There's nothing dubious about the KKK being Democrats. It's a historical fact. That doesn't mean today and it doesn't mean they are the long lost love child of the GOP. The KKK, Hilter, Nazis, fascism is just noise. Like golden showers on a flat rock.
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.
We speak of "the Klan" as if it were a single isolated incident; it was anything but. Here's a partial list of similar groups formed around the Confederacy in the same era, purveying more or less the same objectives:
- Caucasian Club(s) (Louisiana 1869)
- Constitutional Union Guard (North Carolina 1868-70)
- Heggie's Scouts (Mississippi)
- Heroes of America (South Carolina)
- Knights of the Black Cross (Mississippi)
- Knights of the Rising Sun (Texas 1868)
- Knights of the White Camellia (Louisiana 1867-69)
- Knights of the White Carnation (Alabama)
- Native Sons of the South (Mississippi)
- Order of Pale Faces (Tennessee 1869 or 1867)
- Red Caps (Tennessee)
- Red Jackets (Tennessee)
- Red Strings (South Carolina)
- Robertson Family (Mississippi)
- Society of the White Rose (Mississippi)
- Seymour Knights (Louisiana)
- White League (Louisiana 1874)
- White Brotherhood (North Carolina 1868-70)
- Yellow Jackets (Tennessee)
--- The Klan would have been an also-ran among this list, had it not been for Simmons re-starting it in 1915 after the original Klan, and all these groups, were long gone. More on that momentarily.
Notice the recurring incidents of noble terms like "knights" --- as well as "brotherhood", "family", "native sons" and the ironically named "union guards". These socially-oriented icons recall the social-warriors they fancied themselves to be; references to Family and Heritage and Brotherhoods, rather than politics. In fact when "Colonel Joe" Simmons restarted the Klan on Stone Mountain on Thanksgiving Day 1915 he officially called it the "
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan". This reflected their vision as "champions" of heritage, tradition and their favorite crutch --- white womanhood. There's very much a
masculine crisis going on here as well.
Simmons had been part of, and brought with him to Stone Mountain, members of, an ad hoc group called the "
Knights of Mary Phagan" who had taken and lynched a factory owner on specious evidence after a young white girl by that name had been brutally murdered at his factory. So however sincerely or not they portrayed themselves as social "defenders". The victim of that lynching was Leo Frank, a Jew.
Simmons' version grew to be far larger and far more widespread than the original Klan, which lasted at most a decade, and it is from the Simmons Klan we get most of our imagery, accounts of incidents and the idea of burning crosses, which did not exist with the 19th century Klan. Simmons took this idea from the film "Birth of a Nation", which in turn took it from Sir Walter Scott's writing.
There's actually no evidence to my knowledge that Simmons was even a racist, let alone had any political affiliation. What he was above all was an opportunist, looking to skim an easy paycheck from selling memberships --- which he did, especially after hiring a PR team, which sold the Klan on the outstanding bigotry of the period ---- blacks had been suffering lynchings, Jim Crow, segregation and a hammer of demeaned social class since Emancipation (at least in the South) but now they were joined as targets by Jews, Catholics, immigrants, labor unions, gays, moonshiners (the Klan was strongly pro-Prohibition, which movement has its own history), "loose women" and later, communists. This was the hyperconservative, traditionalist,
nativist element, which is why I referenced the Know Nothing Party. Nativism and Protestantism "sold" well in this era, the latter especially in Indiana and Maine, where anti-Catholic riots had already dated back for decades.
It was in this period of strong Klan growth, especially the 1920s, that it dabbled in politics to the extent of actively supporting or opposing candidates it deemed either conducive or antagonistic to its ideals. These included, as noted before, supporting Democrats where Democrats could win, and Republicans where Republicans could win. The former dominated the South, the latter got elected in the West, New England and the Midwest, especially in Indiana where it was estimated that one-third of the adult male population was in the Klan. Sometimes they supported a Democrat on one level and a Republican on another level within the same state.
But none of these candidates were supported or opposed
because they were Democrats or
because they were Republicans. They were singled out for support because that candidate
personally would benefit the Klan, or singled out for opposition because that candidate personally opposed them. There are myriad examples of both types from both parties. Because again, the Klan wasn't out to elect this political party or that one; it was out to promote
itself.
