CDZ Which political party is the party of the KKK?

[Pogo]

Technically, it was the Dem party. But I agree with your opinion OP.

No, it wasn't. There's no evidence the six founders had any political affiliation at all. For that matter there's also no evidence that Simmons, who started the 1915 Klan, had any either.

To the main point of the OP ---- if the Klan can be said to have any political party forebear it would be the Know Nothings of the 1840s-1850s, who were staunch anti-immigrant nativists. And violent. Their rallying cry of "100% Americanism" was picked up verbatim by the much larger Klan of the 20th century.

Yes...keep selling that to the democrats...to claim that former confederate officers would not have been voting for and part of the democrat party is simply ridiculous....

Tell us...did they vote Republican?

They didn't vote at all. NOBODY voted in 1865 Tennessee. It was disenfranchised. And as they were in their 20s they would have had little, if any, voting history before that point. They were too young.

Further --- again for the binary simple minds --- not everybody votes, nor is everybody automatically signed up with a political party. But absolutely feel free to go find any evidence thereof, which does not exist.

Fun fact: in the 1860 Presidential election just prior to the War itself, Tennessee voted for John Bell of the short-lived Constitutional Union Party. So did its neighbors in Kentucky and Virginia. That party was basically former Whigs that wanted to keep the Union intact (hence the name) and like the Whigs took no particular position on slavery. It was popular around the area where I'm sitting in Appalachia, where residents voted NOT to secede, but were outvoted by other parts of the states.

Fun fact Two: In the same election the Democratic Party candidate Stephen Douglas got no electoral votes from Tennessee. Matter of fact he got no electoral votes from any Southern state at all; he got the same number of the South's EVs that Lincoln did -- zero. And that's because the South had already rejected the Democratic Party and ran its own candidate -- as it would again 88 years later.

Moral: don't come into the battlefield of history books unarmed.

 

[Syriusly]

My opinion: Neither party is the party of the KKK- this is just partisan bullshit. Both parties reject the KKK- no party endorses any KKK members for anything.

There is at least a few threads a week by right wing nut jobs trying to label the Democratic Party the party of the KKK- based upon some rather dubious claims from 150 years ago.

Countering that is the claim by Martin Luther King Jr. that the GOP in 1964 pivoted to appeal to racists and the radical right wing becoming the party of the KKK. That of course was over 50 years ago.

The fact is that members of the KKK historically have belonged to both the Democratic and Republican Parties- and the fact is that it is easy to find examples to scream 'racist-racist' for both parties.

But neither party is the party of the KKK. African Americans have by a large degree moved from the GOP Party to the Democratic Party in the last 70 years. Meanwhile, there are conservative African Americans who have chosen the GOP.

I presume that all of those voters make as intelligent decisions as I make- and therefore none of those millions of African Americans have decided that their party is the party of the KKK.

And old white dudes telling them that their party is the party of the KKK is essentially racist in nature- that they know better than African Americans do.

In other threads, I have made a point of posting MLK Jr's remarks declaring the GOP of 1964 becoming the party of the KKK- to counter the BS claims that the Democrats are the party of the KKK.

I do not actually believe either party is the party of the KKK- but if anyone insists that the Democrats are, because of what happened 150 years ago- I will point out that Martin Luther King Jr. considered the GOP to have moved to becoming the party of the KKK.

It is not really a surprise that those who claim the Democrats are the party of the KKK, also tend to consider President Obama to be a racist, and generally despise Martin Luther King Jr.

the kkk was created by democrats and used by democrats to murder freed blacks and Republicans. Today...racists of all races have gathered in the democrat party...the democrat party has been and always will be the party of racism...

Obama sat in an openly and proudly racist church for 20 years, under reverand jeremiah wright who married obama and michelle and baptized their children...he has had the racist al sharpton to the White House as well as the racist, black lives matter ......he is a racist..

As I said- the people who feel compelled to attack the Democrats as the KKK basically think blacks are racists. And whites are not.

You are against the Democratic Party- which has most African Americans, against Martin Luther King Jr., against Barack Obama.

Blacks are all the racists. Not the old white dudes who keep calling blacks racists.

 

[Syriusly]

No it is not "historical fact". If it were "historical fact" there would be some kind of documentation of it, somewhere.

There isn't.

There is however plenty of documentation on who founded it, where and when and why they did so. And none of it refers to any kind of politics.

LOL.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Jim Crow Stories . Ku Klux Klan | PBS
The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the winter of 1865-66. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.

In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization. Lesser officers were given such names as Grand Dragon, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclops.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

It's right there in the first line --- "formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans". Want their names? Again?

• Capt. John B. Kennedy
• Capt. John Lester
• James Crowe
• Frank McCord
• Richard Reed
• Calvin Jones

NONE had any known political affiliation or activity. Nor would they be likely to --- they were all in their twenties at the time.

By 1867 those six were long gone, the concept having spread to various vigilante groups around the area who were already active even before the Civil War, as "slave patrols" (a/k/a "night riders" or "regulators") who were a kind of self-appointed vigilante police force. Moreover when such elements organized in any kind of formality there were at least two dozen of them. I can list them too, and already have. These elements were what the Klan became -- but the original six had nothing to do with it.

1867 was when they organized (in Nashville) and came up with the 'white supremacy' mission. The original founders had no such concept.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Yes, I can read that even without boldface. That's a writer's opinion (Eric Foner) about some of the effect of what they did. That's not the same thing as describing an entity controlled by a political party --- of which there's, again, no evidence.

And I don't own the Foner book and have never seen the context that sets up the statement, but I strongly suspect he's talking specifically about the political effect, when their actions involved elections and voting, in that some of their victims would have been Republicans. But it's a leap to conclude they took those actions because they were Republicans. Rather, we know they persecuted blacks in general who had broken an imaginary ''social code" --- or for sheer intimidation; we know they also persecuted "carpetbaggers", which were commercial opportunists from the North, that they attacked the federal personnel themselves, and that they even attacked local philandering husbands, drunks, debt deadbeats, even people who weren't sufficiently visible at Church, none of which served no political party's interests at all.

Again they saw (and sold) themselves as a social force, keeping "order" in postwar chaos, preserving traditions they couldn't deal with giving up, and resisting forces they saw as "interlopers", whether they were federal troops, carpetbaggers or political activists. Some of it served in effect to sabotage elections, some of it was unrelated.

But again there's no evidence it was controlled by a political party. For most of the period of the first Klan it wasn't controlled by anyone --- it was a disparate gaggle of similarly-oriented groups, and again one of dozens of such groups that existed in various degrees of extremity.

In April of 1867 when the these disparate coalesced in Nashville seeking organization they drafted Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest as a figurehead to cash in on the status of his name as a respected military figure to attain a 'legitimacy'. Forrest wasn't present, but when notified did not decline, and the Klan was organized for the first time. That lasted less than two years, until January 1869 when Forrest issued his first (and only) General Order, dissolving the Klan and ordering its regalia destroyed. Many of those disparate groups ignored that order and continued for roughly five more years in the autonomous fashion they had used previously.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Martin Luther King Jr. talking of the GOP:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right

 

[Syriusly]

Technically, it was the Dem party. But I agree with your opinion OP.

No, it wasn't. There's no evidence the six founders had any political affiliation at all. For that matter there's also no evidence that Simmons, who started the 1915 Klan, had any either.

To the main point of the OP ---- if the Klan can be said to have any political party forebear it would be the Know Nothings of the 1840s-1850s, who were staunch anti-immigrant nativists. And violent. Their rallying cry of "100% Americanism" was picked up verbatim by the much larger Klan of the 20th century.

Yes...keep selling that to the democrats...to claim that former confederate officers would not have been voting for and part of the democrat party is simply ridiculous....

Tell us...did they vote Republican?

Quoting another in the long line of African Americans you dislike:

Martin Luther King Jr.
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right


I think it is telling that those who insist on calling the modern Democratic Party the party of the KKK not incidentally also despise the icon of African American civil rights- Martin Luther King Jr.

 

[Syriusly]

Today...the new racists groups....black lives matter, la raza, the Southern Poverty Law Center....are still democat.....the obsession with race and race hatred is all in the democrat party..the new klan....is made of of the racists of all skin colors...and they call he democrat party home.

The party of all colors is to 2aguy the party of racists.

The party of white people, to 2aguy is of course not.

And black is white and up is down.

 

[Pogo]

My opinion: Neither party is the party of the KKK- this is just partisan bullshit. Both parties reject the KKK- no party endorses any KKK members for anything.

Exactly right. Any individual "Klanner" can call himself anything he wants; most recently David Duke has called himself both a Democrat and a Republican, and both parties denounced the association. Prominent Republicans rejecting/denouncing the Klan include George W. Bush in contemporary times as well as Arthur Gould and an entire wing of the Maine Republican Party in the 1920s that opposed Brewster and Farnsworth. Democrats actively opposing/denouncing the Klan have included Oscar Underwood, Jack Walton, Huey Long, Al Smith, John W. Davis, Ellis Arnall, Stetson Kennedy, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson. The fact that some Klown playing dress-up (the Klan officially ceased to exist in 1944) might call himself a Democrat, Republican or Whig in no way means that party invited him to do so. That's classic Association Fallacy.

 

[Syriusly]

Today...the new racists groups....black lives matter, la raza, the Southern Poverty Law Center....are still democat.....the obsession with race and race hatred is all in the democrat party..the new klan....is made of of the racists of all skin colors...and they call he democrat party home.

Links?




Guess not.

Myths are so fun aren't they. And so much easier than dealing with the complexities of the real world, where not everybody automatically fits into the binary box that simple minds prefer their world to be.

And of course this is the reason why I started this thread.

It is a false narrative to claim that either party today is the party of the KKK.

Generally it is promoted by white people who are frustrated and upset about people of color in the United States having any power.

 

[rdean]

My opinion: Neither party is the party of the KKK- this is just partisan bullshit. Both parties reject the KKK- no party endorses any KKK members for anything.

There is at least a few threads a week by right wing nut jobs trying to label the Democratic Party the party of the KKK- based upon some rather dubious claims from 150 years ago.

Countering that is the claim by Martin Luther King Jr. that the GOP in 1964 pivoted to appeal to racists and the radical right wing becoming the party of the KKK. That of course was over 50 years ago.

The fact is that members of the KKK historically have belonged to both the Democratic and Republican Parties- and the fact is that it is easy to find examples to scream 'racist-racist' for both parties.

But neither party is the party of the KKK. African Americans have by a large degree moved from the GOP Party to the Democratic Party in the last 70 years. Meanwhile, there are conservative African Americans who have chosen the GOP.

I presume that all of those voters make as intelligent decisions as I make- and therefore none of those millions of African Americans have decided that their party is the party of the KKK.

And old white dudes telling them that their party is the party of the KKK is essentially racist in nature- that they know better than African Americans do.

In other threads, I have made a point of posting MLK Jr's remarks declaring the GOP of 1964 becoming the party of the KKK- to counter the BS claims that the Democrats are the party of the KKK.

I do not actually believe either party is the party of the KKK- but if anyone insists that the Democrats are, because of what happened 150 years ago- I will point out that Martin Luther King Jr. considered the GOP to have moved to becoming the party of the KKK.

It is not really a surprise that those who claim the Democrats are the party of the KKK, also tend to consider President Obama to be a racist, and generally despise Martin Luther King Jr.

Very clever. When the real question is "Who does the KKK support?" Do we need to say Trump's name?

 

[Syriusly]

My opinion: Neither party is the party of the KKK- this is just partisan bullshit. Both parties reject the KKK- no party endorses any KKK members for anything.

There is at least a few threads a week by right wing nut jobs trying to label the Democratic Party the party of the KKK- based upon some rather dubious claims from 150 years ago.

Countering that is the claim by Martin Luther King Jr. that the GOP in 1964 pivoted to appeal to racists and the radical right wing becoming the party of the KKK. That of course was over 50 years ago.

The fact is that members of the KKK historically have belonged to both the Democratic and Republican Parties- and the fact is that it is easy to find examples to scream 'racist-racist' for both parties.

But neither party is the party of the KKK. African Americans have by a large degree moved from the GOP Party to the Democratic Party in the last 70 years. Meanwhile, there are conservative African Americans who have chosen the GOP.

I presume that all of those voters make as intelligent decisions as I make- and therefore none of those millions of African Americans have decided that their party is the party of the KKK.

And old white dudes telling them that their party is the party of the KKK is essentially racist in nature- that they know better than African Americans do.

In other threads, I have made a point of posting MLK Jr's remarks declaring the GOP of 1964 becoming the party of the KKK- to counter the BS claims that the Democrats are the party of the KKK.

I do not actually believe either party is the party of the KKK- but if anyone insists that the Democrats are, because of what happened 150 years ago- I will point out that Martin Luther King Jr. considered the GOP to have moved to becoming the party of the KKK.

It is not really a surprise that those who claim the Democrats are the party of the KKK, also tend to consider President Obama to be a racist, and generally despise Martin Luther King Jr.

Very clever. When the real question is "Who does the KKK support?" Do we need to say Trump's name?

Even that is kind of stupid. Because anyone can call themselves the KKK, and anyone can claim to support anyone.

The KKK stuff is just a partisan dog whistle. Now being used by white guys who would feel more at home at a 1920's Klan gathering than at a black church social.

 

[Pogo]

CONTEXT is always crucial.

It's all too easy to go "oh well the South had slaves and that made 'em racists and then they seceded and when they lost they started the Klan", which completely ignores myriad mitigating dynamics in play.

The Klan didn't begin -- or restart --- out of some vacuum and just spring to life out of thin air, nor out of a political party. Its legacy was born of social forces brewing for decades, even centuries. While the original Klan was simply a private innocuous social club, it was soon taken over by pre-existing elements including Slave Patrols, which had been around for a century and a half, long before either a country or political parties existed. These, along with the idea of dressing up in sheets to imitate ghosts to scare slaves, were integrated by the local groups into the Klan's activities and became part of its signature, but the practices themselves where already long established.

In the four decades in between the original Klan and the 1915 reborn one, there were not only rampant lynchings going on all over the country, North and South, but there was a simmering xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry pervading the country and spurring other bigot groups not associated with the Klan but employing similar practices, such as the American Protective Association (1887-1914, which targeted Catholics and was based in Iowa) and the White Caps of Indiana (1888-1906), foreshadowing the massive inroads made in that state in the 1920s by D.C. Stephenson who briefly attained control of the state's entire political structure. The White Caps' targets expanded from blacks Hispanics and Jews to "the poor whites and ne'er-do-wells of the American countryside", "loose women" and "drunken, shiftless and wife-beating whites". All of which was a precursor to, and laid the groundwork for, the Klan's taking up the same causes in the same places after those groups were gone.

Then looking back in the other historical direction there was the Know Nothing political party, nativists who were staunchly and often violently opposed to the influx of immigrants, especially central Europeans and/or Catholics, which famously incited a major riot in Louisville in 1855 and which was augmented by ingredients such as the secret-society "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" (1849). All of this already going on before the Civil War, and well beyond the South, and all of it foreshadowing the similar activities of the Klan.

The high school textbooks of course conveniently "forget" to go into detail about all this strife and racial/ethnic/religious tension, but it's in our historical DNA. The Klan didn't start from nothing; its demise didn't take the sentiment with it; and it didn't re-start from nothing. There were always undercurrents, if one only chooses to look for them, that birthed and continued the Klan.

Context, before, after and during. Crucial.

 

[2aguy]

Technically, it was the Dem party. But I agree with your opinion OP.

No, it wasn't. There's no evidence the six founders had any political affiliation at all. For that matter there's also no evidence that Simmons, who started the 1915 Klan, had any either.

To the main point of the OP ---- if the Klan can be said to have any political party forebear it would be the Know Nothings of the 1840s-1850s, who were staunch anti-immigrant nativists. And violent. Their rallying cry of "100% Americanism" was picked up verbatim by the much larger Klan of the 20th century.

Yes...keep selling that to the democrats...to claim that former confederate officers would not have been voting for and part of the democrat party is simply ridiculous....

Tell us...did they vote Republican?

Quoting another in the long line of African Americans you dislike:

Martin Luther King Jr.
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right


I think it is telling that those who insist on calling the modern Democratic Party the party of the KKK not incidentally also despise the icon of African American civil rights- Martin Luther King Jr.

And you were shown how MLK was wrong...how he sold out to the democrats in the end and backed the racist...LBJ, over the actual Civil Rights leader, Barry Goldwater.

Who despises MLK? He made a mistake by going with the democrats in the end, but there is nothing to despise about the man.

 

[2aguy]

CONTEXT is always crucial.

It's all too easy to go "oh well the South had slaves and that made 'em racists and then they seceded and when they lost they started the Klan", which completely ignores myriad mitigating dynamics in play.

The Klan didn't begin -- or restart --- out of some vacuum and just spring to life out of thin air, nor out of a political party. Its legacy was born of social forces brewing for decades, even centuries. While the original Klan was simply a private innocuous social club, it was soon taken over by pre-existing elements including Slave Patrols, which had been around for a century and a half, long before either a country or political parties existed. These, along with the idea of dressing up in sheets to imitate ghosts to scare slaves, were integrated by the local groups into the Klan's activities and became part of its signature, but the practices themselves where already long established.

In the four decades in between the original Klan and the 1915 reborn one, there were not only rampant lynchings going on all over the country, North and South, but there was a simmering xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry pervading the country and spurring other bigot groups not associated with the Klan but employing similar practices, such as the American Protective Association (1887-1914, which targeted Catholics and was based in Iowa) and the White Caps of Indiana (1888-1906), foreshadowing the massive inroads made in that state in the 1920s by D.C. Stephenson who briefly attained control of the state's entire political structure. The White Caps' targets expanded from blacks Hispanics and Jews to "the poor whites and ne'er-do-wells of the American countryside", "loose women" and "drunken, shiftless and wife-beating whites". All of which was a precursor to, and laid the groundwork for, the Klan's taking up the same causes in the same places after those groups were gone.

Then looking back in the other historical direction there was the Know Nothing political party, nativists who were staunchly and often violently opposed to the influx of immigrants, especially central Europeans and/or Catholics, which famously incited a major riot in Louisville in 1855 and which was augmented by ingredients such as the secret-society "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" (1849). All of this already going on before the Civil War, and well beyond the South, and all of it foreshadowing the similar activities of the Klan.

The high school textbooks of course conveniently "forget" to go into detail about all this strife and racial/ethnic/religious tension, but it's in our historical DNA. The Klan didn't start from nothing; its demise didn't take the sentiment with it; and it didn't re-start from nothing. There were always undercurrents, if one only chooses to look for them, that birthed and continued the Klan.

Context, before, after and during. Crucial.

There were democrats in the north as well as the south, so of course they were lynching blacks in both parts of the country.

 

[Pogo]

CONTEXT is always crucial.

It's all too easy to go "oh well the South had slaves and that made 'em racists and then they seceded and when they lost they started the Klan", which completely ignores myriad mitigating dynamics in play.

The Klan didn't begin -- or restart --- out of some vacuum and just spring to life out of thin air, nor out of a political party. Its legacy was born of social forces brewing for decades, even centuries. While the original Klan was simply a private innocuous social club, it was soon taken over by pre-existing elements including Slave Patrols, which had been around for a century and a half, long before either a country or political parties existed. These, along with the idea of dressing up in sheets to imitate ghosts to scare slaves, were integrated by the local groups into the Klan's activities and became part of its signature, but the practices themselves where already long established.

In the four decades in between the original Klan and the 1915 reborn one, there were not only rampant lynchings going on all over the country, North and South, but there was a simmering xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry pervading the country and spurring other bigot groups not associated with the Klan but employing similar practices, such as the American Protective Association (1887-1914, which targeted Catholics and was based in Iowa) and the White Caps of Indiana (1888-1906), foreshadowing the massive inroads made in that state in the 1920s by D.C. Stephenson who briefly attained control of the state's entire political structure. The White Caps' targets expanded from blacks Hispanics and Jews to "the poor whites and ne'er-do-wells of the American countryside", "loose women" and "drunken, shiftless and wife-beating whites". All of which was a precursor to, and laid the groundwork for, the Klan's taking up the same causes in the same places after those groups were gone.

Then looking back in the other historical direction there was the Know Nothing political party, nativists who were staunchly and often violently opposed to the influx of immigrants, especially central Europeans and/or Catholics, which famously incited a major riot in Louisville in 1855 and which was augmented by ingredients such as the secret-society "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" (1849). All of this already going on before the Civil War, and well beyond the South, and all of it foreshadowing the similar activities of the Klan.

The high school textbooks of course conveniently "forget" to go into detail about all this strife and racial/ethnic/religious tension, but it's in our historical DNA. The Klan didn't start from nothing; its demise didn't take the sentiment with it; and it didn't re-start from nothing. There were always undercurrents, if one only chooses to look for them, that birthed and continued the Klan.

Context, before, after and during. Crucial.

There were democrats in the north as well as the south, so of course they were lynching blacks in both parts of the country.

There has never been a lynching anywhere in which a guy at the gate checked party registrations.

Prove me wrong. Cite one.

This may be too complex for you but there's no requirement to "register" for a lynching. There wasn't even an age minimum.

And again, blacks, although they suffered the brunt of it, weren't the only ones lynched. See the "Knights of Mary Phagan" referenced above. Or more likely read it for the first time since you didn't bother before.

 

[2aguy]

Today...the new racists groups....black lives matter, la raza, the Southern Poverty Law Center....are still democat.....the obsession with race and race hatred is all in the democrat party..the new klan....is made of of the racists of all skin colors...and they call he democrat party home.

The party of all colors is to 2aguy the party of racists.

The party of white people, to 2aguy is of course not.

And black is white and up is down.

The democrat party embraces racists.....what does La Raza Mean? The Race...it is a hispanic racist group that belongs to the democrat party. Black LIves Matter....a black racist group that belongs to the democrat party.....both groups are openly and proudly racist, and are both embraced by the democrat party......

al sharpton, jesse jackson, obama, and the other members of the democrat party..racists.....as are bill clinton, and the other democrats..the ones who still don't hire minorities to work for them in congress.....

the democrat party is obsessed with race..that is why they champion big government......you can't enact your racism if you don't control the levers of government.

 

[2aguy]

CONTEXT is always crucial.

It's all too easy to go "oh well the South had slaves and that made 'em racists and then they seceded and when they lost they started the Klan", which completely ignores myriad mitigating dynamics in play.

The Klan didn't begin -- or restart --- out of some vacuum and just spring to life out of thin air, nor out of a political party. Its legacy was born of social forces brewing for decades, even centuries. While the original Klan was simply a private innocuous social club, it was soon taken over by pre-existing elements including Slave Patrols, which had been around for a century and a half, long before either a country or political parties existed. These, along with the idea of dressing up in sheets to imitate ghosts to scare slaves, were integrated by the local groups into the Klan's activities and became part of its signature, but the practices themselves where already long established.

In the four decades in between the original Klan and the 1915 reborn one, there were not only rampant lynchings going on all over the country, North and South, but there was a simmering xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry pervading the country and spurring other bigot groups not associated with the Klan but employing similar practices, such as the American Protective Association (1887-1914, which targeted Catholics and was based in Iowa) and the White Caps of Indiana (1888-1906), foreshadowing the massive inroads made in that state in the 1920s by D.C. Stephenson who briefly attained control of the state's entire political structure. The White Caps' targets expanded from blacks Hispanics and Jews to "the poor whites and ne'er-do-wells of the American countryside", "loose women" and "drunken, shiftless and wife-beating whites". All of which was a precursor to, and laid the groundwork for, the Klan's taking up the same causes in the same places after those groups were gone.

Then looking back in the other historical direction there was the Know Nothing political party, nativists who were staunchly and often violently opposed to the influx of immigrants, especially central Europeans and/or Catholics, which famously incited a major riot in Louisville in 1855 and which was augmented by ingredients such as the secret-society "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" (1849). All of this already going on before the Civil War, and well beyond the South, and all of it foreshadowing the similar activities of the Klan.

The high school textbooks of course conveniently "forget" to go into detail about all this strife and racial/ethnic/religious tension, but it's in our historical DNA. The Klan didn't start from nothing; its demise didn't take the sentiment with it; and it didn't re-start from nothing. There were always undercurrents, if one only chooses to look for them, that birthed and continued the Klan.

Context, before, after and during. Crucial.

There were democrats in the north as well as the south, so of course they were lynching blacks in both parts of the country.

There has never been a lynching anywhere in which a guy at the gate checked party registrations.

Prove me wrong. Cite one.

And again, blacks, although they suffered the brunt of it, weren't the only ones lynched. See the "Knights of Mary Phagan" referenced above. Or more likely read it for the first time since you didn't bother before.

Yes....republicans were lynched as well...for protecting blacks from the democrats. So tell us how the party that freed the slaves and passed civil rights legislation, the Republicans, were lynching blacks...please...do tell....

 

[2aguy]

LOL.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Jim Crow Stories . Ku Klux Klan | PBS
The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the winter of 1865-66. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.

In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization. Lesser officers were given such names as Grand Dragon, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclops.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

It's right there in the first line --- "formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans". Want their names? Again?

• Capt. John B. Kennedy
• Capt. John Lester
• James Crowe
• Frank McCord
• Richard Reed
• Calvin Jones

NONE had any known political affiliation or activity. Nor would they be likely to --- they were all in their twenties at the time.

By 1867 those six were long gone, the concept having spread to various vigilante groups around the area who were already active even before the Civil War, as "slave patrols" (a/k/a "night riders" or "regulators") who were a kind of self-appointed vigilante police force. Moreover when such elements organized in any kind of formality there were at least two dozen of them. I can list them too, and already have. These elements were what the Klan became -- but the original six had nothing to do with it.

1867 was when they organized (in Nashville) and came up with the 'white supremacy' mission. The original founders had no such concept.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Yes, I can read that even without boldface. That's a writer's opinion (Eric Foner) about some of the effect of what they did. That's not the same thing as describing an entity controlled by a political party --- of which there's, again, no evidence.

And I don't own the Foner book and have never seen the context that sets up the statement, but I strongly suspect he's talking specifically about the political effect, when their actions involved elections and voting, in that some of their victims would have been Republicans. But it's a leap to conclude they took those actions because they were Republicans. Rather, we know they persecuted blacks in general who had broken an imaginary ''social code" --- or for sheer intimidation; we know they also persecuted "carpetbaggers", which were commercial opportunists from the North, that they attacked the federal personnel themselves, and that they even attacked local philandering husbands, drunks, debt deadbeats, even people who weren't sufficiently visible at Church, none of which served no political party's interests at all.

Again they saw (and sold) themselves as a social force, keeping "order" in postwar chaos, preserving traditions they couldn't deal with giving up, and resisting forces they saw as "interlopers", whether they were federal troops, carpetbaggers or political activists. Some of it served in effect to sabotage elections, some of it was unrelated.

But again there's no evidence it was controlled by a political party. For most of the period of the first Klan it wasn't controlled by anyone --- it was a disparate gaggle of similarly-oriented groups, and again one of dozens of such groups that existed in various degrees of extremity.

In April of 1867 when the these disparate coalesced in Nashville seeking organization they drafted Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest as a figurehead to cash in on the status of his name as a respected military figure to attain a 'legitimacy'. Forrest wasn't present, but when notified did not decline, and the Klan was organized for the first time. That lasted less than two years, until January 1869 when Forrest issued his first (and only) General Order, dissolving the Klan and ordering its regalia destroyed. Many of those disparate groups ignored that order and continued for roughly five more years in the autonomous fashion they had used previously.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Martin Luther King Jr. talking of the GOP:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right

Martin Luther King Jr. sided with the known racist Lyndon Baines Johnson after Johnson came out to support the 1964 civil rights act.....after having voted against all the other civil rights acts and against the Republican anti lynching laws.......Johnson realized that they could not murder enough blacks to keep them from voting..and that since blacks were going to vote....the democrats were going to need black votes to keep power....so he switched and supported the last of the great Civil Rights acts....after all the other ones had been passed....

And Barry Goldwater....who was an actual Civil Rights leader...and voted for all the other Civil Rights acts and did all the right things in the Civil Rights movement.....voted against it because he knew it would create quotas and give the government too much power.....and this is the act that is used to destroy bakers, wedding photographers and to deny these people their 1st Amendment Rights...so Gold water was correct.

And MLK went with the racist....LBJ......dooming black children ever since...

 

[2aguy]

LOL.

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Jim Crow Stories . Ku Klux Klan | PBS
The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the winter of 1865-66. The group adopted the name Ku Klux Klan from the Greek word "kyklos," meaning circle, and the English word clan.

In the summer of 1867, the Klan became the "Invisible Empire of the South" at a convention in Nashville, Tennessee attended by delegates from former Confederate states. The group was presided over General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who is believed to have been the first Grand Wizard -- the title for the head of the organization. Lesser officers were given such names as Grand Dragon, Grand Titan, and Grand Cyclops.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

It's right there in the first line --- "formed as a social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans". Want their names? Again?

• Capt. John B. Kennedy
• Capt. John Lester
• James Crowe
• Frank McCord
• Richard Reed
• Calvin Jones

NONE had any known political affiliation or activity. Nor would they be likely to --- they were all in their twenties at the time.

By 1867 those six were long gone, the concept having spread to various vigilante groups around the area who were already active even before the Civil War, as "slave patrols" (a/k/a "night riders" or "regulators") who were a kind of self-appointed vigilante police force. Moreover when such elements organized in any kind of formality there were at least two dozen of them. I can list them too, and already have. These elements were what the Klan became -- but the original six had nothing to do with it.

1867 was when they organized (in Nashville) and came up with the 'white supremacy' mission. The original founders had no such concept.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Yes, I can read that even without boldface. That's a writer's opinion (Eric Foner) about some of the effect of what they did. That's not the same thing as describing an entity controlled by a political party --- of which there's, again, no evidence.

And I don't own the Foner book and have never seen the context that sets up the statement, but I strongly suspect he's talking specifically about the political effect, when their actions involved elections and voting, in that some of their victims would have been Republicans. But it's a leap to conclude they took those actions because they were Republicans. Rather, we know they persecuted blacks in general who had broken an imaginary ''social code" --- or for sheer intimidation; we know they also persecuted "carpetbaggers", which were commercial opportunists from the North, that they attacked the federal personnel themselves, and that they even attacked local philandering husbands, drunks, debt deadbeats, even people who weren't sufficiently visible at Church, none of which served no political party's interests at all.

Again they saw (and sold) themselves as a social force, keeping "order" in postwar chaos, preserving traditions they couldn't deal with giving up, and resisting forces they saw as "interlopers", whether they were federal troops, carpetbaggers or political activists. Some of it served in effect to sabotage elections, some of it was unrelated.

But again there's no evidence it was controlled by a political party. For most of the period of the first Klan it wasn't controlled by anyone --- it was a disparate gaggle of similarly-oriented groups, and again one of dozens of such groups that existed in various degrees of extremity.

In April of 1867 when the these disparate coalesced in Nashville seeking organization they drafted Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest as a figurehead to cash in on the status of his name as a respected military figure to attain a 'legitimacy'. Forrest wasn't present, but when notified did not decline, and the Klan was organized for the first time. That lasted less than two years, until January 1869 when Forrest issued his first (and only) General Order, dissolving the Klan and ordering its regalia destroyed. Many of those disparate groups ignored that order and continued for roughly five more years in the autonomous fashion they had used previously.

Dressed in robes and sheets, intended to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops (and supposedly designed to frighten blacks), the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in service of the Democratic Party and white supremacy.

Martin Luther King Jr. talking of the GOP:

The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right

MLK went with the racist LBJ, instead of Barry Goldwater, the civil rights leader....

Barry M. Goldwater: The Most Consequential Loser in American Politics



Goldwater treated all people the same. As a private citizen, he flew mercy missions to Navaho reservations, never asking for recognition or accepting payment. He felt that “the red man seemed as much—if not more—a part of Arizona and America as any white or black person.”[20] Moreover, a few weeks after Goldwater was discharged from the Army in November 1945, Democratic Arizona Governor Sidney Preston Osborn asked him to organize the Arizona Air National Guard. One of Goldwater’s first recommendations, soon approved, was to desegregate the unit. Goldwater’s integration of the state’s Air National Guard took place more than two years before President Harry Truman integrated the U.S. armed forces.

Goldwater was an early member of the Arizona chapters of both the NAACP and the National Urban League, even making up the latter’s operating deficit when it was getting started. Later as a Senator, he desegregated the Senate cafeteria in 1953, demanding that his black legislative assistant, Kathrine Maxwell, be served along with every other Senate employee after learning she had been denied service.

In the mid-1970s, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, investigating improper operations of the intelligence community in the United States, proposed that transcripts of the FBI tapes about Martin Luther King Jr.’s alleged indiscretions be published. An outraged Goldwater declared he would not be a party to destroying King’s reputation and strode out of the committee room. A fellow Senator recalled that Goldwater’s protest “injected some common sense into the proceedings,” and the electronic surveillance transcripts were not released.[21]

That his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was based on constitutional grounds and not political considerations was underscored in the final week of the fall campaign. Speaking in Columbia, South Carolina, Goldwater condemned segregation and declared that government must treat “all men as equal in the arena of law and civil order.”[22] He pledged if elected President to implement all provisions of the act. His forthright pro-civil rights speech was televised on 87 stations throughout the South.

 

[2aguy]

Technically, it was the Dem party. But I agree with your opinion OP.

No, it wasn't. There's no evidence the six founders had any political affiliation at all. For that matter there's also no evidence that Simmons, who started the 1915 Klan, had any either.

To the main point of the OP ---- if the Klan can be said to have any political party forebear it would be the Know Nothings of the 1840s-1850s, who were staunch anti-immigrant nativists. And violent. Their rallying cry of "100% Americanism" was picked up verbatim by the much larger Klan of the 20th century.

Yes...keep selling that to the democrats...to claim that former confederate officers would not have been voting for and part of the democrat party is simply ridiculous....

Tell us...did they vote Republican?

Quoting another in the long line of African Americans you dislike:

Martin Luther King Jr.
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right


I think it is telling that those who insist on calling the modern Democratic Party the party of the KKK not incidentally also despise the icon of African American civil rights- Martin Luther King Jr.

And this is why Goldwater correctly voted against the 1964 Civil Rights act because they failed to protect the other Rights in this act...he wasn't the racist....LBJ was the racist and saw the great power this act would give the democrats in the future......

NPR Wrong on Goldwater '64, Civil Rights, Say 4 Who Were There

As for the Republican nominee's position on the Civil Rights Act, Goldwater had said he would vote for passage if Section II on public accommodations and Section VII on equal employment opportunity were removed. With his view reinforced by a detailed memorandum from Phoenix lawyer and future Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Goldwater felt these sections were unconstitutional, were unenforceable without a federal police force, and would lead to the creation of racial quotas and affirmative action.


"He was absolutely right about [the two sections of the Civil Rights Act] and they did lead to precisely what Goldwater and most conservatives were afraid of," said Tom Winter, then executive editor of Human Events, who would join Ryskind as its co-owner a year later. As for the "extremism in the defense of liberty" speech, Winter recalled watching it from a San Francisco restaurant "and cheering it because it was clearly about freedom and fighting communism. I certainly didn't think it had anything to do with race."

Breaking News at Newsmax.com NPR Wrong on Goldwater '64, Civil Rights, Say 4 Who Were There
Urgent: Do You Back Trump or Hillary? Vote Here Now!

 

[Pogo]

CONTEXT is always crucial.

It's all too easy to go "oh well the South had slaves and that made 'em racists and then they seceded and when they lost they started the Klan", which completely ignores myriad mitigating dynamics in play.

The Klan didn't begin -- or restart --- out of some vacuum and just spring to life out of thin air, nor out of a political party. Its legacy was born of social forces brewing for decades, even centuries. While the original Klan was simply a private innocuous social club, it was soon taken over by pre-existing elements including Slave Patrols, which had been around for a century and a half, long before either a country or political parties existed. These, along with the idea of dressing up in sheets to imitate ghosts to scare slaves, were integrated by the local groups into the Klan's activities and became part of its signature, but the practices themselves where already long established.

In the four decades in between the original Klan and the 1915 reborn one, there were not only rampant lynchings going on all over the country, North and South, but there was a simmering xenophobia, racism and religious bigotry pervading the country and spurring other bigot groups not associated with the Klan but employing similar practices, such as the American Protective Association (1887-1914, which targeted Catholics and was based in Iowa) and the White Caps of Indiana (1888-1906), foreshadowing the massive inroads made in that state in the 1920s by D.C. Stephenson who briefly attained control of the state's entire political structure. The White Caps' targets expanded from blacks Hispanics and Jews to "the poor whites and ne'er-do-wells of the American countryside", "loose women" and "drunken, shiftless and wife-beating whites". All of which was a precursor to, and laid the groundwork for, the Klan's taking up the same causes in the same places after those groups were gone.

Then looking back in the other historical direction there was the Know Nothing political party, nativists who were staunchly and often violently opposed to the influx of immigrants, especially central Europeans and/or Catholics, which famously incited a major riot in Louisville in 1855 and which was augmented by ingredients such as the secret-society "Order of the Star Spangled Banner" (1849). All of this already going on before the Civil War, and well beyond the South, and all of it foreshadowing the similar activities of the Klan.

The high school textbooks of course conveniently "forget" to go into detail about all this strife and racial/ethnic/religious tension, but it's in our historical DNA. The Klan didn't start from nothing; its demise didn't take the sentiment with it; and it didn't re-start from nothing. There were always undercurrents, if one only chooses to look for them, that birthed and continued the Klan.

Context, before, after and during. Crucial.

There were democrats in the north as well as the south, so of course they were lynching blacks in both parts of the country.

There has never been a lynching anywhere in which a guy at the gate checked party registrations.

Prove me wrong. Cite one.

And again, blacks, although they suffered the brunt of it, weren't the only ones lynched. See the "Knights of Mary Phagan" referenced above. Or more likely read it for the first time since you didn't bother before.

Yes....republicans were lynched as well...for protecting blacks from the democrats. So tell us how the party that freed the slaves and passed civil rights legislation, the Republicans, were lynching blacks...please...do tell....

Once again for those of you wearing intentional blinders, as I pointed out in my first post here, as did also the OP, neither lynchings (which went on continuously even when there was no Klan) nor the Klan itself, was operated by ****ANY**** political party. This again is going to be way too complex for your childlike simplistic binary mind but NOT EVERYTHING THAT FUCKING HAPPENS IS DERIVED FROM A GODDAM POLITICAL PARTY. And until that sinks in you're going to continue to wallow in your own ignorance.

That's going to be way over your head so here's the short version:
Political parties do not lynch. Lynching is not a "political" act.

Further, the lynching I just referenced (Leo Frank) was not known to be a "Republican", a "Democrat" or of any political party. He was known to be a Jew. He may have been registered with a political party but that is not recorded since it's irrelevant.

 

[Syriusly]

Technically, it was the Dem party. But I agree with your opinion OP.

No, it wasn't. There's no evidence the six founders had any political affiliation at all. For that matter there's also no evidence that Simmons, who started the 1915 Klan, had any either.

To the main point of the OP ---- if the Klan can be said to have any political party forebear it would be the Know Nothings of the 1840s-1850s, who were staunch anti-immigrant nativists. And violent. Their rallying cry of "100% Americanism" was picked up verbatim by the much larger Klan of the 20th century.

Yes...keep selling that to the democrats...to claim that former confederate officers would not have been voting for and part of the democrat party is simply ridiculous....

Tell us...did they vote Republican?

Quoting another in the long line of African Americans you dislike:

Martin Luther King Jr.
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right


I think it is telling that those who insist on calling the modern Democratic Party the party of the KKK not incidentally also despise the icon of African American civil rights- Martin Luther King Jr.

And this is why Goldwater correctly voted against the 1964 Civil Rights act !

Not surprised that you are against the 1964 Civil Rights Act also.

Quoting another in the long line of African Americans you dislike:

Martin Luther King Jr.
The Republican Party geared its appeal and program to racism, reaction, and extremism. All people of goodwill viewed with alarm and concern the frenzied wedding at the Cow Palace of the KKK with the radical right


I think it is telling that those who insist on calling the modern Democratic Party the party of the KKK not incidentally also despise the icon of African American civil rights- Martin Luther King Jr

Of course your party then went on to elect two Presidents who opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act
Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

The claim that either party is the party of the KKK in the modern context of course is just your stupid racist partisanship.

Who understands racism better? A bitter old white man who thinks pretty much every civil rights organization is racist?

Or Martin Luther King Jr.?

If you were living in 1915- you would be a member of the klan.