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The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is the name of several historical and current American white supremacist, far-right terrorist organizations and hate groups. Various historians, including Fergus Bordewich, have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist movement. Their primary targets, at various times and places, have been African Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
The Communist Workers' Party (CWP) was a far-left Maoist group in the United States. It had its origin in 1973 as the Asian Study Group established by Jerry Tung, a former member of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) who had grown disenchanted with the group and disagreed with changes taking place in the party line. The party is mainly remembered as being associated with victims of the Greensboro Massacre of 1979.
Benjamin Franklin Stapleton was the mayor of Denver, Colorado, for two periods, the first from 1923 to 1931 and the second from 1935 to 1947. He also served as the Democratic Colorado State Auditor from 1933 to 1935 and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
This is a partial list of notable historical figures in U.S. national politics who were members of the Ku Klux Klan before taking office. Membership of the Klan is secret. Political opponents sometimes allege that a person was a member of the Klan, or was supported at the polls by Klan members.
Eurith Dickinson Rivers, commonly known as E. D. Rivers and informally as "Ed" Rivers, was an American politician from Lanier County, Georgia. A Democrat, he was the 68th Governor of Georgia, serving from 1937 to 1941.
William David Upshaw served eight years in Congress (1919–1927), where he was such a strong proponent of the temperance movement that he became known as the "driest of the drys." In Congress, Upshaw was a staunch defender of the Ku Klux Klan, which was founded in his congressional district, and lost reelection because of major KKK scandals in the mid-1920s. In 1932, he ran for President of the United States on the Prohibition Party ticket, finishing the race in fifth place.
Ku Klux Klan auxiliaries are organized groups that supplement, but do not directly integrate with the Ku Klux Klan. These auxiliaries include: Women of the Ku Klux Klan, The Jr. Ku Klux Klan, The Tri-K Girls, the American Crusaders, The Royal Riders of the Red Robe, The Ku Klux balla, and the Klan's Colored Man auxiliary.
George Emerson Leach was an American politician who served as a major general in the United States Army and two-time Republican Mayor of Minneapolis.
The Ku Klux Klan has had a history in the U.S. state of New Jersey since the early part of the 1920s. The Klan was active in the areas of Trenton and Camden and it also had a presence in several of the state's northern counties in the 1920s. It had the most members in Monmouth County, and operated a resort in Wall Township.
Ku Klux Klan activities in Inglewood, California, were highlighted by the 1922 arrest and trial of 36 men, most of them masked, for a night-time raid on a suspected bootlegger and his family. The raid led to the shooting death of one of the culprits, an Inglewood police officer. A jury returned a "not guilty" verdict for all defendants who completed the trial. It was this scandal, according to the Los Angeles Times, that eventually led to the outlawing of the Klan in California. The Klan had a chapter in Inglewood as late as October 1931.
The New York World's exposé of the Ku Klux Klan brought national media to the operations and actions of the Ku Klux Klan beginning on September 6, 1921. The newspaper published a series of twenty one consecutive daily articles, edited by Herbert Bayard Swope, that discussed numerous aspects of Ku Klux Klan including rituals, recruitment methods, propaganda, and hypocrisies in logic. At least eighteen other newspapers nationwide picked up the coverage, which led to national discourse on the activities of the group. These publications included the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Boston Globe, Pittsburgh Sun, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland), New Orleans Times-Picayune, Galveston News, Houston Chronicle, Seattle Times, Milwaukee Journal, Minneapolis Journal, Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Toledo Blade, Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, Syracuse Herald, Columbus Enquirer-Sun and the Albany Knickerbocker Press. The New York Times ran ads for the article series to increase exposure, while other large papers like the Baltimore Sun quickly picked up the article series instead of advertising for The World. The Ku Klux Klan announced shortly afterward that it would take legal action against all the publications that ran the article series for libel, seeking total damages of over $10 million. Following the exposé, Klan membership significantly increased.
The Knights of the Flaming Circle was a militant organization founded in 1923 to fight the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan. They were part of an opposition that included politicians, labor leaders and immigrant groups. Membership was open to anyone who opposed the KKK and was "not a Protestant". They had significant support amongst various ethnic groups in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Bryce Bauer has written that, "Instead of only admitting white, native-born Protestants as the Klan did, the organization vowed to accept anyone who was anything other than that."
The Canadian branch of the Ku Klux Klan was an expansion of the second Ku Klux Klan established in the United States in 1915. It operated as a fraternity, with chapters established in parts of Canada throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The first registered provincial chapter was registered in Toronto in 1925 by two Americans and a Canadian. The organization was most successful in Saskatchewan, where it briefly influenced political activity and whose membership included a member of Parliament, Walter Davy Cowan.
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".
Ron Stallworth is an American retired police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in the late 1970s. He was the first African-American detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department.
Eric Earl Porterfield is an American politician and a Republican former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing District 27, which includes parts of Mercer and Raleigh counties. First elected in 2018, Porterfield is the second blind person ever to serve in the West Virginia legislature. Alongside being known for being a physically disabled politician, Porterfield is also well known for his unwavering opposition to rights for LGBT people, who he has compared to terrorists and the Ku Klux Klan. He is on video expressing that, should his daughter or son come out gay, he would “see if they knew how to swim”; implying he would drown them. In the June 2020 primary he was defeated in his bid for re-election, coming in last of Republican candidates running.
Howard Goodloe Sutton was an American newspaper editor, publisher, and owner. From 1964 to 2019, he published The Democrat-Reporter, a small weekly newspaper in Linden, Alabama. Sutton was widely celebrated in 1998 for publishing over four years a series of articles that exposed corruption in the Marengo County Sheriff's Office; he received awards and commendations and was suggested as a candidate for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2019, Sutton once again became the focus of national attention when he wrote and published an editorial suggesting the Ku Klux Klan be revived to carry out lynchings to "clean out" Washington, D.C. He already had a local reputation for other, similarly inflammatory racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, and homophobic editorials.
Kathryn Madlyn Ainsworth was an American Ku Klux Klan terrorist. She was killed by law enforcement in 1968 during her failed assassination attempt on a prominent Jewish Mississippian.
Minnie C. T. Love was an American physician and politician from Denver, Colorado. She was an active suffragist, a member of the Colorado House of Representatives, and a member of the Women of the Ku Klux Klan.
References
- 1 2 3 4 Capo, Julio (2017-11-28). "Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later". Time. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- 1 2 3 Capo, Julio (2017). Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940. UNC Press Books. ISBN 9781469635217.
- 1 2 "Boys Will be Boys: The Miami Ku Klux Klan in 1937". South Beach Magazine. 2008-02-11. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ↑ "100, 75, 50 Years Ago". New York Times. 2012-11-16. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- ↑ Shammas, Brittany (2019-03-12). "Five Moments in Miami's LGBTQ History, From 1937 to 2015". Miami New Times. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- ↑ Martinez, Alejandra (2019-03-12). "New Exhibit Chronicles The History Of Miami's LGBTQ Community". WLRN. Retrieved 2019-07-16.
- ↑ "Why a Forgotten KKK Raid on a Gay Club in Miami Still Matters 80 Years Later". TIME. 2017-11-28. Retrieved 2024-05-18.