Fact Checkers Cover for Democratic Party’s Sordid History With the Ku Klux Klan

Just Facts Daily ^ | July 29, 2022 | Anna Agresti and James D. Agresti

[Heartlander]

Fact Checkers Cover for Democratic Party’s Sordid History With the Ku Klux Klan

During a June 7th Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on white supremacy and domestic terrorism, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz stated that:

• the Ku Klux Klan “was formed by elected Democrats.”
• Klan “leadership was almost entirely elected Democrats.”
• today’s Democrats “try very hard to erase the history” of their party’s involvement with the Klan.
• today’s Democrats “politicize acts of violence.”

Conversely, “fact checkers” like PolitiFact and the Associated Press have repeatedly argued that the Democratic Party did not found the Klan, played a limited role in it, and that racist southerners fled to the Republican Party after 1964.

In reality, Cruz’s statements are a much closer reflection of the facts.

Origins & Leadership

The AP and PolitiFact correctly state that the Klan was started by a group of Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee as a non-violent, grassroots social club without political motivations.

What the AP and PolitiFact fail to acknowledge is that the Klan’s 1865–66 founding as a social club does not mark the beginning of the Klan as it is known today. Per the 1971 academic book White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, the “real beginning” of the “Ku Klux conspiracy” occurred at an 1867 meeting in Nashville that consolidated the Klan.

As explained by an 1884 book written by a founding member of the Klan, this meeting bound the “isolated dens together” with “unity of purpose and concert of action” to supposedly reign in rogue Klansmen that had turned violent toward black people just a year after the group’s founding. However, White Terror points out that if Klan leaders really wanted to eliminate violence, they would have disbanded altogether. Instead, they sought “tighter organization” and recruited leaders “of far greater prestige and authority whose influence extended throughout the state”—primarily ex-Confederate generals and Democratic politicians.

An investigation published by the Illinois General Assembly in 1976 explains that after the Klan “transformed into a political organization,” violence became more widespread under Democrat leadership. The men that guided the Klan’s reorganization and subsequent growth included:

• Nathan Bedford Forrest—first Grand Wizard of the Klan and a Democratic Memphis alderman.
• John W. Morton—Grand Cyclops of the Nashville Klan and a Democrat who became the Tennessee Secretary of State.
• John B. Gordon—head of the Georgia Klan and a Democratic governor and senator.
• George G. Dibrell—Deputy Grand Titan of the Klan and a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.
• Dudley M. DuBose—Grand Titan of the Klan’s Fifth Congressional District and a Democratic congressman from Georgia.
• Fredrick N. Strudwick—Klan leader in North Carolina and a Democratic state representative.
• George W. Gordon—Klan leader and a Democratic congressman from Tennessee.
• John C. Brown—“probable leader” of the Klan and a Democratic governor of Tennessee.
• Edmund Pettus—Grand Dragon of the Alabama Klan and a Democratic senator from Alabama.

However, the Illinois investigation also found that “central control over the actions of the various local Klan groups did not really exist,” and some of the figureheads above began “dropping out” to distance themselves from local terrorism. For example, Nathan Bedford Forest ordered the Klan disbanded in 1869 because he claimed a “few disobedient and bad men” had infiltrated the Klan, disgracing its “good name and honorable reputation.”

On the other hand, some prominent Democrats remained loyal to the Klan’s violent activities. For example, Fredrick Strudwick led a Klan attempt to assassinate a Republican state senator and was later elected as a Democrat to the North Carolina state legislature.

Likewise, the Red Shirts—a “paramilitary extension” of the Democratic Party and essentially the “Klan in a different uniform”—attacked a black militia in 1867 for refusing to surrender their guns to the leader of another militia that “had no legal right” to the weaponry. One participating Red Shirt leader named “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman became the Democratic Governor of South Carolina and a U.S. Senator. He recalled what became known as the Hamburg Massacre (in Edgefield county) with pride:

• White men in Edgefield planned “to seize upon the first opportunity” to “provoke a riot and teach the Negroes a lesson” because they believed that “nothing but bloodshed and a good deal of it” could succeed in “redeeming the state from negro and carpet bag rule.”
• The goal “of our visit to Hamburg was to strike terror,” and “seven dead negros lying stark and stiff, certainly had its effect.”
• The massacred black people were “offered up as a sacrifice to the fanatical teachings and fiendish hate of those who sought to substitute the rule of the African for that of the Caucasian in South Carolina.”

The AP reports that “many” Democrats joined the Klan, and PolitiFact reports “some” did and that Nathan Forest spoke at a Democratic National Convention, but this is the extent of their admissions of Democrats’ membership in the Klan.

Media Whitewashing

Even though some individual Democrats denounced the violence of the Klan, Democratic politicians and their media allies consistently covered up for it.

A 2011 paper in The Journal of Southern History explains that Democratic newspapers published “blanket denials” of the Klan’s existence “during and after its most active period of violence.” This is exemplified by the New York Tribune’s criticism of Democratic papers in 1868 for dismissing the Klan as a “mythical maggot of distempered Republican brains.” Democratic politicians followed suit, including:

• Democratic Governor Robert Lindsay, who testified before Congress in 1871 that “reported outrages by Ku-Klux or disguised persons had ceased for the last two years” in Alabama.
• former Democratic Governor John Stevenson who claimed in 1871 that there was “no evidence” of “any secret political organization” in Kentucky.

Such denials were pervasive throughout the Democratic Party and media. As documented by White Terror:

• “Most Democrats asserted that no regular or continuing Ku Klux organization existed in their counties, or in the state,” and they “denied even more vehemently that the disguised bands were politically motivated.”
• “Few Democrats were willing to admit the Klan’s political character and purpose.”
• “The Democratic press in Louisiana played its familiar role as Klan apologist.”
• “Democratic newspapers continued to ignore violence more than they condemned it.”
• The “only native whites who stood out in significant numbers against the Klan” were Republicans.

In 1871, a Congressional committee exposed the Klan’s mass terror and called for federal intervention in the South. Congressional Democrats pushed back, issuing their own report which stated that:

• it is “folly and madness” to claim that “any country can prosper where the Anglo-Saxon is made politically subordinate to the African.”
• government cannot “long exist ‘half black and half white.’ ”
• the disguised men perpetrating violence in the South do not “have any general organization, or any political significance” and their conduct is not “indorsed by any respectable number” of white people.

“Terrorist Arm of the Democratic Party”

In direct contrast to the claims of Democratic politicians and the media that the Klan had no “political significance,” Klansmen used violence and intimidation to serve the interests of the Democratic party.

For example, a black resident of Alabama named Robert Fullerlove testified before Congress (along with other Klan victims) that Klansmen interrogated black people about their political beliefs and promised to leave them alone if they “would come over to the democratic side.”

The Klan also made frequent death threats to Republican speakers and officials. One Republican state official testified that the “sheriff and clerk, to save their lives, have declared themselves democrats.”

One Democrat from South Carolina testified that members of the Democrat Party in Abbeville County:

• were organized into clubs which appointed secret “committees.”
• ordered these committees to seize and destroy Republican ballots by force prior to the election.
• prevented about four hundred blacks from voting Republican at the Greenwood polling precinct.
• generally understood that Republican speakers should be shot, killed, or stopped from speaking.
• were “nearly all” part of the Ku Klux Klan.

White Terror—which contains over 1,000 footnotes—summarizes the Democratic Party’s involvement with the Klan as follows:

• “The Klan became in effect a terrorist arm of the Democratic party, whether the party leaders as a whole liked it or not.”
• “Nearly all members” viewed the Klan “as a secret political society in behalf of the Democratic party.”
• The “Klan itself was universally regarded as a Democratic political device.”
• Some activities were “obviously and almost exclusively political,” and the Klan “systematically” terrorized “Republicans of both races.”

PolitiFact quotes one historian who stated that some Klans were a “strong arm” for local elected Democrats, and the AP’s choice historian reports that the Klan did not “have ideological motives until later.” Once again, these gentle nods to reality downplay the full extent of the Klan’s political activities.

Not the Party of Today

PolitiFact also uses an unsupported claim from a history professor to spread the common canard that racist southerners fled “into the Republican party” after the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed. This claim is belied by the facts that:

• 80% of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as compared to only 65% of Democrats, giving racist Democrats no reason to switch parties.
• 20 of the 21 Democrats who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 remained in the Democratic Party for their entire congressional careers.
• the main demographic of southerners who supported segregation, namely whites who lived in poor areas with large black populations, continued to vote for Democrats at about the same rates.
• Republicans won 44% of Southern electoral votes in 1956, about the same as the 45% they won in 1968 after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
• the portion of white Southerners who said they would be willing to vote for a black president increased from 8% in 1958 to 95% in 1999.

The long-term shift of Southern voters to the Republican Party actually correlates with massive declines in racism, growing prosperity, Democratic opposition to gun rights, and Democratic support of abortion up to birth.

PolitiFact emphasizes that “context matters” because the “anti-black Democratic Party” of yesterday is not the party of today. Yet, Senator Cruz is correct that modern Democrats are still sowing racial divisions for political gain, such as:

• politicizing the death of Trayvon Martin.
• politicizing the death of Michael Brown.
• politicizing the death of George Floyd.
• falsely claiming that black people suffer disproportionately from police brutality.

Conclusion

PolitiFact concludes its article by stating that “while some Democrats supported the KKK, there’s no evidence the group was founded by their political party,” and the AP briefly acknowledges that the Klan took on a “political tone.” These are gross understatements in light of the wide-ranging facts above, which are accurately summarized by Senator Cruz.

By fixating on the point that the Democratic Party did not create the club that first called itself the “Ku Klux Klan,” these so-called fact checkers distract readers from the facts that:

• influential Democrats established and expanded the “real” Klan.
• the Klan was “in effect a terrorist arm of the Democratic party” and used violence to stop people from voting Republican.
• Democrats and newspapers repeatedly downplayed and denied the existence and brutality of the Klan.
• modern Democrats continue to exploit interracial violence for political purposes.

[PIF]

I believe I’m correct in saying that whatever the number of blacks attacked by the Klan, it was far less than the number of Republicans attacked.

[consult]

Great summary. The truth hurts as much as the donkeypox.

[Pikachu_Dad]

Hmmm, since all Blacks were Republicans at the time... Then yes, that would be correct.

[T.B. Yoits]

From the article: Fact checkers cover for the Democrat Party’s sordid history with the Ku Klux Klan?

The Democrat Party IS the Ku Klux Klan.

[Savage Beast]

"Fact checkers" be damned! The Ku Klux Klan was and still is the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party. The mainstream news media is its propaganda machine. Federal agencies are its secret police.

The Democrat Party is and has always been the Party of Hate, Violence, and Evil.

[PIF]

Not true - there were many more white Republicans than black ones - more whites were hung and beaten than blacks - whites were the number one target of the Klan because they could actually push back against the Klan. The Republican party was founded by whites in Wisconsin.

[Steely Tom]

Here are some comments that were offered by other FReepers when I asked about the "parties switching excuse" 26 days ago:

from yefragetuwrabrumuy:

They’ll mention the “Dixiecrats”, suggesting that they became Republicans, but it’s not true. Only *one* of them, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican. The rest of them returned to the Democrats until their dying day.

from Reddy:

AFAIK, this supposedly is being taught as having occurred during reconstruction, so when anyone mentions this ridiculous lie, I say, “Please explain Robert KKK Byrd, who was a DEMOCRAT US Senator from 1959 to 2010. He was the Exalted Cyclops of the WV Ku Klux Klan in the 40’s. So when did this “switch” occur??”

SMH

from far sider:

Wikipedia used to say the Dem party was founded by Jackson and Van Buren to preserve slavery but I can’t find it anymore so it must have been “cleaned up.” Can anyone give me a source that says that?

SMH

from E. Pluribus Unum:

Here is how I shut down that lie:

"Labor unions are the Democrat Party's most important constituency."

"When did labor unions "switch" from Republican to Democrat?"

SMH

from Betty Jane:

I always start with, ‘you don’t believe that BS, do you? The dems have always been bigoted: slavery, Chinese Exclusion Act, Irish need not apply, Japanese internment, Blaine Amendments against Catholics, Jews prohibited, Jim Crow laws, voted against Civil Rights Act. The only thing that ever changes for dems is the target of their hatred. Now it’s whites, straights, Christians, and males. They always use identity to divide people.’

from Nomad577:

I mean if we are being honest here, the demographics did switch sides around the 60s and 70s, and it’s kind of a “gotcha” comment to call the Democratic party KKK even though they were but it’s still funny to do

Republicans were historically the “rich city man’s” party while Democrats were “poor working class”, which included the rural working class whites in the South. But Dems started pandering to minorities in the 60s and Reps focused to grab that lost “southern poor white” demographic. Nixon’s “southern strategy”, and George Wallace and the Dixiecrats breaking away from the Dem party etc., a pivotal moment when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and Barry Goldwater opposed it. All of that

Heres a really good video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8VOM8ET1WU

from FreedomPoster:

History professor Carol Swain talks about it some here:

Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican? https://youtu.be/UiprVX4os2Y

from fuzzylogic:

I was taught this in the late 80’s.

It really makes no sense though at all. Both parties would have to AGREE they’ve switched, which isn’t the case to my understanding. It seems to be a CLAIM made by the D’s. That all the Dixiecrats (racists) went to the Republican party, which seems to have been a ruse as they eventually returned to the D’s. ...all so the D’s can claim ‘the switch’. But the R’s have never agreed to this as far as I can tell. I can’t see a switch in POLICIES either.

It seems it was just a big lie, of course taught by the media and public schools, so the D’s could run away from their racist past.

The biggest detractor from this claim, imo, is that Robert KKK Byrd was a D and was Hillary’s self declared mentor. How does that reconcile??? I think Dinesh D’Souza documented much of this in a book.

https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/dsouza/which-party-opposed-civil-rights/

from TBP:

We can start by pointing out the lifelong racist history of the Dhimmicraps’ “moderate” cult leader “president.”

from higgmeister:

To me, the obvious question is "When did this momentous political switcheroo occur? What was the date of the switch?"

Someone here may have a better response than that one, which is kind of based on Calculus (a function must be continuous and differentiable everywhere, that stuff).

The Myth that the parties swapped sides was started by Democrats trying to cover up their racist history. Of the 20 Southern Democrat Senators that voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, only one switched parties, Sen. Strom Thurmond.

Sen. Strom Thurmond did move to the Republican Party in 1964 but that was because he was angry at the Democrat leadership, not because the Republican Party suddenly embraced his racism. All of the other Democrats stayed in the House or Senate until they retired or were defeated by other Democrats in elections.

The no vote in the Senate consisted of 78% Democrats. Look it up for yourself. That is what I did. You can Google it. Google The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965, find the list of the "Yea and Nay" votes and then look at the dates the Southern Democrats served in Congress. I looked at the Congressional record of all of the racist Democrats and found that they all had a long record within their party and never did anything but attempt to hide their racist leopard spots behind lies.

In every vote in both legislative chambers, a larger percentage of Republicans voted Yea for Civil Rights, than Democrats.

Democrats lie and say the Parties switched with the so called "Southern Strategy." Let's remember the late Robert C. Byrd was a lifelong Democrat, who was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, he rose to the title of "Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops" of his local KKK chapter before becoming the Democrat Party's leader in the Senate. Senator Byrd used the "N" word in a TV interview in 2001 at the same time he said that racial problems were behind us and the only problem was that we keep talking about it too much.

"And as I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent towards justice, Like the Constitution he tucked in his pocket, like our nation itself, Robert Byrd possessed that quintessential American quality, and that is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, a capacity to be made more perfect." - Barack Obama Eulogizing KKK leader Democrat Robert Byrd

Bill Clinton's mentor was the heinously racist Sen. William Fulbright. President Bill Clinton eulogizing his former mentor and friend, called Senator Fulbright a lifelong student and teacher and credited him with making the world a better place. Fulbright was a Democrat Congressman, a Senator, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and had the distinction along with the majority of his Democrat colleagues in the Senate for filibustering against the landmark Civil Right Act of 1964 and voted against it. He opposed the 1965 Voting Rights Act and in 1968 he voted against the Fair Housing Act. Bill Clinton was an intern and then a clerk in the office of Senator Fulbright from 1964 to 1967 while Senator Fulbright was voting against Black Freedom.

And Al Gore's father, Sen. Al Gore Sr. was the same sort of ugly racist that was for segregation, filibustered and voted against The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

So much for your ideology shift between parties! It never happened. Democrat apologists and revisionists lie!

You have to ask yourself why is the Democratic Party not labeled a hate group? Democrats were the slaveholders before the Civil War; they founded the KKK during Reconstruction to retain their power and they imposed poll taxes and literacy tests to prevent blacks from voting. Remember all the Confederate Statues being pulled down were put there by Democrats to honor Democrats. That is Democrats still trying to hide their own racist past. Not one single Confederate was a Republican. Not one Republican was a slave owner.

To this day Democrats continue to oppose school choice vouchers that would allow minority children to escape the failing inner city public schools. The first thing the Obama administration did when taking office was to repeal the vouchers for Washington, DC poor and minority school children, who had been using public school money vouchers to pay for private school tuition. Gun Control is used by Democrats in the big cities to put Black men into prison, who only want to defend themselves in crime filled streets. To me, this history and these positions of the Democratic Party are the very essence of a hate group.

Watch this video from Carol Swain, Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University titled Why Did the Democratic South Become Republican?:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiprVX4os2Y

Read this article from the National Review by Mona Charen. The political parties never "switched", that's a lie:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/386257/myth-republican-racism-mona-charen

Dinesh D'Souza Debunks the Myth of the "Switch" between Republicans and Democrat Party

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol7OMGBDMao&feature=youtu.be

[Steely Tom]

Here's a link to the FR thread on which that discussion took place:

Republican Uses AR-15 to Confront 'Angry Democrats in KKK Hoods' in Campaign Ad.

[lizma2]

BKMK

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I just ask them “When did labor unions switch from Republican to Democrat?”

[Steely Tom]

I included you in my list. You’re the fourth quote down.

[FreedomPoster]

Great summary post! Glad to have helped a small bit. Bookmarking.

[Socon-Econ]

Southern Democrats’ past support for the Klan is a loser issue for Republicans. Republicans today need to explain how Democrats’ discriminstory racial policies TODAY are harming both whites and blacks.

[GOPJ]

... racist southerners fled to the Republican Party after 1964.

I lived in the Jim Crow South... the above comment's a deception.

Republicans moving South prior to 1064 realized their vote was worthless in the South WAS ONE PARTY REGION. Only democrats were elected - the democrat primary WAS the election.

So, if you wanted to vote against the Klan dude running you had to be registered as a democrat. Republicans never won.

After 1964 millions of 'snowbirds' who had moved to the South changed their registration back to Republican. That included my parents who had been born in the North. My grandfather was a Republican Judge in Illinois - and my mother hated having to register 'democrat' in order for her vote to count. As soon as the first 'Republican to win since the Civil War' had won, she switched back to Republican. So did my Dad.

As far as real racists went (dyed in the wool democrats)- those in power who ran the White Citizens Councils and Klan and racists newspapers and cities - they STAYED Democrat.

There were two exceptions - one was Lestor Maddox who switched parties... and one other person who I've forgotten. Both made newspaper coverage because it was so unusual for a democrat official to become Republican...

George Wallace (D)(who stood in the school house door to stop black children from entering) later ran as an independent. The rest of the powerful racists who ran the South stayed democrat. Most went from 'blacks can do no right - to blacks can do no wrong' in less than ten years. Check out the names of Senators, House members Governors and racist Newspaper Editors and Publishers if you have doubt. The historical record is still intact. The democrat power/racist 'elite' NEVER left the democrat party.

Oh, and MLK during his greatest and most important years was a Republican. And a minister. Later - when the hard battles were won, he became a somewhat compromised Democrat.

[Steely Tom]

Thank you for that addition to the record, and for your first-person testimony.

[Savage Beast]

The Democrat Party is the Party of Racism! Always has been, is now, always will be! The sooner that evil organization is kicked into the garbage dump of history the better. It’s America’s version of the Nazi Party.

[Betty Jane]

Southern Democrats’ past support for the Klan is a loser issue for Republicans. Republicans today need to explain how Democrats’ discriminstory racial policies TODAY are harming both whites and blacks.

It's not loser issue if put into the dem history of dividing people into to separate categories, then hating on a group of people. Great videos could be made using their hate filled and violent history of their supporters. Blame them for today's church burnings and vandalism, violence against whites, Republicans. And tie it all into the history of the democrat party as a hate group.

[TBP]

Only *one* of them, Strom Thurmond, became a Republican.

Because the Democrats stripped him of his seniority. The Republicans restored it.

[TBP]

the same sort of ugly racist that was for segregation

Like the people today who believe in separate events, meetings, and facilities for black and white people -- they're called "antiracists."