Ku Klux Klan

The name "Ku Klux Klan" comes from the Greek word "kuklos" which means wheel, circle, or band and

the word "clan", which means family.

This movie’s release in 1915 led to the rebirth

of the KKK.

William Simmons was the man who revived

the Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Klan at its Height

• 3-8 million people nationally were in the KKK• Indiana was one of the biggest states for it• Politicians and judges, both state and local, were in KKK

– IN Governor Edward Jackson (elected 1924) was a KKK member

• 1 in every 3 white men in Indiana were in the KKK – Hoosier membership numbered at least 250,000

• 16 Senators and many Representatives were elected with Klan backing

This is at an orphanage.

Why did the KKK get so large?• Patriotism coming out of the war years• Black migration to the north during WWI• Fear of / Hatred of Communism coming from Europe following World

War I• Massive wave of “New Immigrants” coming from Russia, Bulgaria,

Lithuania, Romania, Czechoslovakia, etc.• It presented itself as a pro-Christian (Protestant, of course) organization• Many changes in morals and social manners• It coincided with a wave of anti-Semitism that was common

internationally at that time

Henry Ford’s Anti-Semitic ViewsThe International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem (1921):

"It is the purpose of this article to put people in possession of the truth concerning the moron music which they habitually hum and sing and shout day and night, and if possible to help them to see the invisible Jewish baton which is waved above them for financial and propaganda purposes. Just as the American stage and motion picture have fallen under the control of Jews and their art-destroying commercialism, so the business of handling "popular songs" has become a Yiddish industry.

"Jazz is a Jewish creation. . . The mush, slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.

Monkey talk, jungle squeals, grunts and squeaks and gasps suggestive of calf love are camouflaged by a few feverish notes and admitted in homes where the thing itself, unaided by scanned music, would be stamped out in horror. The fluttering music sheets disclose expressions taken directly from the cesspools of modern capitals, to be made the daily slang, the thoughtlessly hummed remarks of school boys and girls. . . . . .

A dreadful narcotizing of moral modesty and the application of powerful aphrodisiacs have been involved in the present craze for crooning songs--a stimulated craze. The victims are everywhere. But too few of the opponents of this moral poison see the futility of scolding the young people thus diseased.

Common sense dictates a cleaning out, and a clearing out, of the sources of the disease. The source is in the Yiddish group of song manufacturers who control the whole output and who are responsible for the whole matter from poetry to profits.”

Ford particularly hated Irving Berlin. http://www1.assumption.edu/ahc/1920s/Eugenics/JewsandJazzFord.html

Reasons for the Decline of the KKK

• DC Stephenson – Indiana’s Grand Dragon – raped and poisoned a girl. Her death and the violence of the act caused many people to leave the organization.

• Stephenson’s arrest and trial led to investigation of many politicians nation-wide on various corruption charges

• these corruption investigations were another cause of people leaving the organization

• By 1930 the KKK had about 45,000 members nationally

D.C. Stephenson