 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2018) |
The Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights (originally the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights [1] ) was founded in 1933 [2] by Samuel Untermyer to enact an economic boycott against Nazi Germany.
A champion for Jewish rights, Samuel Untermyer was among the most outspoken critics of the Hitler regime, advocating an international boycott of Germany through the League of Nations. He led the league until his retirement in 1938, remaining involved in its activities until his death in 1940. Throughout the 1930s, allied with groups such as the American Federation of Labor, the league tried to persuade American businesses to stop purchasing merchandise from Germany, exposing the ones that continued selling Nazi-made goods in their bulletin. They also tried to stop Americans from visiting Germany, thereby stopping any money from coming in. Among its many boycotts were ones against the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and the Schmeling – Louis boxing match [3] in 1938. They also lobbied the United States government, asking it to investigate various things, including pro-Nazi propaganda activities in the U.S. by organizations such as Welt-Dienst/World Service founded by Ulrich Fleischhauer. The League also tried to educate the public through talks on radio and by distributing printed material. It also provided information to Martin Dies and his House Un-American Activities Committee.
The League, under the new leadership of James H. Sheldon, a former professor at Boston University, changed its mission to directly investigate right-wing propaganda groups. Among them were the Christian Front of Father Coughlin, the Christian Mobilizers of Joseph McWilliams and the American First of Gerald L. K. Smith. They had also begun to support the civil rights movement voicing their approval for the Fair Employment Practice Commission (FEPC) and various other anti-discrimination laws. In 1945 it filed a lawsuit against Columbia University to have its tax-exempt status revoked for discrimination against Jews. After World War Two the League also unsuccessfully tried to have the Nuremberg court prosecute the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for having aided Hitler during the war.
The League was able to successfully combat the resurgence of hate groups in the U.S. by infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. It was also instrumental in shutting down the Columbians, an Atlanta, Georgia-based group hate group, [4] by hiring Stetson Kennedy to infiltrate the group. [5] The league continued its investigation and exposure activities through the 1950s. Through the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, the league continued to maintain an office on 46th street in New York, but it served mostly as a repository, with information flowing in but minimal action being taken. The League terminated in 1975 with the death of its head, James H. Sheldon.
Shortly after Sheldon's death, the archives of the League were entrusted to the Columbia University Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Division where they are, today, accessible to scholars and researchers. [6]
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-wing terrorist, and hate groups. Their primary targets are African Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Catholics, as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, and abortion providers.
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 German American Bund, or the German American Federation, was a German-American Nazi organization which was established in 1936 as a successor to the Friends of New Germany. The organization chose its new name in order to emphasize its American credentials after the press accused it of being unpatriotic. The Bund was allowed to consist only of American citizens of German descent. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.
White Aryan Resistance (WAR) is a white supremacist and neo-Nazi organization in the United States which was founded and formerly led by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. It was based in Warsaw, Indiana, and it was also incorporated as a business. In 1993, the group expanded into Canada in what they dubbed operation Maple leaf.
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.
Samuel Untermyer was a prominent American lawyer and civic leader. He is also remembered for bequeathing his Yonkers, New York estate, now known as Untermyer Park, to the people of New York State.
Friends of New Germany, sometimes called Friends of the New Germany, was an organization founded in the United States by German immigrants to support Nazism and the Third Reich.
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.
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.
Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche. Frankhouser was reported by federal officials to have been arrested at least 142 times. In 2003 he told a reporter, "I'm accused of everything from the sinking of the Titanic to landing on the moon." He was convicted of federal crimes in at least three cases, including dealing in stolen explosives and obstruction of justice. Irwin Suall, of the Anti-Defamation League, called Frankhouser "a thread that runs through the history of American hate groups".
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 were paid 200 dollars per hour by the commission and 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.
The United League was an African-American social movement in Northern Mississippi established in 1978, during the height of Ku Klux Klan activity in America. The United League's president and founder, Alfred "Skip" Robinson, was moved to act against Klan activity and police brutality in the turbulent American South. Mr. Robinson was a brick mason by trade, but a charismatic preacher in practice. Through his leadership, the black communities of Northern Mississippi effectively tempered police beatings, organized citywide boycotts, prevented black land and property loss, urged armed defense among its members, and elected local blacks into political office.
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 original Klan's prescripts of 1867 and 1868, then revamped with William J. Simmons's Kloran of 1916. Subsequent Klans have made various modifications.
The National Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is a Klan faction that has been in existence since November 1963. In the sixties, the National Knights were the main competitors against Robert Shelton's United Klans of America.
The Ku Klux Klan is an organization that expanded operations into Canada, based on 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.
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.
Nazism in the Americas has existed since the 1930s and continues to exist today. The membership of the earliest groups reflected the sympathies of some German-Americans and German Latin-Americans toward Nazi Germany, embracing the spirit of Nazism in Europe and establishing it within the Americas. Throughout the inter-war period and the outbreak of World War II, American Nazi parties engaged in activities such as sporting Nazi propaganda, storming newspapers, spreading Nazi-sympathetic materials and infiltrating other non-political organizations.
The Anti-Nazi Council was a London-based organisation of the 1930s. Initially part of the left-wing anti-fascist movement, it gained political significance when allied to Winston Churchill, though at the time its influence was largely covert. Between around 1935 and 1937 it was a vehicle for Churchill's attempts to form a cross-party alliance against appeasement of the fascist dictatorships. The group behind it used the title Focus in Defence of Freedom and Peace, and variants, and is sometimes known as the Focus Group.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
