Leaders of the Ku Klux Klan

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The national leader of the Ku Klux Klan is called either a Grand Wizard or an Imperial Wizard, depending on which KKK organization is being described.

Contents

Second Ku Klux Klan

Other Ku Klux Klan movements

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ku Klux Klan</span> American white supremacist terrorist hate group

The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian extremist, white supremacist, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction in the devastated South. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist group. The group contains several organizations structured as a secret society, which have frequently resorted to terrorism, violence and acts of intimidation to impose their criteria and oppress their victims, most notably African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. There have been three distinct iterations with various other targets relative to time and place.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eldon Edwards</span> American Ku Klux Klan member (1909–1960)

Eldon Lee Edwards was an American Ku Klux Klan leader.

The grand wizard is the national leader of Ku Klux Klan organizations in the United States and abroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Joseph Simmons</span> Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (1880–1945)

William Joseph Simmons was an American preacher and fraternal organizer who founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from Thanksgiving evening 1915 until being ousted in 1922 by Hiram Wesley Evans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James A. Colescott</span> American Ku Klux Klan member

James Arnold Colescott was an American white supremacist who was Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Under financial pressure from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for back taxes, he disbanded the second wave of the original Ku Klux Klan in 1944.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hiram Wesley Evans</span> Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard (1881–1966)

Hiram Wesley Evans was an American dentist and political activist who served as the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, an American white supremacist group, from 1922 to his resignation in 1939.

Samuel Holloway Bowers Jr. was an American white supremacist who co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Previously, he was a Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Bowers was responsible for instigating and planning the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner by members of his Klan chapter near Philadelphia, Mississippi, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of being involved in the 1967–1968 bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian. He died in prison at the age of 82.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnny Lee Clary</span> American preacher and professional wrestler

Johnny Lee Clary was an American former professional wrestler, white supremacist, and later preacher. Clary served as a Ku Klux Klan leader before he became a Pentecostal Christian, traveling around the world preaching the gospel and teaching against racism and hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis, and the Aryan Nations. Clary, under the stage name Johnny Angel, also wrestled in the National Wrestling Federation (NWF) during the 1980s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan</span> American Ku Klux Klan organization

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Shelton (Ku Klux Klan)</span> American Ku Klux Klan member (1929–2003)

Robert Marvin Shelton was an American salesman and printer who became notorious for being the Imperial Wizard of the United Klans of America (UKA), a Ku Klux Klan group, active from the early 1960s until 1987.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arthur Hornbui Bell</span>

Arthur Hornbui Bell was an attorney and the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indiana Klan</span> Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan

The Indiana Klan was the state of Indiana branch of the Ku Klux Klan, a secret society in the United States that organized in 1915 to promote ideas of racial superiority and affect public affairs on issues of Prohibition, education, political corruption, and morality. Like the rest of the KKK, it was strongly white supremacist against African Americans, Chinese Americans, and also Catholics and Jews, whose faiths were commonly associated with Irish, Italian, Balkan, and Slavic immigrants and their descendants. In Indiana, the Klan did not tend to practice overt violence but used intimidation in certain cases, whereas nationally the organization practiced illegal acts against minority ethnic and religious groups.

Virgil Lee Griffin was a leader of a Ku Klux Klan chapter in North Carolina who was involved in the November 3, 1979, Greensboro massacre, a violent clash by the KKK and American Nazi Party with labor organizers and activists from the Communist Workers Party at a legal march in the county seat of Guilford County. It resulted in the deaths of five marchers, including a woman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Samuel Green (Klansman)</span> American Ku Klux Klan member (1889–1949)

Samuel Green was a Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1940s, organizing its third and final reformation in 1946.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey</span>

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 recruitment of members is the responsibility of 'Kleagles', as defined by "Ku Klux Klan: An Encyclopedia". They are organizers or recruiters, "appointed by an imperial wizard or his imperial representative to 'sex' the KKK among non-members". These members received a portion of each new member's invitation fee. Recruitment of new KKK members entailed framing economic, political, and social structural changes in favour of and in line with KKK goals. These goals promoted "100 per cent Americanism" and benefits for white native-born Protestants. Informal ways Klansmen recruited members included "with eligible co-workers and personal friends and try to enlist them". Protestant teachers were also targeted for Klan membership.

Samuel W. Roper was an American law enforcement official and Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">U.S. Klans</span> Ku Klux Klan organization

The U.S. Klans, officially, the U.S. Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc. was the dominant Ku Klux Klan in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The death of its leader in 1960, along with increased factionalism, splits and competition from other groups led to its decline by the mid-to-late 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary</span>

Ku Klux Klan (KKK) nomenclature has evolved over the order's nearly 160 years of existence. The titles and designations were first laid out in the 1920s Kloran, setting out KKK terms and traditions. Like many KKK terms, this is a portmanteau term, formed from Klan and Koran.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roy Elonzo Davis</span> American Ku Klux Klan member (1890–1966)

Roy Elonzo Davis was an American preacher, white supremacist, and con artist who co-founded the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan in 1915. Davis was Second Degree of the KKK under William J. Simmons and later became National Imperial Wizard (leader) of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. He worked closely with Simmons, and was a co-author of the 1921 KKK constitution, bylaws and rituals. Davis spent decades as a KKK recruiter, at one point being named "Royal Ambassador" and an "Official Spokesperson" of the KKK by Simmons. Davis and Simmons were both expelled from the KKK in 1923 by Hiram Wesley Evans, who had ousted Simmons as leader. Simmons started the Knights of the Flaming Sword branch of the KKK and with Davis's help retained the loyalty of many KKK members. Davis was later reappointed second in command of the national KKK organization by Imperial Wizard Eldon Edwards, a position he held until being elected national leader by 1959.

References

  1. Ku Klux Klan -- Extremism in America Archived 2006-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
  2. Samuel Green Archived 2006-06-15 at the Wayback Machine
  3. "Key Leader Profile: Berry, Jeff". www.tkb.org. Archived from the original on 2006-10-02. Retrieved 2006-08-09.
  4. "CNN - Former KKK leader convicted of 1966 murder - August 21, 1998". www.cnn.com.
  5. Samuel Bowers Bio Archived 2010-11-25 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Martin, Douglas (17 February 2009). "Virgil Lee Griffin, Klan Leader, Dies at 64". The New York Times.
  7. Cunningham, David. Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan. Massachusetts: Oxford Scholarship Online, 2012. Print.