeting place for civil rights organizers. Four young girls were killed, and outrage over the bombing helped to build momentum for the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Klan used threats, intimidation, and murder to disrupt voter registration drives in the South, and to prevent registered black voters from voting. The Klan was involved in the 1964 murders of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi, and also murdered Viola Liuzzo, a Southern-raised white mother of five who was visiting the South from her home in Detroit to attend a civil rights march. Viola Liuzzo In 1964, the FBI's COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the Klan. COINTELPRO occupied a curiously ambiguous position in the civil rights movement, since it used its tactics of infiltration, disinformation, and violence against violent far-left and far-right groups such as the Klan and the Weathermen, but simultaneously against peaceful organizations such as Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. This ambivalence was shown dramatically in the case of the murder of Liuzzo, who was shot on the road by four Klansmen in a car, of whom one was an FBI informant. After she was murdered, the FBI spread false rumors that she was a communist, and that she had abandoned her children in order to have sex with black civil rights workers. Regardless of the FBI's ambivalence, Jerry Thompson, a newspaper reporter who infiltrated in the Klan in 1979, reported that COINTELPRO's efforts had been highly successful in disrupting the Klan; rival Klan factions both accused each other's leaders of being FBI informants, and one leader, Bill Wilkinson of the Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was in fact later revealed to have been working for the FBI. Once the century-long struggle over black voting rights in the South had ended, the Klans shifted their focus to other issues, including affirmative action, immigration, and especially busing ordered by the courts in order to desegregate schools. In 1971, Klansmen used bombs to destroy ten school buses in Pontiac, Michigan, and charismatic Klansman David Duke was active in South Boston during the school busing crisis of 1974. Duke also made efforts to update its image, urging Klansmen to "get out of the cow pasture and into hotel meeting rooms." Duke was leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from 1974 until he resigned from the Klan in 1978. In 1980, he formed the National Association for the Advancement of White People, a far-right white nationalist political organization. He was elected to the Louisiana State House of Representatives in 1989 as a Republican, even though the party threw its support to a different Republican candidate. In 1979 the Greensboro Massacre occured in which five members of the Communist Workers Party were shot and killed while participating in an anti-Klan demonstration. The CWP had been active trying to organize black workes in Greensboro, North Carolina. Greensboro, North Carolina In this period, resistance to the Klan became more common. Jerry Thompson reported that in his brief membership in the Klan, his truck was shot at, he was yelled at by black children, and a Klan rally that he attended turned into a riot when black soldiers on an adjacent military base taunted the Klansmen. Attempts by the Klan to march were often met with counterprotests, and violence sometimes ensued. Greensboro, North Carolina Vulnerability to lawsuits has encouraged the trend away from central organization, as when, for example, the lynching of Michael Donald in 1981 led to a civil suit that bankrupted one Klan group, the United Klans of America. Thompson related how many Klan leaders who appeared indifferent to the threat of arrest showed great concern about a series of multimillion-dollar lawsuits brought against them as individuals by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a result of a shootout between Klansmen and a group of African Americans, and curtailed their activities in order to conserve money for defense against the suits. Lawsuits were also used as tools by the Klan, however, and the paperback publication of Thompson's book, My Life in the Klan, was canceled because of a libel suit brought by the Klan. Klan activity has also been diverted into other racist groups and movements, such as Christian Identity, neo-Nazi groups, and racist subgroups of the skinheads.

Knights of the Ku Klux Klan

"Knights of the Ku Klux Klan" has been part of the title of at least ten organizations patterned on the original KKK. The most prominent of these was the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., which was founded in November 1915 by William J. Simmons and disbanded in 1944 by James Colescott. At its peak this fraternal organisation had around three to five million members. In 2005 the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (Knights Party) is headed by National Director Pastor Thom Robb, and based in Zinc, Arkansas. It is the biggest Klan organization in America today. The sixth era Klan continues to be a racist group. Robb's group in the past produced such Klan stars as David Duke, but it is now continuing a long, slow decline. In 1991 Thom Robb said that he foresaw imminent respectability for the Klan: "You take Exxon. They had an identity thing to overcome after that oil spill. Well, the Klan has an image problem to overcome, also."

The Ku Klux Klan today

David Duke]] Although often still discussed in contemporary American politics as representing the quintessential "fringe" end of the far-right spectrum, today the group only exists in the form of a number of very isolated, scattered "supporters" that probably do not number more than a few thousand. In a 2002 report on "Extremism in America", the Anti-Defamation League wrote "Today, there is no such thing as the Ku Klux Klan. Fragmentation, decentralization and decline have continued unabated." However, they also noted that the "need for justification runs deep in the disaffected and is unlikely to disappear, regardless of how low the Klan's fortunes eventually sink." In some Klan units, anti-Catholicism has been dropped as a core principle; and in some cases Klan units have adopted neo-Nazism or Christian Identity as core ideological beliefs. Today the only known former member of the Klan to hold a federal office in the United States is Senator Robert Byrd, (D-WV), who says he "deeply regrets" his roles as "Exalted Cyclops" and "Kleagle," or recruiter, for his local Klan in the 1940's. Californian musical sisters Prussian Blue also perform at modern Ku Klux rallies. Some of the larger KKK organizations currently in operation include:
- Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
- Imperial Klans of America
- Knights of the White Kamelia There is a vast number of smaller organizations. In 2005 there are an estimated 3,000 Klan members, divided among 158 chapters of a variety of splinter organizations, about two-thirds of which were in former Confederate states. The other third are primarily in the Midwest region. The American Civil Liberties Union has provided legal support to various factions of the KKK in defense of their First Amendment rights to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, and their right to field political candidates. In a July 2005 incident, a Hispanic man's house was burned down in Hamilton, Ohio, after accusations that he sexually assaulted a nine-year-old white girl. Klan members in Klan robes showed up afterward to distribute pamphlets.

Ku Klux Klan vocabulary

Membership in the Klan is secret, and the Klan, like many fraternal organizations, has signs members can use to recognize one another. A member may use the acronym AYAK (Are you a Klansman?) in conversation to surreptitiously identify himself to another potential member. The response AKIA (A Klansman I am) completes the greeting. Throughout its varied history, the Klan has coined many words beginning with "KL" including:
- Klabee: treasurers
- Klavern: local chapter
- Kleagle: recruiter
- Klecktoken: initiation fee
- Kligrapp: secretary
- Klikadada: sacred ritual
- Klonvocation: gathering
- Kloran: ritual book
- Kloreroe: delegate
- Kludd: chaplain
- Klupalata: initiation ceremony
- Kluupa: the leader

The Ku Klux Klan in popular culture

While the Klan has faced decline during the latter part of the twentieth century, it nevertheless managed to resonate in the minds of those in the media. Talk show host Jerry Springer had Klan members on his program The Jerry Springer Show numerous times. The animated series South Park often pokes fun at the Klan, especially during Halloween-themed episodes, wherein one character will wear an ill-fitting sheet as a "ghost" costume but will come across as a Klansman to the town's African-American members. In the movie Forrest Gump, the title character (played by Tom Hanks) is said to be named after his ancestor Nathan Bedford Forrest.

See also


- Jim Crow laws
- Silent Brotherhood
- Neo-Nazism
- History of the United States (1865-1918)
- Wide Awakes
- Knights of the Golden Circle
- American Protective Association
- Notable Ku Klux Klan members in national politics

Notes

# According to the 1920 census, the population of white males 18 years and older was about 31 million, but many of these men would have been ineligible for membership because they were immigrants, Jews, or Roman Catholics. Klan membership peaked at about 4-5 million: [http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2207/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_a_brief__biography http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2207/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_a_brief__biography], retrieved August 26 2005. # Horn, 1939, p. 9. The founders were John C. Lester, John B. Kennedy, James R. Crowe, Frank O. McCord, Richard R. Reed, and J. Calvin Jones. # Horn, 1939, p. 11, states that Reed proposed "κύκλος" ("kyklos") and Kennedy added "clan." Wade, 1987, p. 33 says Kennedy came up with both words, but Crowe suggested transforming "κύκλος" into "kuklux." # Wade, 1987. # The quote is from the 1868 Revised Precept, from Horn, 1939. # The Oddfellows, for example, were founded in 1810, and focused strongly on providing a safety net for members' families. Similar provisions were made by the United American Mechanics, founded in 1845. A later example was the Woodmen of the World, which had a connection to the second Klan via William J. Simmons. # Horn, 1939. Horn casts doubt on some other aspects of the story. # data compiled from [http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/lynching_century.htm http://users.bestweb.net/~rg/lynching_century.htm], retrieved June 26 2005 # [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694], retrieved August 26 2005. # Horn, 1939. # Horn, 1939, p. 375. # Wade, 1987, p. 102. # Horn, 1939, p. 375. # Cincinnati 'Commercial', August 28 1868, quoted in Wade, 1987. Full text of the interview on wikisource. # Horn, 1939, p. 27. # quotes from Wade, 1987. # Horn, 1939, p. 360. # Horn, 1939, p. 362. # [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html], retrieved August 11 2005. # Wade, 1987, p. 85. # Wade, 1987. # Horn, 1939, p. 373. # Wade, 1987, p. 88. # [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html], retrieved August 11 2005. # Wade, 1987, p. 102. # Wade, 1987, p. 109, writes that by ca. 1871-4, "For many, the lapse of the enforcement acts was justified since their reason for being --- the Ku-Klux Klan --- had been effectively smashed as a result of the dramatic showdown in South Carolina." Klan "costumes or regalia" had disappeared by the early 1870's (Wade, p. 109). That the Klan was entirely nonexistent for a period of decades is shown by the fact that in 1915, Simmons's refounding of the Klan was attended by only two aging "former Reconstruction Klansmen" (Wade, p. 144). Horn, a very sympathetic Southern historian of the first Klan, was careful in an oral interview to distinguish it from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days." [http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/ohisrch.html http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/ohisrch.html], retrieved August 11 2005. [http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_enforce.html A PBS web page] (retrieved August 12 2005) states that "By 1872, the Klan as an organization was broken." # Wade, 1987, pp. 109-110. # [http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jbalkin/opeds/historylesson1.pdf] (PDF), retrieved August 12 2005. # [http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-CivRts2.html], retrieved August 15 2005. # [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAliuzzo.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAliuzzo.htm], retrieved August 15 2005. # New York Times, August 12 2005, p. A14. # Dray, 2002. # [http://www.geocities.com/emruf5/birthofanation.html http://www.geocities.com/emruf5/birthofanation.html], retrieved July 7 2005. # Dray, 2002, p. 198. The comment was relayed to the press by Griffith and widely reported, and in subsequent correspondence, Wilson discussed Griffith's filmmaking in a highly positive tone, without challenging the veracity of the statement. # Wade, 1987, p. 137. # [http://www.in.gov/statehouse/years/ http://www.in.gov/statehouse/years/], retrieved Dec. 3, 2005 # [http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2207/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_a_brief__biography http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/2207/The_Ku_Klux_Klan_a_brief__biography], [http://www.africanamericans.com/KuKluxKlan.htm http://www.africanamericans.com/KuKluxKlan.htm], [http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/kkk.asp http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/kkk.asp], [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730], all retrieved August 26 2005. # Ingalls, 1979; [http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/ref/nchistory/jan2005/jan05.html], retrieved June 26 2005. # Thompson, 1982. # [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm], retrieved June 26 2005. # [http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp], retrieved June 26 2005. # [http://stop-the-hate.org/klanbody.html http://stop-the-hate.org/klanbody.html], retrieved June 26 2005. # Southern Poverty Law Center. Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2004. Intelligence Report. Retrieved April 5 2005 from [http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp]. # [http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp http://www.adl.org/backgrounders/american_knights_kkk.asp], retrieved June 26 2005. # [http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/kkk.asp http://www.adl.org/hate-patrol/kkk.asp], retrieved August 26 2005. # Axelrod, 1997, p. 160

References


- Alexander, Charles C. The Ku Klux Klan in the Southwest (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965).
- Chalmers, David Mark. Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. (Durham: Duke UP 3rd edition 1987).
- Chalmers, David Mark. Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement." (Rowman & Littlefield: 2003).
- [http://www.jfklibrary.org/coolidge_felzenberg.html Alvin S. Felzenberg, "Calvin Coolidge and Race: His Record in Dealing with the Racial Tensions of the 1920s" online essay from JF Kennedy Library]
- Horn, Stanley F. Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871, Patterson Smith Publishing Corporation: Montclair, NJ, 1939. ::Horn, born in 1889, was a Southern historian who was sympathetic to the first Klan, which, in a 1976 oral interview [http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/ohisrch.html], he was careful to distinguish from the later "spurious Ku Klux organization which was in ill-repute—and, of course, had no connection whatsoever with the Klan of Reconstruction days."
- Horowitz, David A. Inside the Klavern: The Secret History of a Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), based on the minutes of a chapter in Oregon.
- Lay, Shawn, ed. The Invisible Empire in the West: Toward a New Historical Appraisal of the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press: 2003).
- [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/KK/vek2.html Christopher Long, "Ku Klux Klan" in Texas (2005)] covers 1866-1990
- Moore, Leonard J. Citizen Klansmen: The Ku Klux Klan in Indiana, 1921-1928 (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1991).
- Maclean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. (NY: Oxford University Press, 1995).
- [http://www.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/Klan.html 2001 essay interpreting KKK by Professor John McClymer, Assumption College]
- Newton, Michael, and Judy Ann Newton. The Ku Klux Klan: An Encyclopedia. New York & London: Garland Publishing, 1991.
- [http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1974/74_3_sloan.htm "Kansas Battles the Invisible Empire: The Legal Ouster of the KKK From Kansas, 1922-1927," by Charles William Sloan, Jr. Kansas Historical Quarterly Fall, 1974 (Vol. 40, No. 3), pp 393-409 details how KKK operated]
- Thompson, Jerry. My Life in the Klan, Rutledge Hill Press, Inc., 513 Third Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee 37210. Originally published in 1982 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, ISBN 0399126953.
- Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), the best coverage of the first KKK.
- Wade, Wyn Craig. The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. New York: Simon and Schuster (1987). ::An unsympathetic account of both Klans, with a dedication to "my Kentucky grandmother ... a fierce and steadfast Radical Republican from the wane of Reconstruction until her death nearly a century later."

External links


- [http://www.k-k-k.com/ Imperial Klans of America Website]
- [http://www.splcenter.org/center/splcreport/report.jsp The Southern Poverty Law Center Report]
- [http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/KKK.asp?xpicked=4&item=18 The ADL on the KKK]
- [http://www.tkb.org/Group.jsp?groupID=62 MIPT Terrorist Knowledge Base for the KKK]
- [http://www.rickross.com/reference/kkk/kkk12.html In 1999, South Carolina town defines the KKK as terrorist]
- [http://www.lib.duke.edu/forest/Research/ohisrch.html A long interview] with Stanley F. Horn, author of Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871.
- [http://education.harpweek.com/KKKHearings/AppendixA.htm Full text of the Klan Act of 1871] ([http://education.harpweek.com/KKKHearings/AppendixB.htm simplified version])
- [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-694 Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era] (New Georgia Encyclopedia), scholarly
- [http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-2730 Ku Klux Klan in the Twentieth Century] (New Georgia Encyclopedia) scholarly Category:Anti-co

Fraternal and service organizations

A fraternity is an organization that represents the relationship between its members as akin to brotherhood. There is a great deal of overlap between the terms Friendly Society and fraternal organization. Most mystical organizations are also fraternal. what follows is a list of contemporary fraternities.

International


- Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis
- Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks
- B'nai Brith
- Charitable trust
- Civitan
- E Clampus Vitus
- Fraternal Forestry (Ancient Order of Foresters, Ancient Order of United Workmen, Independent Order of Foresters)
- Freemasonry
  - Scottish Rite
  - York Rite
  - Shriners
  - Masonic Youth organizations
- Junior Chamber International (Jaycees or Junior Chamber of Commerce)
- Kiwanis
- Lions Clubs International
- Oddfellows, Independent Order of Odd Fellows
- Optimist International
- Orange Order
- Ordo Templi Orientis
- Red Cross
- Rosicrucian Fellowship
- Rotary International
- Ruritan
- Samaritans (charity)
- Woodmen of the World
- Zonta International

Australia


- Apex

Canada


- Canadian Order for Home Circles
- Knights of Pythias

South Africa


- Afrikanerbond

United Kingdom


- Orange Order
- Order of Scottish Clans

United States


- Aid Association of Lutherans
- Apex
- Chautauqua Institute
- Knights of Columbus
- Dramatic Order Knights of Khorassan
- Fraternal Order of Eagles
- Eastern Star
- Knights of the Golden Eagle
- Knights of the Maccabees
- Knights of Pythias
- Ku Klux Klan
- Modern Brotherhood of America
- Loyal Order of Moose
- Improved Order of Red Men
- National Haymakers Association
- Quota
- Roosevelt Institution
- Royal Neighbors of America
- Royal Templars of Temperance
- Native Sons of the Golden West
- Twilight Club
- United American Mechanics
- Volunteers of America

See also


- Fraternity
- List of organizations
- List of civic and political organizations
- List of professional organizations
- Service organization

External links


- [http://www.exonumia.com/art/society.htm Complete listing of all secret society, fraternal organizations and fraternal orders with abbreviations, with slogans and mottoes]
- Category:Society Category:Lists of organizations

White supremacy

White supremacy is a racist ideology which holds that the white race is superior to other races. White supremacy is most often thought of in connection with anti-black racism and anti-Semitism, though it has also been used to justify discrimination against Native Americans, Chinese, Irish, Roman Catholics, Southeast Asians, Arabs and others. For example, politically, socially and economically, white supremacy was by and large the law of the land in the United States before and for decades after Reconstruction; the same is true of apartheid-era South Africa, and of parts of Europe at various periods of time, most notably under the Third Reich. The extent and nature of white supremacy's continuing influence in Western culture is a subject of ongoing debate. White supremacy is sometimes used in a more limited sense to indicate a philosophical belief that whites are not only superior to others, but should rule over them. White separatist and white nationalist groups often use this more limited definition in order to distinguish themselves from white supremacists. White supremacy, as with supremacism in general, is rooted in ethnocentrism and a desire for hegemony. It contains varying degrees of racism and xenophobia. Associations of white supremacy with ethnic cleansing and racial separation are common, but not necessarily intrinsic.

White supremacy in the United States

In many states of the United States, non-whites were effectively disenfranchised and prevented from holding government office (or even serving in most government jobs) well into the second half of the 20th century; Native Americans in the U.S. and Canada and Aborigines in Australia were often viewed as little more than obstacles to white settlement, rather than human beings in their own right; many European-settled countries bordering the Pacific Ocean at times severely limited immigration and naturalization from the Asian Pacific countries, usually on an overtly white supremacist basis; the United States allowed individual states to ban interracial marriage as late as 1967 (see Loving v. Virginia); Rhodesia held out as an overtly white supremacist regime until 1979 and South Africa into the 1990s. In the United States, white supremacy was, along with notions of democracy and manifest destiny, among the most formative ideologies of the young nation. At the time of the nation's founding, there were African slaves even in such northern states as New York, and Native Americans were being displaced from their lands and massacred. Both Native Americans and blacks commonly were considered by whites to be "savages", even subhuman, and routinely subjected to discrimination, oppression and brutality. The U.S. South until the Civil War sustained a plantation economy based on black slaves. Even in those parts of the South where African Americans constituted the majority, except for the brief period of the Reconstruction (1866-1877), they were routinely disenfranchised; resistance was successfully held down by state and local governments and by organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan who, as late as the early 1960s practiced lynching—extra-judicial execution—with impunity. In the rest of the United States, the regime was generally milder, but—again, at least into the second half of the 20th century—non-whites were generally expected to "know their place". For example, few of the country's leading colleges and universities admitted non-white students, or if they did, they admitted them under very restrictive quotas. These restrictions applied to not only African Americans, but also, during much of the 19th and 20th centuries, to Asians, Native Americans, and Jews. Those African Americans who received a higher education mostly did so in what are now known as the Historically Black colleges and universities. Few African Americans held public office: after Reconstruction, no African American served in the United States Senate until Edward W. Brooke in 1966. There has never been a non-white United States president. George Ariyoshi of Hawaii became, in 1974, the first Asian American governor of a state. Charles W. Mills argues (Racial Contract, 1997) that 'White supermacy' remains a functioning political system, or at least forms a part of most of today's political systems.

Ideology in contemporary White Supremacy

While white supremacists share with white separatists a general opposition to racial mixing, especially interracial relationships and marriages, a distinguishing feature of modern Nazi-influenced white supremacy is the claim that Whites who are Nordic or Germanic should rule over Blacks, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Asians, Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Middle Easterners, North Africans, non-Protestants, atheists, and homosexuals by virtue of the supposed innate superiority of so-called "pure" whites, upon which white supremacy is posited. (See also: Race and intelligence, The Bell Curve.) There are different types of white supremacy; groups that would generally be classified as White supremacist may vary greatly in their ideology of race. White supremacists who follow the ideology of Nordicism and Germanicism only consider Northern European people who are Nordic or Germanic to be white, shunning Southern and Eastern Europe. Pan Europeanism is a White supremacist belief that accepts all native Europeans as White, a population that ranges from fair skinned Swedes to dark skinned Italians. Then there is Pan Aryanism, which accepts native Europeans from all of continental Europe and extends its definition to non-European Caucasoids such as some Middle Easterners, North Africans, and Central/West Asians. Yet not all Middle Easterners, North Africans and Central/West Asians are accepted by Pan-Aryanists as white. With regard to the acceptance of Middle Easterners from Pan Aryan White supremacists, Syrians, Lebanese, Turks (not as often as the other two), and Iranians are accepted as White, but Saudis and Yemenites are not. These beliefs have much in common with Nazism. Some white supremacist groups, particularly in German-speaking countries, actively proclaim themselves Nazis; and, collectively, the groups commonly are labeled neo-Nazi. Many who adhere to racialist doctrines do not use the term 'supremacist' because of the connotations it has with the desire to rule over those of other races. However, many of them do believe that the white race is superior to other races. In the United States, some claim white supremacist movements are linked to fundamentalist Christianity or Christian Identity; but most Christians denounce the movement as fundamentally non-Christian. Some white supremacists consider violence to be a legitimate way to further their cause and dismiss Christianity as a mongrel or "suicidal" faith. Other white supremacist groups identify themselves as Odinists. The white supremacist version of Odinism has little to do with Christian Identity, but there is one key similarity: their version of Odinism provides dualism - as does Christian Identity - with regard to the universe being composed of 'worlds of light' (white people) and 'worlds of dark' (non-white people). The most fundamental difference between the two ideologies is that Odinists believe in the old Norse gods and do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Some groups, such as the South African Boeremag, even conflate elements of Christianity and Odinism. Many white supremacist groups do not necessarily adhere to Christian Identity or other religious doctrines. Groups such as the American Nazi Party are largely politically, rather than religiously, motivated. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), one of the most recognized white supremacist groups in the United States, proposes racial segregation that generally is not based on religious ideals.

Distribution and prominence of contemporary white supremacist groups

White supremacist groups can be found in most countries with a significant white population, including the United States, Australia, South Africa, and in the nations of Europe and parts of Latin America. In all of these places, their views represent a relatively small minority of the population, and active membership of the groups is quite small. However, a backlash to the influx of non-white immigrants into various European nations in the last 25 years has spurred a rise in membership in such organizations, as well as an escalation white supremacist demonstrations and hate crimes. The militant approach taken by some groups has caused them to be watched closely by law enforcement officials. In some European countries, which have more recent experience with the effects of such beliefs in World War II, white supremacist groups are banned by various laws. These include laws which forbid "hate speech" in addition to laws which forbid organizations deemed to be fundamentally opposed to any multi-ethnic, multi-racial, and democratic society.

Violent activism by contemporary white supremacist groups

The World Church of the Creator, now called the Creativity Movement, presents a recent example of violence perpetrated by a white supremacist in order to bring about a race war. Ben Klassen, the sect's founder, believed that one's race is his religion. Aside from this central belief, its ideology is similar to many Christian Identity groups in the conviction that there is a Jewish conspiracy in control of the federal government, international banking, and the media. They also dictate that RAHOWA, a Racial Holy War, is destined to ensue to rid the world of Jews and “mud races”. In the early 1990s, there was a dramatic increase in membership due to the growing belief in the Apocalypse and that RAHOWA was imminent. In 1996, Matthew F. Hale, who came upon recent fame by being denied a license to practice law in Illinois, was appointed the new leader of the Church of the Creator. Hale made a number of changes to the group, including changing the name of the organization to the World Church of the Creator, to give it the feel of a widespread movement. Recent incidents have demonstrated the willingness of members to take part in violent action. WCOTC members in Southern Florida are thought to be tied to several racially motivated beatings. Within the last year, four Florida members were convicted for the pistol-whipping and robbery of a Jewish video store owner. They were supposedly trying to raise money for "the revolution." Many believe in the necessity of becoming martyrs for their cause. For example, Bob Mathews, the leader of The Order, died in a confrontation with law enforcement. Also, William King relished the fact that he would receive the death penalty for his act of murdering James Byrd, Jr.

Fragmentation and formation of groupuscules

Many racist organizations seem to have shown a tendency to splinter easily, and modern-day racist movements existing on the Internet show a great deal of strife within "The Movement", in a similar way to that observed in movements at the opposite extreme of the political spectrum. Different groups have feuds and rivalries, different figures have personal feuds with different figures, etc. It could be observed that too many people within the movement want to be leaders as opposed to followers. Less extreme white supremacists or white supremacist groups, along with followers of and groups associated with white nationalism and paleo-conservatism are considered to be cowards and traitors by a lot of white supremacists, the latter two groups reciprocate with a conviction that white supremacists and neo-Nazis especially make them all look bad.

Contemporary White Supremacists

A list of famous white supremacists would be far too long to include in this article; just as a beginning, it would have to include most of the political rulers of the United States before 1960, most of the political rulers of apartheid era South Africa, of the Confederacy, and of Nazi Germany. What follows, therefore, is merely a list of contemporary figures who are primarily known for their support of white supremacy. The majority of people who are part of the "White Power" movement denounce any type of association with Racial Supremacism. They characterize the label as a misconceived epithet or a pejorative stereotype, and consider themselves advocates of racial separatism or nationalism, which they see as opposed to racial supremacism. Most "White Power" activists are opposed to living in a multi-racial society, whereas racial supremacism demands a multi-racial society.
- Don Andrews
- John Bean
- Don Black
- Andrew Brons
- George Burdi
- Dan Burros
- Richard Girnt Butler
- Willis Carto
- Mark Collett
- Frank Collin
- David Copeland
- Mark Cotterill
- Nicky Crane
- Mark Albert Clapp
- Françoise Dior
- Ian Stuart Donaldson
- Wolfgang Droege
- David Duke
- Leo Felton
- Roberto Fiore
- Andrew Fountaine
- Paul Fromm
- Nick Griffin
- Matthew F. Hale
- Wolf Rüdiger Hess
- Ray Hill
- Derek Holland
- Tom Holmes
- David Irving
- Colin Jordan
- David Kerr
- Ben Klassen
- David Lane
- Arnold Leese
- Marc Lemire
- Alex Linder
- Martin Lindstedt
- James H. Madole
- Horst Mahler
- James Mason
- Robert Jay Mathews
- Michael McLaughlin
- Tom Metzger
- Frazier Glenn Miller
- Savitri Devi Mukherji
- David Myatt
- Fred Phelps
- William Luther Pierce
- John Kingsley Read
- Otto Ernst Remer
- Ingrid Rimland
- George Lincoln Rockwell
- Charlie Sargent
- Benjamin Nathaniel Smith
- John Ross Taylor
- Eugène Terre'Blanche
- Jean-François Thiriart
- Joseph Tommasi
- John Tyndall
- Donna Upson
- Richard Verrall
- Robert Vesterlund
- Varg Vikernes
- Martin Webster
- Bill White
- Martin Wingfield
- Francis Parker Yockey
- Ernst Zündel

Organizations


- Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) (South Africa)
- American Front
- American Nazi Party
- Aryan Brotherhood
- Aryan Nations
- Aryan Revolutionary Front
- British National Party
- Central Oregon Skinheads
- Christian Conservative Church
- Combat 18 (British Group)
- Council of Conservative Citizens
- Confederate Hammer Skins
- European-American Unity and Rights Organisation (EURO)
- Forsyth County Defense League
- Hammerskin Nation (HSN)
- Heritage Front
- Ku Klux Klan (KKK), there are many groups of the Ku Klux Klan
- Legion of Aryan Warriors
- National Alliance
- National Association for the Advancement of White People
- National Socialist Movement (NSM)
- National Socialist Skinheads
- Nationalist Party of Canada
- National Front
- Pagan Front
- The Order
- The Posse Comitatus
- Volksfront
- Westboro Baptist Church
- White Aryan Resistance (WAR)
- White Citizens' Council
- White Patriot Party
- White Revolution: a recent group to emerge, led by Billy Roper
- World Church of the Creator/Creativity Movement (WCOTC)

Related topics


- American History X
- Apartheid
- Dixiecrat
- Eugenics
- Forsyth County, Georgia v. The Nationalist Movement
- Institutional racism
- Jim Crow law
- Master race
- nadir of American race relations
- Neo-Nazi groups of the United States
- Oz
- Racial segregation
- Zionist Occupation Government

Compare


- Black supremacy
- Racism and anti-racism
- Black power and White Power
- White pride and Black pride
- White nationalism and Black nationalism
- White separatism and Black separatism

External links

Alleged or stated white supremacist websites:
- [http://www.stormfront.org Stormfront home page]
- [http://www.nationalvanguard.org/ National Vanguard home] The Acting National Chairman of National Vanguard is the ex-Media Director of the old National Alliance, Kevin Alfred Strom, This group is widely perceived as the new, reorganized successor to the old National Alliance, in the wake of the resignation of scandal-plagued N.A. National Chairman Erich Gliebe in early 2005.
- [http://www.natall.com/ National Alliance home page] This is the so-called "rump" National Alliance, presently led by Erich Gliebe's close personal associate and alleged co-conspirator, Shaun Walker.
- [http://www.govnn.com Vanguard News Network home page]
- [http://www.panf.info/upload/index.php?styleid=1 Pan-Aryan National Front home page]
- [http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/index.php Original Dissent Forum (White Supremacist/Christian Nationalist fusion site)] Category:Neo-Nazi movements and concepts Category:Discrimination Category:Ethnic supremacy Category:Racism Category:Political theories Category:Neo-Nazis ja:白人至上主義

Anti-Catholicism

Anti-Catholicism is religious or political opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, often employing mischaracterizations, stereotypes and negative prejudices. Anti-Catholicism typically applies only to those instances in which Roman Catholics are persecuted or discriminated against for their beliefs by other Christians; Roman Catholics may also be the target of persecution of Christians in general.

Religious anti-Catholicism

On the Internet anti-Catholic sites are reportedly rampant. A check on the words "Catholicism is evil" yields some examples.[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22Catholicism+is+evil%22&btnG=Search] The Southern Poverty Law Center specifically cites groups like the New Black Panthers, as an anti-Catholic group with an Internet presence. Other groups deemed to be Anti-Catholic who have an online presence include Reaching Catholics for Christ[http://www.reachingcatholics.org/], Good News For Catholics[http://www.gnfc.org/], and Chick Publications. Further when a Christian humor site called "Ship of Fools" recently asked for offensive religious jokes, as a rebuke of proposed religious anti-defamation laws, the jokes they received to be deemed to be "too far" generally concerned Catholicism or Catholic priests. [http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/08/14/2003267725 see story] By "too far" what was normally meant is that the jokes were essentially about expressing hatred rather then trying for any kind of humor. Traditional anti-Catholic works include Charles Chiniquy's 50 Years In The Church of Rome and The Priest,the Woman and the Confessional in which he accuses Catholicism of being pagan. Such sentiments are common among some Protestant fundamentalists Christians, specifically those that deny the Catholic Church's standing as a Christian church. Proponents often cite Scripture, such as the Book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18, which they claim depict the Pope as the Antichrist and the Catholic Church as being the "Whore of Babylon". Proponents of anti-Catholicism also claim that the Mass is an abomination in the eyes of Jesus Christ. Many anti-Catholics also claim that Catholics worship the Blessed Virgin Mary. Curiously in recent times this idea of Marian Goddess worship has arisen in some Neo-Pagan or New Age circles who view it more as a positive or ambiguous trait. One high-profile example of anti-Catholicism is the series of tracts produced by noted anti-Catholic and comic book evangelist Jack Chick, in particular his Alberto series. These tracts accuse the papacy of using the Jesuits to incite revolutions all over the world, and claim that the papacy was the driving force behind Muhammad and helped both Communism and National Socialism come to power. Chick's works also claim that "Catholic Germany" was responsible for the Holocaust. One of the most famous tracts is titled Are Roman Catholics Christians?, in which the reader is told that the Catholic Church's doctrines are against God and inspired by Satan. While these views are not widely held, several Roman Catholic organizations continue to battle anti-Catholic sentiment fed by, or explicitly formed by, such materials. Jack Chick's chief source of Anti-Catholicism is Alberto Rivera who claims that he was a Jesuit and that he infiltrated many Protestant churches. Neither Jack Chick nor Alberto Rivera have substantiated his claims. Christianity Today published a repudiation of all claims that Alberto was a true story, and proved that Rivera was never a Jesuit, never graduated High School, never graduated any Seminary or receved Holy orders. Evidence provided by Chick failed to give any date where Holy Orders was given, and consisted of secondary documents stating Rivera was claiming to be a Priest.[http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ343.HTM] Christianity Today Other Anti-Catholic works in the religious domain include John Foxe's Book of Martyrs in which he chronicles the Church persecution of Protestants. During the 19th century, Rebecca Reed's Six Months in a Convent sold 200,000 copies in a month within publication in 1835. Reed was a nun who alleged she had been held captive in an Ursuline convent near Boston. Though the Mother Superior of that convent denied Reed had been a nun, an angry mob burned the convent. Reed's story led to other anti-Catholics publishing tales. One was told by a Canadian girl named Maria Monk and became an even larger best-seller called Awful Disclosures of the Hotel-Dieu Nunnery. In the book it was claimed that nuns served as a harem for Catholic priests, and any children born to such unions were murdered after baptism. Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons claims that the Catholic Church originated from a Babylonian mystery religion and that its practices are pagan. Outside of Protestantism, Russian Orthodoxy has expressed anti-Catholicism at times. This was strongly influenced by their rivalry of, and then rule, of Poland. In many cases their Anti-Polonism and Anti-Catholicism went hand in hand.[http://www.yale.edu/ycias/europeanstudies/empire/Paper-Weeks.pdf]. Some objected on theological grounds and felt special antipathy to the "Uniates." Those who spoke Russian and belonged to a "Uniate" church were often encouraged (or pressured) to "return to the fold." The most noteworthy Russian writer to have religious antipathy to Catholicism is Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the chapter of The Brothers Karamazov called The Grand Inquisitor, the Catholic Church is alleged to have become a servant of Satan some time in the eighth century. This date is not arbitrary, as it coincides with the last Ecumenical Council recognized by both faiths. Curiously the book is said to be well-liked by Pope Benedict XVI, perhaps because he sees it only as a criticism of the Inquisition. However, such an interpretation is flawed as it ignores the consistent anti-Catholicism in his writing and thought. In Notes from Underground the main character fantasizes about making the world a better place by eliminating or overthrowing the Pope, even his characters who defend Catholics believed in Jesuit conspiracies. In more modern times the Center for Religious Freedom states that Russia currently restricts the travel of Catholic priests and other former Soviet states restrict Catholic seminaries as threats to Russian Orthodoxy. Sedevacantists, such as the Palmarian Church, condemn the succession of Roman Popes as illegitimate and Antipopes, pleading for other Popes. Former Catholics like Sinead O'Connor have also been known for anti-Catholic spectacles.

Historical anti-Catholicism

Many countries have had a long history of sectarianism between Catholics and Protestants, or less commonly, Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Political anti-Catholicism has existed in various Protestant countries, and in particular the English speaking countries. Protestantism was firmly established in England with the accession of Queen Elizabeth I. In 1570, Pope Pius V sought to depose her with the Regnans in Excelsis ("Ruling on high"), which purported to declare Elizabeth deposed and to acquit her Roman Catholic subjects of further allegiance to her. This added a political dimension to what was a purely religious conflict, and rendered Elizabeth's subjects who persisted in allegiance to the Catholic Church politically suspect. The failed invasion of England by the Spanish Armada has been cited as an attempt by Philip II of Spain to put into effect the Pope's decree, and to enforce a claim to the throne of England he held as a result of being the widower of Mary I of England. Later episodes that deepened anti-Catholicism in England include the Gunpowder Plot, in which Guy Fawkes and other Catholic conspirators are alleged to have attempted to blow up the English Parliament while it was in session. Later, the "Popish Plot" involving Titus Oates was used by anti-Catholics to make Roman Catholicism seem a renewed political menace by means of a fictitious assassination scheme. In the context of long-standing attitudes among many British people to Catholicism, the beliefs that underlie this sort of anti-Catholicism were summarized by William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England: :As to papists, what has been said of the Protestant dissenters would hold equally strong for a general toleration of them; provided their separation was founded only upon difference of opinion in religion, and their principles did not also extend to a subversion of the civil government. If once they could be brought to renounce the supremacy of the pope, they might quietly enjoy their seven sacraments, their purgatory, and auricular confession; their worship of reliques and images; nay even their transubstantiation. But while they acknowledge a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain if the laws of that kingdom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects. ::— Bl. Comm. IV, c.4 ss. iii.2, p.
- 54 The gravamen of this charge, then, is that Catholics constitute an imperium in imperio, a sort of a fifth column of persons who owe a greater allegiance to the Pope than they do to the civil government, a charge very similar to that repeatedly leveled at Jews. Accordingly, a large body of British laws, collectively known as the penal laws, imposed various civil disabilities and legal penalties on recusant Catholics. These laws were gradually repealed over the course of the nineteenth century with laws such as the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829; however, the law of succession to the British throne continues to bar Catholics, and anyone married to a "papist", from the line of succession. Although on that it should be noted that British royalty are still considered to have a religious role as the head of the Church of England. A Catholic Cardinal who converts to Anglicanism also loses any right to become Pope. These accusations had to some extent been exported to the United States. John Jay in 1788 promoted the New York legislature to require officeholders to renounce foreign authorities "in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil."[http://www.archives.gov/nhprc/annotation/march-2002/religion-founding-fathers.html]. More significant anti-Catholicism has historically been conspicuous among the beliefs of various nativist organisations from the Know-Nothing Party to the Ku Klux Klan. Within more recent years, suspicion of the political aims and agenda of the Catholic Church have been revived several times. In 1949, Paul Blanshard's book American Freedom and Catholic Power portrayed the Catholic Church as an anti-democratic force hostile to freedom of speech and religion, eager to impose itself on the United States by boycott and subterfuge. These accusations continue to have some currency because of the Catholic hierarchy's alliance with the anti-abortion movement and their periodic threats to use excommunication to compel Catholic elected officials to vote in accordance with the hierarchy's wishes.

Anti-Catholicism in modern times

excommunication The submission to the Roman Pope has led to several governments to try to separate their local Catholics from the Roman Church. Thus, the juror priests of the First French Republic and the Catholic Patriotic Association in Communist China. Avro Manhattan's books, The Vatican's Holocaust, The Vatican Billions and Vatican, Washington, Moscow Alliance proposed that the Church engineers wars and tries to rule the world; and Dan Brown's best-selling The Da Vinci Code depicts the Catholic Church as an organization determined to hide the truth about Jesus Christ. The Duvalier dynasty of Haitian dictators wanted to weaken or control the Catholic Church by bringing Voudoun "openly into the political process", according to Michel S LaGuerre in Voodoo and Politics in Haiti, and nominating the bishops. In the USSR, they persecuted the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church just for its religious role in the community, but at other times they used Russian Orthodoxy to combat it because it was more "Russian". Finally, in Mexico, Plutarco Elías Calles caused priests to lose basic rights and the people's religious practices were harmed. Although to an extent he had been able to do this because of the Mexican Constitution. His enforcement of anti-Catholics aspects of that led to the Cristero War of 1926-1929. That war caused numerous priests to be killed and deemed Saints of the Cristero War. Events relating to all this were famously portrayed in the novel The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene.

Contemporary anti-Catholicism

Religious

Anti-Catholicism is a term applied by some Catholics to those they believe to be prejudiced towards or unfairly critical of the Church or its actions, leadership, or beliefs. It differs from religious discrimination or religious persecution where individuals are treated negatively because of their Catholic beliefs. Many Christian Fundamentalists, for example Bob Jones, Sr., have frequently been labeled as anti-Catholic because of their statements against the Catholic Church.

Failures acknowledged by Catholicism

In recent years the Catholic Church's historical treatment of Jews and religious dissenters has been acknowledged as unfair by the Church. Among some Traditionalist Catholics this acknowledgement is seen as a betrayal of Church tradition, but even as early as 1911 the Catholic Encyclopedia conceded the Medieval Inquisition was at times excessive and corrupt. Further for centuries Popes have criticized excessive actions of bishops or even previous Popes. Nevertheless events concerning those eras still cause some anger toward Catholicism. Although conservative Catholics would feel that Anglicans, Lutherans, and other groups who committed similar persecutions have not received the same criticism.

Abuse of the term

There are some who feel the term has been overused, even abused, in modern times. An important element being accusations that during the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal members of the Catholic hierarchy dismissed or denigrated the issue by indicating it was exaggerated or even fabricated by Anti-Catholic forces. Perhaps as troubling is accusations of Anti-Semitism in the Catholic League itself, particularly its leader William A. Donohue. Also some feel those who talk most on this issue essentially want blasphemy laws, see Rudy Giuliani#Opposition to Brooklyn Museum art exhibit. Others feel the term is meant to silence anyone critical of any element of Catholicism as being a bigot. An example being those who, mostly Traditionalist Catholicism adherents, feel that all Protestantism is also Anti-Catholicism because Protestantism began with rejecting Catholicism. Although others go further and state that if based solely on verified information Anti-Catholicism is a valid position, but that it is offense to call this brand of Anti-Catholicism that name. In any event the term has at times been used too broadly or in an exaggerated way. Because of difficulties the term is perhaps only truly appropriate to those who truly hate Catholicism and mistreat Catholics. Especially if they do so based on unverifiable or irrational reasons.

Actions frequently labeled anti-Catholic


- Claiming that Roman Catholics are not Christians and are possibly polytheists, or refering to the institution as a cult
- Committing hate crimes against Catholics
- Incorrectly