Knights of the White Camelia | |
---|---|
White Camelia | |
Leaders | Alcibiades DeBlanc |
Dates of operation | 1867 – c. 1870 |
Ideology | White supremacy |
Allies | Ku Klux Klan |
Opponents | U.S. Government, U.S. Republican Party, carpetbaggers, scalawags, African-Americans |
The Knights of the White Camelia was an American white supremacist organization that operated in the Southern United States in the late 19th century. Similar to and associated with the Ku Klux Klan, it opposed freedmen's rights. [1]
The Knights of the White Camelia (named apparently for the camellia, a type of flower) was founded by Confederate States Army Colonel, Alcibiades DeBlanc, on May 22, 1867, in Franklin, Louisiana. Author Christopher Long stated, "Its members were pledged to support the supremacy of the White race, [1] to oppose the amalgamation of the races, to resist the social and political encroachment of the so-called carpetbaggers, and to restore White control of the government". [2] [3] Historian Nicholas Lemann calls the Knights the leading terrorist organization in Louisiana. [4] Their tactics, (which included "harassment, floggings, and sometimes murder") "produced a reign of terror among the state's black population during the summer and fall of 1868." [5] The estimated death toll of their terror campaign may have been as large as 1,800 people, with an even larger number being wounded by them. The double murder of pro-Republican Judge Valentine Chase and Sheriff Henry H. Pope of St. Mary Parish may have been committed by them. [6]
Chapters primarily existed in the southern part of the Deep South. Historian George C. Rable noted that, "Although the Republicans saw evidence of a massive conspiracy in these outrages, in Louisiana as elsewhere, White terrorists were not organized beyond the local level." [7] An additional aim of the group was to keep Freedmen farm labor from leaving the plantations. [8] Unlike the Ku Klux Klan, which drew much of its membership from lower-class Southerners (primarily Confederate veterans), the White Camelia consisted mainly of upper-class Southerners, including physicians, landowners, newspaper editors, and officers. They were also usually Confederate veterans, the upper part of antebellum society. It began to decline, despite a convention in 1869. The more aggressive people joined the White League or similar paramilitary organizations that organized in the mid-1870s. By 1870, the original Knights of the White Camelia had mostly ceased to exist. [9] Among its members was Louisiana Judge Taylor Beattie, who led the Thibodaux massacre of 1887. [10]
In 1939, Time reported that the West Virginian anti-Semite George E. Deatherage was describing himself as the "national commander of the Knights of the White Camellia". [11] In the 1990s, a Ku Klux Klan group which was based in eastern Texas adopted the name. [12] According to the book Soldiers of God, the new age White Camelia has a strong influence in Vidor, Texas. [13] Ever since the return of the White Camelia name, so-called "White Camelia" (sometimes spelled Kamelia) Klan groups have also emerged in Louisiana and Florida.
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of an American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organization and hate group. Various historians, including Fergus Bordewich, have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. There have been three distinct iterations with various targets relative to time and place, including African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, and the promotion of the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
The White Patriot Party (WPP) was an American anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, homophobic, white supremacist paramilitary political party which was associated with Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan. It was led by its founder, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., through various organizational incarnations. In the mid-1970s, the organization was founded as the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It was involved in the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when a confrontation between Klansmen, Nazis and communists degenerated into a shootout and a mass shooting which left five people dead and twelve people wounded. The organization became the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1980s and it became the White Patriot Party in 1985.
The Colfax massacre, sometimes referred to as the Colfax riot, occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the parish seat of Grant Parish. An estimated 62–153 Black militia men were murdered while surrendering to a mob of former Confederate soldiers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Three White men also died during the confrontation.
The White League, also known as the White Man's League, was a white supremacist paramilitary terrorist organization started in the Southern United States in 1874 to intimidate freedmen into not voting and prevent Republican Party political organizing, while also being supported by regional elements of the Democratic Party. Its first chapter was formed in Grant Parish, Louisiana, and neighboring parishes and was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the Colfax massacre in April 1873. Chapters were soon founded in New Orleans and other areas of the state.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American neo-Confederate nonprofit organization of male descendants of Confederate soldiers that commemorates these ancestors, funds and dedicates monuments to them, and promotes the pseudohistorical Lost Cause ideology and corresponding white supremacy.
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy is an American pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. First enunciated in 1866, it has continued to influence racism, gender roles, and religious attitudes in the Southern United States into the 21st century. Historians have dismantled many parts of the Lost Cause mythos.
The Coushatta massacre (1874) was an attack by members of the White League, a white supremacist paramilitary organization composed of white Southern Democrats, on Republican officeholders and freedmen in Coushatta, the parish seat of Red River Parish, Louisiana. They assassinated six white Republicans and five to 20 freedmen who were witnesses.
In the United States, domestic terrorism is defined as terrorist acts that were carried out within the United States by U.S. citizens and/or U.S. permanent residents. As of 2021, the United States government considers white supremacists to be the top domestic terrorism threat.
The Red Shirts or Redshirts of the Southern United States were white supremacist paramilitary terrorist groups that were active in the late 19th century in the last years of, and after the end of, the Reconstruction era of the United States. Red Shirt groups originated in Mississippi in 1875, when anti-Reconstruction private terror units adopted red shirts to make themselves more visible and threatening to Southern Republicans, both whites and freedmen. Similar groups in the Carolinas also adopted red shirts.
This is a list of topics related to racism:
The White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization which is active in the United States. It originated in Mississippi and Louisiana in the early 1960s under the leadership of Samuel Bowers, its first Imperial Wizard. The White Knights of Mississippi were formed in December 1963, when they separated from the Original Knights of Mississippi after the resignation of Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Roughly 200 members of the Original Knights of Louisiana also joined the White Knights. Within a year, their membership was up to around six thousand, and they had Klaverns in over half of the counties in Mississippi. By 1967, the number of active members had declined to around four hundred. Similar to the United Klans of America (UKA), the White Knights are very secretive about their group.
Jean Maximilien Alcibiades Derneville DeBlanc was a lawyer and state legislator in Louisiana. He served as a colonel for the Confederate army during the American Civil War. Afterward, he founded the Knights of the White Camelia, a white insurgent militia that operated from 1867–1869 to suppress freedmen's voting, disrupt Republican Party political organizing and try to regain political control of the state government in the 1868 election. A Congressional investigation overturned 1868 election results in Louisiana.
The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a group styled after the original Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Formed around 2012, it aims to "restore America to a White, Christian nation founded on God's word".
A White ethnostate is a proposed type of state in which residence or citizenship would be limited to Whites, and non-Whites and any other groups not seen as White would be excluded from citizenship. Native populations would also be excluded from citizenship, such as the indigenous peoples of the United States.
The First Klan is a neologism or a retronym which is used to describe the first of three distinct operational eras in the history of the Ku Klux Klan, a White supremacist domestic terrorist group in the United States. The First Klan, or the Reconstruction Klan, was followed by the Second Klan, which reached its peak in the 1920s, and finally, it was followed by the Third Klan, which has been extant since the 1960s. According to historian Carl N. Degler, "Aside from the name, about the only common trait that the three Klans possess is vigilantism."
Hinche Parham Mabry Jr., also known as "Hinchie" Mabry and H.P. Mabry was a Texas lawyer, state legislator, judge, and brigade commander in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. After joining the Confederate army, Mabry was promoted to colonel and assigned command of a cavalry brigade in Forrest's Cavalry Corps. Mabry's brigade fought against Union forces in Mississippi until the late stages of the war. During Reconstruction, Mabry returned to his home in Jefferson, Texas, where he was the leader of a KKK-style terror organization called the Knights of the Rising Sun. Mabry was implicated in lynchings committed by the group in 1868, but he was never prosecuted.