Ku Klux Klan,

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Ku Klux Klan, set up in 1868 Why in 1868?
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08/01/2005 Preacher charged with 1964 Ku Klux
Klan civil rights murders A preacher and alleged
Ku Klux Klan leader appeared in court yesterday
charged with the murders of three volunteers who
sought to register black voters at the height of
the civil rights campaign of the 1960s.
(Daily
Telegraph) Thursday June 23, 2005 Mississippi
Klansman sentenced to 60 years in prison.
PHILADELPHIA, Mississippi - Former Ku Klux
Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was sentenced on
Thursday to 60 years in prison for orchestrating
the 1964 killings of three civil rights workers
who were registering black voters in Mississippi.
(Daily
Telegraph)
2005
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02/05/2001 Klansman given life for 1963 killings
A FORMER member of the Ku Klux Klan was
convicted last night of killing four black girls
in a crime that has haunted America since the
civil rights battles of the 1960s. Thomas
Blanton, 62, was jailed for life for his role in
the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist
Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on Sept 15 1963.
Before leaving court in handcuffs, he said "I
guess the good Lord will settle it on judgment
day. The girls died as they prepared for the
church service. Even whites sympathetic to the
Klan were shocked by the violence of their deaths
and the maiming of many others in the
church. Doug Jones, the prosecutor, told the
jury that it was "never too late for justice".

(Daily Telegraph)
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Daily Telegraph, Jan 2005 Killen was cleared (in
a trial in 1967) after one juror refused to find
him guilty. She said she could never convict a
preacher.
H. L. Menken, Americana, published 1925 Because a
juryman failed to agree a verdict of guilty in
the case of Alvin Calhoun, a negro accused of
murder, a mob took the juror from the jury-room,
whipped him, and dipped him in a mud-hole. After
his chastisement he returned to the jury-room and
agreed to a verdict of murder in the first
degree.
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Hiram Wesley Evans, the leader of the Klan,
speaking in 1924 The world has been so made
that each race must fight for its life, must
conquer or accept slavery and die.. The Klan
wants each state to bring in laws making sex
between a white and a black person a crime.
Protestants must be supreme. Rome shall not rule
America. The Roman Catholic Church is un0American
and usually anti-American where else in 1924
would you have heard such ideas preached?
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Robert Coughlan, Konklave in Kokomo, published
1949. Literally half the town belonged to the
Klan when I was a boy. At its peak, the Nathan
Hale Den had about 5,000 members out of an
able-bodied adult population of about
10,000..the Klan was able to dominate local
politicsit packed the police and fire
departments with its own people, with the result
that on parade nights the traffic patrolman
disappeared and traffic control was taken over by
sheeted figures whose size and shape resembled
those of the vanished policemen There were 30
bands, but as usual in Klan parades there was no
music, only the sound of drums.. There were 300
mounted Klansmen, interspersed amongst the 50,000
hooded men, women and children on foot many of
the marchers carried flaming torches whose light
threw grotesque shadows up and down the main
street..
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(we are fighting against) every criminal, every
gambler, every thug, every libertine, every
girl-ruiner, every home-wrecker, every
wife-beater, every dope-peddler, every
moonshiner, every crooked politician, every pagan
papist priest every Roman controlled newspaper,
every hyphenated American, every lawless alien
A Klan leader argued, in a 1926 Kansas newspaper
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William J Simmons. America is a garbage can!
When the hordes of aliens walk to the ballot box
and their votes outnumber yours, then that alien
horde has got you by the throat..
Another argued
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• No. of persons lynched in USA
• White black
  total
• 8 53
  61
• 0 17
  17
• 1 20
  21
• 1935 2 18
  20

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An article in a Black Newspaper 1921. Look around
your cabin, look at the dirt floor and the
windows without glass. Then ask your folks
already up North about the bathrooms with hot and
cold running water the steam heat and the
glistening hardwood floors What chance has the
average black got to get these things down home?
And if he does get them how can he be sure that
some night some poor white man will get his gang
together and come round and drive him out?...
Step on a train and ride for a day and night to
freedom. Your nickel is worth as much as the
other fellows nickel in the Northern streetcars
and you sit wherever you can find a seat. You tip
your hat to no man unless you want to do so.
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What does a study of the Klan tell us about
1920s America? Land of the Free?
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• Intolerance
• immigration
• Sacco Vanzetti
• short skirts
• alcohol
• birth control
• trade unions
• film censorship
• evolution