KKK's 1st targets were Republicans

WorldNetDaily.com ^ | 2007-10-25 | Bob Unruh

[RussP]

The original targets of the Ku Klux Klan were Republicans, both black and white, according to a new television program and book, which describe how the Democrats started the KKK and for decades harassed the GOP with lynchings and threats.

An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.

The documentation has been assembled by David Barton of Wallbuilders and published in his book "Setting the Record Straight: American History in Black & White," which reveals that not only did the Democrats work hand-in-glove with the Ku Klux Klan for generations, they started the KKK and endorsed its mayhem.

[Ditto]

Good grief, there have only been 20,000 books on this subject in the last 100 years. This article acts like its some new found revelation.

I talked to a young fellow (yes, he is a lefty) about this a few years ago and explained to him that the KKK was formed as the enforcement arm of the Democrat party in served in that role up into the 1960s. In fact, I told him that in the Reconstruction years, the KKK killed more white males (Republicans in the South) than blacks. He didn't believe me so show I showed him the history. It was a major disconnect for him because he had been taught that the KKK were somehow Republicans. He brought up David Duke and I told him the Republicans tossed his sorry ass out of the party and then I printed out Sheets Byrd's history for him and pointed out that he's never even been criticized by the Rats.

He used to initiate 'political' discussions with me (mostly anti-Bush rants) but after I showed him that what he had learned was simply not true, he pretty much steers clear now. I think his ego was so bruised by that last encounter that he does not want to experience it again.

[lowbridge]

Most of those folks switched over after the 60’s

Baloney. Most of them remained in the Democratic fold.

[RussP]

“I’m just going to have to operate on the idea that you didn’t actually read the article you posted.”

I read the entire article before I posted it. But you got me wondering if I forgot something, so I just read it again, from start to finish.

I could not find one hint of a suggestion that the KKK and the Republicans are now or ever were somehow in harmony. You either imagined it or you just made it up out of wholecloth.

If I am wrong, please quote the relevant section of the article for me. Otherwise, quit wasting my time and obfuscating the issue.

[RussP]

“The second Klan that was founded in 1915 and reached its peak of popularity in the early 1920s was at least as strong in Republican leaning Northern and Western states as it was in the South.”

And what is your evidence for that conclusion?

[Mamzelle]

re: The staggering level of political cognitive dissonance amongst my people is frightning.)))

I hear you. Lots of cognitive dissonance out there. Feminists who ignore Islam's abuse of women--Liberal Jews actively supporting anti-Israel candidacies--

I'm old enough to remember Jesse Jackson's early "Black is Beautiful" speech--how I admired him, at least for a little while. That speech still rings in my ears, and ought to have been as important as "I Have a Dream." Remember it? He mocked the condescension of white liberals, saying that if black children could jump higher and run faster while living under poverty and discrimination, then they could succeed in school and at life despite the disadvantages.

How soon that changed--now the Race Pimp is unrecognizable.

[Wallace T.]

Per Newsday, a Long Island newspaper, one out of every seven or eight Long Islanders belonged to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Police chiefs and pastors were open Klan members, an the terrorist group organized vigilante patrols against bootleggers with the consent of the local lawmen. (source: http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs725a,0,7485380.story)

The popularity of the Klan in then rural Long Island was not an isolated event. Pennsylvania had 200,000 Klansmen and Ohio 300,000 at the peak of the second Klan's strength (source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/peopleevents/e_klan.html). In Indiana, where one estimate claimed that as many as 25% of the native born white men in the state were Klansmen, both the governor and the mayor of Indianapolis were Klan sympathizers, per Wikipedia. While estimates of its membership at its peak vary from three million to eight million, there is no doubt that many of its members lived outside the Southern or Border states. There are rumors that President Warren Harding was a member, although there is no solid evidence proving such.

In any case, at least with respect to the second Ku Klux Klan, there is abundant evidence that Republican voters and elected officials in the Northern and Western states supported it, like it or not (and I don't).

[Ditto]

“The second Klan that was founded in 1915 and reached its peak of popularity in the early 1920s was at least as strong in Republican leaning Northern and Western states as it was in the South.”

That is BS too, and I have some 'family history' that demonstrates that is BS.

The second Klan got it's kick start from Woodrow Wilson's praise for the D.W. Griffth silent film, "Birth of a Nation" which glorified the reconstruction era Klan. What drew the Klan and the Northern Democrats at the time was the migration of millions of southerners, both blacks and whites, into northern cities to work in factories during WWI. Both the Klan and the Democrat party saw the opportunity for not only new recruits but as a way to break the hold that the Republicans had on many large midwestern cities since the Civil War by stroking resentments against the blacks moving into their cities. Much of their target audience were white southerners who also had moved north for the same jobs the blacks moved for but also working class whites who didn't want black competition.

The Klan started to hold large cross-burning rallies and I had an uncle who was a young teenager who attended one. According to my father who told me the story, his father, who was a rock ribbed Republican, found out about my uncle being there and not only smacked him around a little but forced him to make amends. My uncle was an excellent baseball player and my grandfather made him volunteer to coach an all black little league team. Turned out it was a great experience for him and he stayed at it for many years even into adulthood.

Bottom line, it wasn't Republicans who supported the Klan in the north. It was the Democrats doing what they have always done --- play the race card.

[prairiebreeze]

for AM read

[Wallace T.]

Many places of Ku Klux Klan strength in the North such as Long Island and rural Pennsylvania or in the West such as Oregon drew few Southerners as a result of the industrial growth in the 1920s. That growth, which took place after restrictive immigration rules were passed in 1920, largely took place in the Great Lakes region, cities like Akron, Detroit, and Gary.

The Klan supporters in the Northern and Western states were overwhelmingly descendants of British, German, and Dutch descendants, most of whom had lived in the North since colonial times. The ministers who supported the Klan in the Northern states were mostly members of Northern denominations, such as the Northern Presbyterians, the Northern Methodists, and the Reformed Church in America. In the Northeast, the Democratic Party had become dominated by white Catholics, especially Irish Americans, and the old Jacksonian Democrats of colonial origins in that region aligned with the GOP in the late 19th Century. In much of the North, except for the Scandinavian settled areas of the Upper Midwest and the Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina settled areas in the southern one third of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, most white, native born Protestants voted Republican by 1900. Except for the elections of 1912 and 1964, the GOP carried both Nassau and Suffolk Counties (the two Long Island counties not in New York City) in presidential elections from 1900 to 1988. From 1864 until the 1930s, Pennsylvania was almost as one sidedly Republican as the Deep South was Democrat, due to the power of the political machine first established in the 1860s by Simon Cameron. Yet the Klan thrived in both Long Island and Pennsylvania, as well as in the rural Midwest, including those areas settled from New York, Pennsylvania, and New England.

There is no historical evidence to support your contention that Northern Republicans entirely shunned the Klan in the 1920s. Many obviously did, as you indicated from your anecdote. However, it is also true that Southern Democrats opposed the Klan. In Texas, for instance, the hooded order was defeated by Democrats such as Dan Moody and Ma Ferguson. The organization imploded in the mid 1920s due to its massive corruption and increased public revulsion against its violent, terroristic tactics. In that era, BTW, Catholics, Jews, and the foreign born, not blacks, were the main targets of Klan violence.

There is no need to fabricate or rewrite history to hide Republican blemishes. What happened in the past cannot be changed; we are responsible for our time and not the days of Reconstruction or the Roaring '20s.

[Bender2]

Re: Every member of the KKK who ever served in the US Congress was a Democrat.

This just in... Kent Brockman reporting--

Senator Robert Byrd... had called this a damn lie!

Film... at 11!

[stainlessbanner]

Get lost flamer

[RussP]

You complain that a historian “lives in the past,” and you expect to be taken seriously?

Debating with people like you is like shooting fish in a barrel.

[stainlessbanner]

You’re not worth the time, buddy.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Catholics were their targets too.

[BnBlFlag]

Amen, Bro!

[Perfesser]

OK, but, one should not be fooled into believing that it is a sincere support. It is merely another tactic to accomplish the same thing. Control of the slaves and their votes.

[RussP]

You complain when a historian brings up the history of the close relationship between the early KKK and the Democratic Party.

That’s the same Democratic Party that wants to force corporations today to “apologize” for their history of racism!

Surely you aren’t naive enough to think that the Democrats and the mainstream media wouldn’t exploit it to the hilt if the Republicans had started the KKK.

If you see a need to cover up the historical sins of the Democratic Party, what the hell are you doing on FR anyway? Shouldn’t you be over at MoveOn or something?

[RussP]

Oh, wait. I just realized that you are probably a Southerner who just wants to erase subject of slavery. You poor guy. Please forgive me for my insensitivity!

[johnthebaptistmoore]

And Senator Byrd still does target Republicans today.

[RussP]

And what kills me about Bird is that his background with the KKK is forgiven by the Democrats as a “youthful indiscretion.” Wasn’t he a high-ranking member of the KKK at around the age of 40 or something? That’s some “youthful indiscretion”!

If a Republican Senator had a similar background, we would never hear the end of it from the Democrats and the mainstream media, of course. And just like the Foley scandal, it would taint the entire Republican Party.