The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Catholics, and Native Americans as well as immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Muslims, abortion providers and atheists.
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.
Zarephath is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) and located in Franklin Township, in Somerset County, New Jersey, United States, about 15 mi (24 km) north of Princeton. As of the 2010 United States Census, Zarephath's population was 37.
Alma Bridwell White was the founder and a bishop of the Pillar of Fire Church. In 1918, she became the first woman bishop of Pillar of Fire in the United States. She was a proponent of feminism. She also associated herself with the Ku Klux Klan and was involved in anti-Catholicism, antisemitism, anti-Pentecostalism, racism, and hostility to immigrants. By the time of her death at age 84, she had expanded the sect to "4,000 followers, 61 churches, seven schools, ten periodicals and two broadcasting stations."
The Westminster Castle, also locally known as "The Pillar of Fire" is a historic landmark located in Westminster, Colorado, northwest of Denver near the intersection of 83rd and Federal. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Westminster University.
Arthur Kent White was a bishop, and the general superintendent of the Pillar of Fire Church in Zarephath, New Jersey, and the president of Belleview College. The church was started by his mother, Alma Bridwell White, in Denver, Colorado.
Ray Bridwell White was the son of Alma White, the leader of the Pillar of Fire Church in Zarephath, New Jersey. He was nominated to be a Bishop shortly after his mother died in 1946, but was too ill to attend the ordination ceremony and died shortly thereafter.
The Pillar of Fire International, also known as the Pillar of Fire Church, is a Methodist Christian denomination with headquarters in Zarephath, New Jersey. The Pillar of Fire Church affirms the Methodist Articles of Religion and as of 1988, had 76 congregations around the world, including the United States, as well as "Great Britain, India, Liberia, Malawi, Nigeria, the Philippines, Spain, and former Yugoslavia."
Alma White College was a Bible college in Zarephath, New Jersey from 1921 to 1978. It was an institution of the Pillar of Fire Church. The academic institution is now succeeded by Pillar College.
Arlene Hart White Lawrence was a bishop and the third president and general superintendent of the Pillar of Fire Church, a Protestant denomination which in 1966 operated church congregations, missionary homes, radio stations, publishing operations, farms, schools and colleges from 54 properties around the world. The denomination was founded in Denver, Colorado, by her grandmother, Alma Bridwell White, the first woman to become a bishop in the US. She believed that "activities such as gambling and dancing take time from the really important activities of life". She was the president of all three church radio stations, KPOF in Westminster, Colorado; WAWZ in the Zarephath section of Franklin Township, Somerset County, New Jersey ; and WAKW in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Women of the Ku Klux Klan (WKKK), also known as Women's Ku Klux Klan, and Ladies of the Invisible Empire, held to many of the same political and social ideas of the KKK but functioned as a separate branch of the national organization with their own actions and ideas. While most women focused on the moral, civic, and educational agendas of the Klan, they also had considerable involvement in issues of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and religion. The women of the WKKK fought for educational and social reforms like other Progressive reformers but with extreme racism and intolerance. Particularly prominent in the 1920s, the WKKK existed in every state, but their strongest chapters were in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Arkansas. White, native-born, Protestant women over age 18 were allowed to join the Klan. Women of the Klan differed from Klansmen primarily in their political agenda to incorporate racism, nationalism, traditional morality, and religious intolerance into everyday life through mostly non-violent tactics.
Arthur Hornbui Bell was an attorney and the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey.
Heroes of the Fiery Cross is a book in praise of the Ku Klux Klan, published in 1928 by Protestant Bishop Alma Bridwell White, in which she "sounds the alarm about imagined threats to Protestant Americans from Catholics and Jews", according to author Peter Knight. In the book she asks rhetorically, "Who are the enemies of the Klan? They are the bootleggers, law-breakers, corrupt politicians, weak-kneed Protestant church members, white slavers, toe-kissers, wafer-worshippers, and every spineless character who takes the path of least resistance." She also argues that Catholics are removing the Bible from public schools. Another topic is her anti-Catholic stance towards the United States presidential election of 1928, in which Catholic Al Smith was running for president.
The Good Citizen was a sixteen-page monthly political periodical edited by Bishop Alma White and illustrated by Reverend Branford Clarke. The Good Citizen was published from 1913 until 1933 by the Pillar of Fire Church at their headquarters in Zarephath, New Jersey in the United States. White used the publication to expose "political Romanism in its efforts to gain the ascendancy in the U.S."
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.
Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty was a book published by the Pillar of Fire Church in 1926 by Bishop Alma Bridwell White and illustrated by Branford Clarke. She claims that the Founding Fathers of the United States were members of the Ku Klux Klan, and that Paul Revere made his legendary ride in Klan hood and robes. She said: "Jews are everywhere a separate and distinct people, living apart from the great Gentile masses ... they are not home builders or tillers of the soil." Her book became popular during the United States presidential election of 1928 when Al Smith was a candidate.
Branford Edward Clarke was an Evangelical preacher, poet and artist who promoted the Ku Klux Klan through his art which was drawn for the Pillar of Fire Church and their publications.
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.
Guardians of Liberty is a three volume set of books published in 1943 by Bishop Alma Bridwell White, author of over 35 books and founder of the Pillar of Fire Church. Guardians of Liberty is primarily devoted to summarizing White's vehement anti-Catholicism under the guise of patriotism. White also defends her historical support of and association with the Ku Klux Klan while significantly but not completely distancing herself from the Klan. Each of the three volumes corresponds to one of the three books White published in the 1920s promoting the Ku Klux Klan and her political views which in addition to anti-Catholicism also included nativism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy. In Guardians of Liberty, White removed most, but not all of the direct references to the Klan that had existed in her three 1920s books, both in the text and in the illustrations. In Volumes I and II, she removed most of the nativist, anti-Semitic and white supremacist ideology that had appeared in her predecessor books. However, in Guardians Volume III, she did retain edited versions of chapters promoting nativism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy.
Known as the Crann Tara in Gaelic, the burning cross represented a signal fire, a method of communication among the clans and the rallying symbol of ancient Scotland and of the Highlanders in times of war.
