(Poster note: various sources render the date in question as either December 24 or December 25, 1865)
In a small town in the devastated South, ravaged by war, impoverished and with gainful employment and any sense of normalcy elusive, six young men, veterans of the defeated Confederate Army, met in the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones at 205 West Madison Street.
>> They had lost all their property, there were no business prospects for them at the time; it was Christmas Eve and their town was saddened not only by the wreckage of Civil War, but by the visitation of a cyclone which had killed and injured many of its inhabitants and destroyed many homes; yet, the spirit of youth could not be conquered.... . One of these young men, Captain John C. Lester, said:
"Boys, let's start something to break this monotony, and to cheer up our mothers and the girls.
Let's start a club of some kind."
.... Before the arrival of the next meeting one of the young men, Captain John B. Kennedy, was requested to stay in the home of Col. Thomas Martin, for its protection, while he and his family were absent from Pulaski. Captain Kennedy invited the other organizers of the club, Frank O. McCord, Calvin E. Jones, John C. Lester, Richard R. Reed and James R. Crowe, to meet him there.
During the evening the organization was perfected. Captain John B. Kennedy, on the committee to select a name mentioned one which he had considered, "Kukloi," from the Greek word "Kuklos," meaning a band or circle. James R. Crowe said "Call it Ku Klux," and no one will know what it means. John C. Lester said: "Add Klan as we are [of] all Scotch-Irish descent."
He then repeated the words: "Ku Klux Klan," the first time these words ever fell from human tongue. The weirdness of the alliteration appealed to the mysterious within them ; so the name was adopted with a feeling that they had chosen something which would excite the curiosity of their friends and carry out their idea of amusement, which, most unexpectedly to them, proved a boon to Pulaski and the South.
James R. Crowe suggested to make it more mysterious, that a costume be adopted. They then made a raid upon Mrs. Martin's linen closet and robed themselves with boyish glee in her stiff linen sheets
and pillow-cases, as masquerading was a popular form of entertainment in those days. Wishing to make an impression they borrowed some horses from a near-by stable and disguised them with sheets.
They then mounted and rode through the darkness, calling at the homes of their mothers and sweethearts, without speaking a word. They rode slowly through the streets of Pulaski waving to the people and making grotesque gestures, which created merriment to the unsuperstitious, and to the superstitious, great fear.
The next day they heard many favorable comments on the unknown boys who had so paraded, having optimism enough to penetrate the gloom which had settled over this once prosperous and happy community. Aside from the amusement they had created, it was reported on the streets, that many of the idle negroes thought they had seen ghosts from the nearby battlefields, and had with haste gone back to their former masters, only too willing to work.
The trivial incident of the selection of the ghostly regalia had a most important bearing on the future
of the organization. The potency of the name "Ku Klux Klan" was not wholly in the impression made
by it on the public, but the members of the Ku Klux Klan themselves first felt its mysterious power, and
realized that through this means they might accomplish something towards alleviating the distress then
prevalent in their community. Yet their dominant idea was amusement, based on secrecy and mystery.
<<1
The shroud of mystery proved infectious far beyond this group of six and loose adjunct chapters were started around the region. Into these chapters crept a lawless vigilante element that had been mustering in the defeated South, usually also started by Confederate veterans, at first ostensibly a "protective" force but in practice increasingly a terroristic one, in effect insurgents bent on continuing the War, or at least driving out what it saw as an occupying army.
Though officially disbanded in 1869 specifically because of this lawlessness, this same vigilante element ignored the order and continued its terrorism well into the 1870s, organized or not, until the Klan was extinguished by the end of that decade.
This Ku Klux Klan had lasted less than 15 years and would have been relegated to the footnotes of history along with the White League, Knights of the White Camellia and other such postwar movements, had it not been for a Georgia salesman and opportunist named William Simmons who, exactly fifty years later, saw a get-rich-quick opportunity in the wake of the stir created by the racist film "Birth of a Nation", which romanticized and whitewashed the old Klan stories. On Thanksgiving Day 1915 Simmons took some followers up Stone Mountain and rekindled the Klan, taking the trouble to acquire a charter from the State of Georgia (and set up a scheme to sell and market memberships, making sure he got a cut of each one).
Simmons saw dollar signs in the national fear of foreigners and immigrants, his new Klan reiteration targeting these newcomers, largely Eastern European, along with labor unions, Catholics, Jews, blacks and any other non-WASP minority, as well as communists, "loose" women, and alcohol (his KKK was firmly behind the Temperance movement and 18th Amendment) -- even though Simmons himself was known to imbibe in these vices. Simmons would hire marketing consultants to exploit these national fears, greatly expanding the Klan far beyond the former geographical and ideological boundaries of the South, to the point where at one point an estimated one-third of the entire male population of Indiana was counted in its members.
Most of our experience of Klan activity, and virtually all of the photographic evidence, derives from Simmons' second (1915) iteration, as does the cross-burning imagery (which was taken from the film, not from history). But ultimately it derives from six bored young guys looking for something to do in a small town, 150 years ago today.
The building at 205 West Madison was marked with a plaque by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1917, listing the names of the group's founders, apparently feeling Pulaski was snubbed by not being mentioned in Birth of a Nation. In 1990 the building's new owner Don Massey2 turned the plaque backwards and re-bolted it to the brick, so that it now shows nothing but blank.
1 - description quoted from "Authentic History [of the] Ku Klux Klan 1865-1877" by Susan Lawrence Davis
2- Article, Augusta Chronicle 1/20/97
In a small town in the devastated South, ravaged by war, impoverished and with gainful employment and any sense of normalcy elusive, six young men, veterans of the defeated Confederate Army, met in the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones at 205 West Madison Street.
>> They had lost all their property, there were no business prospects for them at the time; it was Christmas Eve and their town was saddened not only by the wreckage of Civil War, but by the visitation of a cyclone which had killed and injured many of its inhabitants and destroyed many homes; yet, the spirit of youth could not be conquered.... . One of these young men, Captain John C. Lester, said:
"Boys, let's start something to break this monotony, and to cheer up our mothers and the girls.
Let's start a club of some kind."
.... Before the arrival of the next meeting one of the young men, Captain John B. Kennedy, was requested to stay in the home of Col. Thomas Martin, for its protection, while he and his family were absent from Pulaski. Captain Kennedy invited the other organizers of the club, Frank O. McCord, Calvin E. Jones, John C. Lester, Richard R. Reed and James R. Crowe, to meet him there.
During the evening the organization was perfected. Captain John B. Kennedy, on the committee to select a name mentioned one which he had considered, "Kukloi," from the Greek word "Kuklos," meaning a band or circle. James R. Crowe said "Call it Ku Klux," and no one will know what it means. John C. Lester said: "Add Klan as we are [of] all Scotch-Irish descent."
He then repeated the words: "Ku Klux Klan," the first time these words ever fell from human tongue. The weirdness of the alliteration appealed to the mysterious within them ; so the name was adopted with a feeling that they had chosen something which would excite the curiosity of their friends and carry out their idea of amusement, which, most unexpectedly to them, proved a boon to Pulaski and the South.
James R. Crowe suggested to make it more mysterious, that a costume be adopted. They then made a raid upon Mrs. Martin's linen closet and robed themselves with boyish glee in her stiff linen sheets
and pillow-cases, as masquerading was a popular form of entertainment in those days. Wishing to make an impression they borrowed some horses from a near-by stable and disguised them with sheets.
They then mounted and rode through the darkness, calling at the homes of their mothers and sweethearts, without speaking a word. They rode slowly through the streets of Pulaski waving to the people and making grotesque gestures, which created merriment to the unsuperstitious, and to the superstitious, great fear.
The next day they heard many favorable comments on the unknown boys who had so paraded, having optimism enough to penetrate the gloom which had settled over this once prosperous and happy community. Aside from the amusement they had created, it was reported on the streets, that many of the idle negroes thought they had seen ghosts from the nearby battlefields, and had with haste gone back to their former masters, only too willing to work.
The trivial incident of the selection of the ghostly regalia had a most important bearing on the future
of the organization. The potency of the name "Ku Klux Klan" was not wholly in the impression made
by it on the public, but the members of the Ku Klux Klan themselves first felt its mysterious power, and
realized that through this means they might accomplish something towards alleviating the distress then
prevalent in their community. Yet their dominant idea was amusement, based on secrecy and mystery.
<<1
Though officially disbanded in 1869 specifically because of this lawlessness, this same vigilante element ignored the order and continued its terrorism well into the 1870s, organized or not, until the Klan was extinguished by the end of that decade.
This Ku Klux Klan had lasted less than 15 years and would have been relegated to the footnotes of history along with the White League, Knights of the White Camellia and other such postwar movements, had it not been for a Georgia salesman and opportunist named William Simmons who, exactly fifty years later, saw a get-rich-quick opportunity in the wake of the stir created by the racist film "Birth of a Nation", which romanticized and whitewashed the old Klan stories. On Thanksgiving Day 1915 Simmons took some followers up Stone Mountain and rekindled the Klan, taking the trouble to acquire a charter from the State of Georgia (and set up a scheme to sell and market memberships, making sure he got a cut of each one).
Simmons saw dollar signs in the national fear of foreigners and immigrants, his new Klan reiteration targeting these newcomers, largely Eastern European, along with labor unions, Catholics, Jews, blacks and any other non-WASP minority, as well as communists, "loose" women, and alcohol (his KKK was firmly behind the Temperance movement and 18th Amendment) -- even though Simmons himself was known to imbibe in these vices. Simmons would hire marketing consultants to exploit these national fears, greatly expanding the Klan far beyond the former geographical and ideological boundaries of the South, to the point where at one point an estimated one-third of the entire male population of Indiana was counted in its members.
Most of our experience of Klan activity, and virtually all of the photographic evidence, derives from Simmons' second (1915) iteration, as does the cross-burning imagery (which was taken from the film, not from history). But ultimately it derives from six bored young guys looking for something to do in a small town, 150 years ago today.
The building at 205 West Madison was marked with a plaque by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1917, listing the names of the group's founders, apparently feeling Pulaski was snubbed by not being mentioned in Birth of a Nation. In 1990 the building's new owner Don Massey2 turned the plaque backwards and re-bolted it to the brick, so that it now shows nothing but blank.
1 - description quoted from "Authentic History [of the] Ku Klux Klan 1865-1877" by Susan Lawrence Davis
2- Article, Augusta Chronicle 1/20/97
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