First Klan: 1865–1871 Creation, etymology, and naming threatening that the KKK will
lynch scalawags (left) and
carpetbaggers (right) on March 4, 1869, the day
President Grant takes office.
Tuscaloosa, Alabama,
Independent Monitor, September 1, 1868. During
Reconstruction in the South, six
Confederate veterans from
Pulaski, Tennessee, created the First Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865; it was known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan". The name was probably formed in 1865 by combining the Greek ''
(κύκλος, which means circle) with clan. The word had previously been used for other fraternal organizations in the South, such as Kuklos Adelphon''. The Klan was one of several secret, oath-bound organizations that used means of violence to pursue political objectives, including the Southern Cross in
New Orleans (1865) and the
Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in
Louisiana. Historians view the first iteration as a violent effort to reverse the dramatically changed social order through extrajudicial means, with the goal of restoring white supremacy in post–Civil War America. In 1866,
William L. Sharkey, the governor of
Mississippi, reported widespread disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness. In other Southern states, armed bands of former Confederate soldiers roamed largely unchecked. In the context of this instability and weak authority, the Klan systematically used violence against Black people and their white allies as a means of intimidation, burning houses and killing
Black people and leaving their bodies on the roads. At an 1867 meeting in
Nashville, Tennessee, first-generation Klan activists attempted to create a hierarchical organization in which local chapters would report to a centralized national headquarters; most members were veterans familiar with military hierarchies. This effort failed, and local chapters and bands remained highly independent, never operating under any durable centralized structure. and
Francis Preston Blair Jr. with secession and the Confederate cause.|alt= , first Grand Wizard of the Klan, pictured in 1864 wearing his Confederate uniform Former Confederate brigadier general
George Gordon developed the
Prescript, which espoused white supremacist beliefs. For instance, an applicant was to be asked whether he favored "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights". The latter phrase refers to the
Ironclad Oath, which stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union. Confederate general
Nathan Bedford Forrest was elected the first
grand wizard and claimed to be the Klan's national leader. In an 1868 newspaper interview, Forrest said the Klan's primary opposition was to the
Loyal Leagues, the state governments of the
radical Republicans, opposing individuals like Tennessee governor
William Gannaway Brownlow, and "
carpetbaggers" and "
scalawags". He also argued that many Southerners believed that Black people were voting for the Republican Party because they were being hoodwinked by the Loyal Leagues. One Alabama newspaper editor declared: "The League is nothing more than a nigger Ku Klux Klan." Despite Gordon's and Forrest's work, local Klan chapters never accepted the
Prescript as they operated autonomously with no hierarchical levels or a state headquarters. Members utilized violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, working to restore general white dominance in the disrupted post-war society. Historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership as the following: Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime
guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, bored young men, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades-old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and
Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen. Historian
Eric Foner observed that the Klan was "a military force" that served "the interests of the
Democratic party, the
planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy", as it had a purpose of "affect[ing] power relations ... throughout Southern society" by thoroughly destroying the "Republican party's infrastructure", breaking the "Reconstruction state", reestablishing "control of the Black labor force" and "restoring racial subordination" in all aspects "of Southern life." The organization worked to stifle the education, economic advancement,
voting rights, and
right to keep and bear arms of Black individuals. The first Klan mobilized and spread into every Southern state, launching a coordinated campaign of terror against Republican leaders, both Black and white.
Activities and tactics Whipping attacks, killings, and cruelty Meant to resemble previous conditions of servitude, the early Klan's seemingly random whipping activities became a widespread practice. In a 1933 interview, William Sellers, born enslaved in Virginia, recalled that the Ku Klux Clan raids of
Rockingham County would involve going into the huts of "the recently freed negros" or "catch[ing] some negro... on his way home from work...and cruelly whip him, leaving him to live or die". In Limestone Township, between 1870 and 1871, which is now
Cherokee County, South Carolina, out of 77 documented attacks, "four were shot, sixty-seven whipped and six had
their ears cropped". The First Klan attacked Black members of the
Loyal Leagues and intimidated white Republicans and
Freedman's Bureau workers. When they killed Black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedman's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of Black people. Klansmen killed more than 150 African Americans in
Jackson County, Florida, and hundreds more in other countries, including
Madison,
Alachua,
Columbia, and
Hamilton. Florida Freedman's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedman and their white allies. The Klan operated with "armed guerilla warfare" that "killed thousands of Negros". Some of the tactics included shooting into houses and burning them "sometimes with...occupants still inside", driving "Black farmers off their land", and staging political riots. The results were always certain as "ten to one hundred times as many Negros were killed as whites." Milder encounters, including some against white teachers, occurred. In
Mississippi, one example involved Miss Allen of Illinois, who was visited by "about fifty men mounted and disguised" who "treated her gentlemanly and quietly" as they complained about the "heavy school-tax"; they said that "she must stop teaching and go away" and warned that "they never gave a second notice", leading to her "heed[ing] the warning" and leaving the United States. , September 1871, for the attempted murder of an entire family.
Adopting masks Since the South was heavily rural and people knew each other by their voices and mannerisms, Klan members adopted masks and robes to hide their identities. Since members were afraid or ashamed of doing this openly, "they accomplish[ed] secretly, masked, and at night." The night riders claimed to "be ghosts of Confederate soldiers ... to frighten superstitious Blacks" but "few freedmen" took that seriously.
Suppressing the vote was assassinated for his pro-Black sentiments. Klan violence worked to suppress Black voting, and campaign seasons were deadly. More than 2,000 people were killed, wounded, or otherwise injured in
Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the presidential election of November 1868. Although
St. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,071, after the murders no Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 200 Black Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half-buried pile of 25 bodies was found in the woods. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact. In the April 1868
Georgia gubernatorial election,
Columbia County cast 1,222 votes for Republican
Rufus Bullock. By the
November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote, and only one person voted for
Ulysses S. Grant. , as posed for
Joseph A. Dacus of the
Missouri Republican, in August 1875.
Decrease in activity By 1868, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Klan members hid behind masks and robes to avoid prosecution for freelance violence. Many influential Southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it. There were outlandish claims made, such as Georgian
B. H. Hill stating, "that some of these outrages were actually perpetrated by the political friends of the parties slain."
Resistance Union Army veterans in mountainous
Blount County, Alabama, organized "the anti-Ku Klux". They curtailed local violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping
Unionists and burning Black churches and schools. Armed Black people formed their own defense in
Bennettsville, South Carolina, and patrolled the streets to protect their homes. While national sentiment rose against the Klan, it was "still regarded as something of a joke". In line with this view, Southern conservative newspapers and the Northern Democratic papers blamed these Southern atrocities on
Radical Republicans, alleging that attempts were being made to "hide Radical Rottenness behind a cloud of Ku-Klux" and deriding this concern as "Ku-Klux fever", a supposed conspiracy to swell Republican power. National Democrats further claimed that it was "unnecessary to legislate against a myth" and argued that Republicans were using this issue to manufacture "an emotional issue for the 1870 campaigns" and were "waving the bloody shirt". Amid this controversy, several Southern states began to pass anti-Klan legislation. wrote the
Civil Rights Act of 1871. In January 1871,
Pennsylvania Republican senator
John Scott convened a congressional committee that took extensive testimony from witnesses about Klan atrocities, producing multiple volumes of evidence. In February, former Union general and Massachusetts congressman
Benjamin Butler introduced the
Civil Rights Act of 1871 (Ku Klux Klan Act). This further increased the enmity that Southern white Democrats bore toward him. While the bill was being considered, further violence in the South swung support for its passage. The
governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A
riot and massacre occurred in a courthouse in
Meridian, Mississippi, from which a Black state representative escaped by fleeing to the woods. The 1871 Civil Rights Act allowed the president to suspend
habeas corpus, which caused uproar among some newspapers and Democrats, who claimed that this centralized presidential power, trampled on the Constitution, that federal intervention was what caused the violence, and that it would "make twenty Ku-Klux where there is now one". In 1871, President
Ulysses S. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act and the
Enforcement Act of 1870 were used by the federal government to enforce civil rights provisions for individuals under the Constitution. The Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve after the 1871 Klan Act, so President Grant issued a suspension of habeas corpus and stationed federal troops in nine South Carolina counties by invoking the
Insurrection Act of 1807. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges
Hugh Lennox Bond and George S. Bryan presided over
South Carolina Ku Klux Klan Trials in Columbia, S.C., during December 1871. The defendants were given from three months to five years of incarceration, along with fines. More Black people served on juries in federal court than on local or state juries, so they had a chance to participate in the process. It created a sensation through the dramatic nature of its masked forays and the large number of murders attributed to its members. In the early 1870s, federal grand juries issued hundreds of indictments against alleged Klan members for crimes of violence and terrorism. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina. Many people not formally inducted into the Klan used the Klan's costume to hide their identities when carrying out independent acts of violence. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1869, arguing that it was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace". Historian
Stanley Horn argues that "generally speaking, the Klan's end was more in the form of spotty, slow, and gradual disintegration than a formal and decisive disbandment". A Georgia-based reporter wrote in 1870: "A true statement of the case is not that the Ku Klux are an organized band of licensed criminals, but that men who commit crimes call themselves Ku Klux". of North Carolina In many states, officials were reluctant to use Black militia against the Klan out of fear that racial tensions would be raised. Republican governor of North Carolina
William Woods Holden called out the
militia against the Klan in 1870, adding to his unpopularity. This, together with extensive violence and fraud at the polls, caused the Republicans to lose their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions contributed to white Democratic legislators impeaching him and removing him from office, although their reasons for doing so were numerous. Klan operations ended in South Carolina and gradually withered away throughout the rest of the South. Attorney General
Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions. Historian Eric Foner argues that by 1872, the federal government's "evident willingness to bring its legal and coercive authority" broke "the Klan's back" and "produced a dramatic decline in violence" in the South, ending the "Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan"; the Klan was damaged and splintered as an organization. Klan costumes—
regalia—disappeared from use by the early 1870s, as Forrest had others destroy them as part of the disbandment. New groups of insurgents emerged in the mid-1870s, local paramilitary organizations such as the
White League,
Red Shirts, saber clubs, and rifle clubs, that intimidated and murdered Black political leaders. The White League and Red Shirts were distinguished by their willingness to cultivate publicity, working directly to overturn Republican officeholders and regain control of politics. In 1882, the Supreme Court ruled in
United States v. Harris that the Klan Act was partially
unconstitutional. It held that Congress's power under the
Fourteenth Amendment did not include the authority to regulate purely private conspiracies, leaving persons who had been victimized to seek relief in state courts, which were generally unsympathetic to such appeals.
Second Klan: 1915–1944 Reinitiation and reinstitution In 1915, the film
The Birth of a Nation was released, mythologizing and glorifying the first Klan and its activities. The second Ku Klux Klan was founded later that year by
William Joseph Simmons, an itinerant
Methodist preacher and effective speaker, at
Stone Mountain near Atlanta, with fifteen "charter members". At the mountain, he "built an altar on which he placed an American flag, a Bible and an unsheathed sword", then "set fire to a crude wooden cross" and "muttered a few incantations about a 'practical fraternity among men'"; afterward, he "declared himself Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan." The second Klan's growth was based on a new anti-immigrant,
anti-Catholic,
Prohibitionist, and
anti-Semitic agenda that reflected contemporary social tensions, particularly those associated with recent immigration. The new organization and chapters adopted regalia featured in
The Birth of a Nation, and members wore masks in public to conceal their identities.
The Birth of a Nation '', which has been widely credited with inspiring the 20th-century revival of the Ku Klux Klan Director
D. W. Griffith's
The Birth of a Nation glorified the original Klan. The film was based on the book and play
The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, as well as the book ''
The Leopard's Spots'', both by
Thomas Dixon Jr. Much of the modern Klan's iconography is derived from it, including the standardized white costume and the
burning cross. Its imagery drew on Dixon's romanticized concept of old England and Scotland, as portrayed in the novels and poetry of Sir
Walter Scott. The film's influence was amplified by an alleged claim of endorsement by President
Woodrow Wilson. Dixon was an old friend of Wilson's and, before its release, there was a private showing of the film at the
White House. A publicist claimed that Wilson said, "It is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true." The likelihood of him saying this is doubtful, and he later issued a statement distancing himself from the film and criticizing its use of his writings following protests.
Goals , from the shores of America. Among the "snakes" are various supposed negative attributes of the Church, including superstition, the union of church and state, control of public schools, and intolerance. The first and third Klans were primarily active in the
Southeastern United States and focused on enforcing white supremacy, especially against Black people. The second Klan, in contrast, broadened its appeal to people in the
Midwestern and
Western states who considered Catholics, Jews, and foreign-born minorities to be anti-American. Much of the Klan's rhetoric emphasized guarding the home, and historian Kathleen Bee notes that its member sought to protect "the interests of white womanhood". Simmons published the pamphlet
ABC of the Invisible Empire in Atlanta in 1917; in it, he identified the Klan's goals as "to shield the sanctity of the home and the chastity of womanhood; to maintain white supremacy; to teach and faithfully inculcate a high spiritual philosophy through an exalted ritualism; and by a practical devotedness to conserve, protect and maintain the distinctive institutions, rights, privileges, principles and ideals of a pure Americanism". Such moral-sounding purposes underlay its appeal as a fraternal organization, and it recruited members in rapidly growing cities such as
Dallas and
Detroit. Owing to a mass influx of immigrants and African Americans, the spread of anti-Catholic groups and religious intolerance, and intensifying class conflict, Detroit was the "unquestioned center of Klan strength", as "approximately half the Wolverine's 70,000 Klansmen resided in Detroit." In the case of Dallas, there were deep-rooted "fear of the Catholic Church" and "immigrant hordes" among "the Southern Protestants", and it was the "financial and fashion capital of the Southwest", offering a strategic location. It was believed in Dallas that "one in three men in the city were members of the white supremacist group." During the 1930s, particularly after
James A. Colescott of Indiana became imperial wizard, opposition to
Communism became another primary aim of the Klan. Klan organizers, called "
Kleagles", signed up hundreds of new members, who paid initiation fees and received costumes in return. The organizer kept half the money and sent the rest to officials. When the organizer was done with an area, he organized a rally, often with burning crosses, perhaps presented a Bible to a local Protestant preacher, and left with the money collected. The local chapters operated like many fraternal organizations and occasionally brought in speakers. Simmons initially met with little success in recruiting members or raising money, and the Klan remained a small operation in the Atlanta area until 1920. The group produced publications for national circulation from its headquarters in Atlanta:
Searchlight (1919–1924),
Imperial Night-Hawk (1923–1924), and
The Kourier.
Perceived moral threats The second Klan was a response to fears regarding the growing power of Catholics and
American Jews and the accompanying proliferation of non-Protestant cultural values. The Klan had a nationwide reach by the mid-1920s, with its densest per capita membership in
Indiana. It became most prominent in cities with high growth rates between 1910 and 1930, as rural Protestants flocked to jobs in
Detroit and
Dayton in the Midwest, and
Atlanta,
Dallas,
Memphis, and
Houston in the South. Members swore to uphold American values and Protestantism, and some Protestant ministers became involved at the local level. However, no major Protestant denomination officially endorsed the KKK; the Klan was repeatedly denounced by the major Protestant magazines, as well as by all major secular newspapers. It was supported by one small cult, the
Pillar of Fire Church controlled by Bishop
Alma Bridwell White, but she said she and her followers did not belong to the Klan. Historian Robert Moats Miller reported that "not a single endorsement was found by the present writer in the Methodist press" and Klan attacks in the media "were quite savage", as the Southern Baptist press condoned their "aims but condemned the methods." National denomination organizations never endorsed the Klan, but they rarely condemned it by name. Many nationally and regionally prominent churchmen did condemn it by name, and none endorsed it. Historians agree that the Klan's resurgence in the 1920s was aided by the national debate over Prohibition. Historian Prendergast states that the KKK's "support for
Prohibition represented the single most important bond between Klansmen throughout the nation". The Klan opposed bootleggers, sometimes using violence. In 1922, two hundred Klan members set fire to saloons in
Union County, Arkansas. Membership in the Klan and in other Prohibition groups overlapped, and they sometimes coordinated their activities.
Violence The second Klan was less violent than either the first or third Klans. Yet, the second Klan, especially in the Southeast, was not an entirely non-violent organization; the most violent Klan activity was in Dallas, Texas. In April 1921, several members of the Klan kidnapped Alex Johnson, a Black man who had been accused of having sex with a white woman, burning the letters "KKK" into his forehead and giving him a severe beating by a riverbed. The police chief and district attorney refused to prosecute, publicly stating they believed that Johnson deserved this treatment. Reassured by approval of this whipping, Klansmen in Dallas whipped 68 people by the riverbed in 1922 alone. Although Johnson had been Black, most of the Dallas KKK's whipping victims were white men accused of offenses against their
wives—adultery, wife beating, abandoning their wives, refusing to pay child support, or gambling. Klansmen often invited local newspaper reporters to attend their whipping so that they could write a story about them in the next day's newspaper. All the Dallas newspapers strongly condemned the Klan. Historians report that the
Morning News "diligently published thousands of anti-Klan editorials, exposés, and critical stories, informing its readership of Klan activities in their community as well as from around the state and the nation." The Alabama KKK whipped both white and Black women who were accused of fornication or adultery. Although many people in Alabama were outraged by the whippings of white women, no Klansmen were ever convicted for the violence. Anti-Catholicism was a main concern of the Alabama Klan, and
Hugo Black built his political career in the 1920s on fighting Catholicism. Black, a Democrat, went on to the U.S. Senate and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rapid growth and marketing In 1920, Simmons handed the day-to-day activities of the national office to two professional publicists,
Elizabeth Tyler and
Edward Young Clarke. The new leadership invigorated the Klan, and it grew rapidly. It appealed to new members by drawing on contemporary social tensions and emphasized responses to fears raised by the defiance of
Prohibition and changing sexual norms. It promoted
anti-Jewish,
anti-Catholic,
anti-immigrant, and later
anti-Communist positions. The organization presented itself as a fraternal, nativist, and strongly patriotic body, and its leaders stressed support for vigorous enforcement of Prohibition law. Membership expanded dramatically, reaching a peak by 1924 that is commonly estimated at between 1.5 million to 4 million, or roughly 4–15% of the eligible population, mainly based on the Klan's own claims. In Indiana, which had the highest reported Klan penetration, there were 162,267 members, or "18.44% of the eligible Indiana population"; applying those numbers to the entire United States yields an "upper bound of 5.2 million Klan members". By the 1920s, most of its members lived in the Midwest and West. Nearly one in five of the eligible Indiana population (18.44%) were members. The Klan had a national base by 1925. In the South, where the great majority of whites were Democrats, most Klansmen were Democrats. In the rest of the country, the membership comprised
Republicans, Democrats, and
independents. Klan leaders tried to infiltrate political parties; as Cummings notes, "it was non-partisan in the sense that it pressed its nativist issues to both parties". Sociologist
Rory McVeigh has explained the Klan's strategy in appealing to members of both parties: Religion was a major selling point.
Kelly J. Baker argues that Klansmen seriously embraced Protestantism as an essential component of their white supremacist, anti-Catholic, and paternalistic formulation of American democracy and national culture. Their cross functioned as a religious symbol, and their ritual honored Bibles and local ministers. As part of positioning themselves within the nation's religious landscape, the Klan also "launched campaigns to unify Protestants across denominal lines in its effort to save America from immigration and 'other evils'" and maintained a "requirement of church membership in a Protestant denomination" with a "centrality of
churchgoing in print". In this framework, the Klan was not merely just a "marginal movement of reactionaries" but rather a group whose members sought what they viewed as an "authentic interpretation of Protestantism". Economists
Fryer and
Levitt argue that the rapid growth of the Klan in the 1920s was partly the result of an innovative,
multi-level marketing campaign. They also contend that, during this period, the Klan leadership focused more on monetizing the organization than achieving its political goals, and that local leaders profited from expanding their membership. The Klan attracted people but most of them did not remain in the organization for long.
Urbanization '' 1926 Being based in urban areas, the second Klan reflected the major shifts of the population to cities in the North, West, and the South—being an urban organization. In Michigan, for example, 40,000 members lived in Detroit, where they constituted more than half of the state's membership. Most Klansmen were lower- to middle-class white Protestants who feared the influx of newcomers to industrial cities: immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, who were predominantly Catholic or Jewish, as well as Black and white migrants from the rural South. As new populations moved into cities, rapidly changing neighborhoods generated social tensions. Because of the rapid pace of population growth in industrializing cities such as Detroit and Chicago, the Klan expanded quickly in the Midwest, and it also grew in booming Southern cities such as Dallas and Houston. In the medium-sized industrial city of
Worcester, Massachusetts, in the 1920s, the Klan rose to local prominence but declined as a result of opposition from the Catholic Church. There was no associated violence, and the local newspaper ridiculed Klansmen as "night-shirt knights". About half of the members were
Swedish Americans, including some first-generation immigrants.
Ethnic and religious conflicts among more recent immigrants contributed to Klan's rise in the city, as Swedish Protestants competed with Irish Catholics—who had been entrenched there longer—for political and ideological influence. In some states, historians have obtained membership rosters of local units and matched the names against city directories and other records to create statistical profiles of the membership. Big-city newspapers were often hostile and portrayed Klansmen as ignorant farmers. Detailed analysis from Indiana, however, shows that this rural stereotype was inaccurate for that state: Indiana's Klansmen represented a wide cross section of society: they were not disproportionately urban or rural, nor were they significantly more or less likely than other members of society to be from the working class, middle class, or professional ranks. Klansmen were
Protestants, of course, but they cannot be described exclusively or even predominantly as
fundamentalists. In reality, their religious affiliations mirrored the whole of white Protestant society, including those who did not belong to any church.
Costumes and the burning cross was introduced by
William J. Simmons, the founder of the second Klan in 1915. Wearing the distinctive white costumes permitted its members to have large-scale public activities, especially parades and cross-burning ceremonies. Sales of the costumes provided the main financing for the national organization, while initiation fees funded local and state organizers. The second Klan embraced the burning
Latin cross as a dramatic symbol with an intimidating tone. No crosses had been used as a symbol by the first Klan, but it became a symbol of the Klan's quasi-Christian message. Its lighting during meetings was often accompanied by prayer, the singing of hymns, and other overtly religious symbolism. In his novel
The Clansman, Thomas Dixon Jr. borrows the idea that the first Klan had used
fiery crosses from "the call to arms" of the Scottish Clans, and film director D. W. Griffith used this image in
The Birth of a Nation; Simmons adopted the symbol wholesale from the movie, and the symbol and action have been associated with the Klan ever since.
Women By the 1920s, the KKK had developed a women's auxiliary, with chapters in many areas. Its activities included participation in parades, cross lightings, lectures, rallies, and boycotts of local businesses owned by Catholics and Jews. The Women's Klan was active in promoting Prohibition, emphasizing liquor's perceived negative impact on wives and children. Its efforts in public schools included distributing Bibles and petitioning for the dismissal of Catholic teachers. Their goals included "outlaw[ing] the
Knights of Columbus" due to allegations of taking over the country, "remov[ing] Catholic encyclopedias from public schools", "barr[ing] the use of Catholic contractors by public agencies", and excluding Jewish and Catholic "vacationers in majority-Protestant suburban resorts".
Political role The second Klan expanded with new chapters in Midwestern and Western cities and recruited Republicans, Democrats, and men without party affiliation. The goal of Prohibition in particular helped the Klan and some Republicans make common cause in the North. The Klan had members in every region of the United States but was especially strong in the South and Midwest. At its peak, claimed Klan membership exceeded four million and, in some broad regions, amounted to about 20% of the adult white male population, reaching as high as 40% in certain areas. In Indiana, members were American-born white Protestants, and it had claimed it had more than 30% of white male Hoosiers as members. In 1924, it supported Republican
Edward Jackson in his successful campaign for governor. The Klan moved north into Canada, especially
Saskatchewan, where it exercised significant influence within the provincial
Conservative party in the 1920s and 1930s. Catholic and liberal Democrats—who were strongest in northeastern cities—decided to make the Klan an issue at the
1924 Democratic National Convention in New York City. Their delegates proposed a resolution indirectly attacking the Klan; it was defeated by one vote out of 1,100. The leading presidential candidates were
William Gibbs McAdoo, a Protestant with a base in the South and West where the Klan was strong, and New York governor
Al Smith, a Catholic with a base in the large cities. After weeks of stalemate and bitter argumentation, both candidates withdrew in favor of a compromise candidate. In 1928,
Thomas J. Heflin, the junior senator from Alabama, blamed the Democratic loss in the
1924 presidential election on Roman Catholics dividing the party, stating: In some states, such as Alabama and California, Klan chapters backed certain political reform efforts. In 1924, Klan members were elected to the city council in
Anaheim, California, a city dominated by an entrenched commercial-civil elite that was mostly
German American. Given their tradition of moderate social drinking, many German Americans did not strongly support Prohibition—the mayor had been a
saloon keeper. Led by the minister of the First Christian Church, the Klan represented a rising group of politically active non-ethic Germans who denounced the elite as corrupt, undemocratic, and self-serving. Historian Christopher Cocoltchos argues that the Klansmen sought to have a model, orderly community. The Klan had about 1,200 members in
Orange County, California, and the economic and occupational profiles of pro- and anti-Klan groups were similar and about equally prosperous. Klan members were Protestants, as were most of their opponents, but the latter also included many
Catholic Germans. Individuals who joined the Klan had previously shown higher rates of
voting and civic activism than their opponents, and Cocoltchos suggests that many in Orange County joined out of sense of civic engagement. The Klan slate easily won the local election in Anaheim in April 1924, then dismissed city employees known to be Catholic and replaced them with Klan appointees. The new city council sought stricter enforcement of Prohibition, and the local Klan chapter held large rallies and initiation ceremonies over the summer. Opponents organized in response, bribed a Klansman for the secret membership list, and exposed Klan-backed candidates in the state primaries, defeating most of them. In 1925, anti-Klan forces regained control of local government and, in a special election, successfully recalled the Klansmen elected in 1924. The Klan in Anaheim quickly collapsed; its newspaper closed after losing a libel suit, and the minister who led the local Klavern moved to Kansas. Black was elected U.S. senator that year as a Democrat. In 1937, President
Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court without knowing the full extent of his earlier Klan activity. The Senate confirmed him before his complete KKK connection became public; Black later stated that he left the Klan when he entered the Senate. Although the KKK has generally viewed as anti-labor, historian Thomas R. Pegram writes that "local Klans supported striking white Protestant workers" while opposing interracial unions, and that working-class Klan sympathies "complicated urban socialist politics in the Midwest".
Resistance and decline , Grand Dragon of the
Indiana Klan. His conviction in 1925 for the murder of
Madge Oberholtzer, a white schoolteacher, led to the decline of the Indiana Klan. Many groups and leaders, including prominent Protestant ministers such as
Reinhold Niebuhr, the Jewish
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (now the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and local civic organizations, spoke out and organized against the Klan, gaining national attention. After its peak in 1925, Klan membership in most areas began to decline rapidly, in part because of these campaigns, as well as ineffective leadership and the exposure of abuses by the national organization. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, founded in the early 20th century in response to attacks on
Jewish Americans—including the lynching of
Leo Frank in Atlanta—opposed the Klan's campaign to prohibit
private schools, a measure aimed chiefly at Catholic
parochial institutions. Other organizations worked to expose the Klan's secrecy; in Indiana, the publication of membership lists by a civic group contributed to a rapid decline in local enrollment. The NAACP conducted public education campaigns about Klan activities and lobbied Congress against Klan abuses. Beyond external organizations attacking them, internal struggles suffocated the Klan. As an example, in Indiana, the scandal surrounding the 1925 murder trial of Grand Dragon
D.C. Stephenson shattered the Klan's image as an upholder of law and order; by 1926, the group became "crippled and discredited". His conviction precipitated a dramatic collapse of the Klan in Indiana. Historian Leonard Moore attributes the Klan's collapse to failures in leadership; Stephenson and the other salesmen "lacked both the ability and the desire to use the political system" for goals of the Klan, arguing that the Klan for them was "nothing more than a means for gaining wealth and power". Due to internal corruption and crimes tainting the movement, those concerned with their political goals and futures "had even less reason to work on the Klan's behalf" and it also "never required strong, dedicated leadership" until it "became a political force". In Alabama, Klan
vigilantes begun a wave of violence in 1927, targeting both Black and white residents for perceived violations of racial norms and moral standards. This provoked backlash that begun in the press. Grover C. Hall Sr., editor of the Montgomery Advertiser from 1926, wrote a series of editorials attacking the Klan—what the paper later described as having "waged war on the resurgent [KKK]". In 1928, Hall earned the
Pulitzer Prize for
Editorial Writing for his "editorials against gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance". Other newspapers denounced the Klan as violent and "un-American", and law enforcement increased pressure on its activities. In the
1928 presidential election, the state voters overcame their initial opposition to the Catholic candidate
Al Smith and voted the Democratic Party line as usual, as "despite Baptists' aversion to Smith's religion, many of them no doubt voted for him." However, in
Oklahoma City, the minister of the largest Baptist congregation said, "If you vote for Al Smith you’re voting against Christ and you’ll all be damned." Although declining, the Klan demonstrated some influence when it staged a march along
Pennsylvania Avenue in
Washington, D.C., in 1928. Nonetheless, by 1930, Alabama membership had fallen to fewer than 6,000, though small independent units remained active in
Birmingham. Klan groups continued operating in parts of Georgia during the 1930s. In
Atlanta, "night riders" enforced their moral cores by flogging individuals—both white and Black—accused of violating them. In March 1940, they were implicated in the beating deaths of a young white couple abducted from a lovers' lane, and in the fatal flogging of a white barber for drinking, all in East Point, a suburb of Atlanta. More than 20 others were "brutally flogged". When police began investigating, they discovered that Klan records had disappeared from the East Point office. The cases were reported by the
Chicago Tribune, the NAACP's
Crisis magazine, and the local newspapers.
National changes and historiography In 1939, after several years of decline brought on by the
Great Depression,
Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans sold the national Klan organization to
James A. Colescott, an Indiana
veterinarian, and
Samuel Green, an Atlanta
obstetrician. They were unable to reverse the Klan's shrinking membership. In 1944, the
Internal Revenue Service filed a
lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the organization, and Colescott dissolved the national Klan by decree on April 23 of that year. Many local chapters continued to close years later. After
World War II, American author
Stetson Kennedy infiltrated the Klan and provided internal information to journalists and law enforcement agencies. He also supplied secret code words and ritual details to writers of the
Superman radio program, leading to
episodes in which
Superman confronted a thinly disguised version of the Klan. By exposing and trivializing the group's rituals, Kennedy helped undermine its mystique, which may have contributed to declining recruitment and membership. In the 1950s, he published a bestselling book
The Klan Unmasked, further discussing his experiences with the Klan. The
historiography of the second Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s has evolved significantly over time. Early accounts relied primarily on contemporary mainstream sources, but from the late 20th century onward, historians increasingly drew on internal records and local chapter materials to produce social histories that analyze the movement's membership, community roots, and political influence. Historian Craig Fox argues that the second Klan "exercised a particularly compelling allure, its pull reflected in its sheer numerical popularity in towns and cities nationwide", suggesting that "unlike its historical namesakes, the organization involved largely ordinary citizens, from all walks of life" and that it "dwarfed all other Klan movements". Similarly, Thomas Pegram contends that "many joined the Klan for fraternal and social reasons or to pursue local political issues", reflecting an "intensified expression of widely shared civic and moral values...threatened by dramatic culture change in the aftermath of World War I."
Anti-modern interpretations , September 13, 1926 The Klan was a secret organization; apart from a few top leaders, most members did not publicly identify themselves and wore masks at rallies and parades. Investigators in the 1920s relied on Klan publicity, court cases, exposés by disgruntled members, newspaper reports, and conjecture to describe the organization's activities. Almost all major national newspapers and magazines were hostile to the Klan. Historian Thomas R. Pegram argues that these published accounts tended to exaggerate the official viewpoint of Klan leaders and to repeat the interpretations of hostile newspapers and other opponents. According to Pegram, the resulting popular and scholarly interpretation of the Klan from the 1920s into the mid‑20th century emphasized its Southern roots and its violent, vigilante-style efforts to resist modernity, and scholars often compared it to
European fascist movements. Peter H. Amann states that, "Undeniably, the Klan had some traits in common with European fascism—chauvinism, racism, a mystique of violence, an affirmation of a certain kind of archaic traditionalism—yet their differences were fundamental. ...[The KKK] never envisioned a change of political or economic system." Pegram characterizes this original interpretation as one that "depicted the Klan movement as an irrational rebuke of modernity by undereducated, economically marginal bigots, religious zealots, and dupes" and as viewing the Klan as "a movement of country parsons and small-town malcontents" that were dwarfed with "the dynamism of twentieth-century urban America".
New social history interpretations The "
social history" turn in historiography from the 1960s onward emphasized history from the bottom up; in the case of the Klan, historians used membership lists and minutes from local chapters across the country to examine the characteristics, beliefs, and behavior of typical members, giving less weight to accounts derived solely from elite or external sources. This research showed that the earlier interpretation was largely mistaken about the Klan's social base and activities: its members were not predominantly anti-modern, rural, or rustic, but were often relatively well-educated, middle-class joiners and community activities. Roughly half of the membership lived in rapidly growing industrial cities, and Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Indianapolis, Denver, and Portland, Oregon, were among the Klan's major strongholds during the 1920s. Pegram concludes that the Klan "was more of a civil exponent of white Protestant social values than a repressive hate group". American writer
Kelly J. Baker argues that religion was crucial, suggesting that the Klan was based on a particular brand of Protestantism that resonated with mainstream Americans: Klan members "embraced Protestant Christianity and a crusade to save America from domestic as well as foreign threats." The Klan consisted of primarily
Baptists,
Methodists, and the
Disciples of Christ. The Klan did not have a lot of members from the "more elite or liberal" denominations in Protestantism—
Unitarians,
Episcopalians,
Congregationalists, and
Lutherans—who were less likely to join.
State-wide focus Historians focused on states like Alabama and Indiana to analyze the Klan. In Indiana, traditional political historians focused on leaders like Indiana's Klan
Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson, whose conviction in the case of
Madge Oberholtzer helped rout the Klan nationwide. Historian
Kenneth T. Jackson noted the 1920s Klan as a part of cities and urbanization—"the Invisible Empire had a strong urban flavor from the beginning"—and the local chapters acted as fraternal organization in a lot of the times. Historian Leonard Moore suggested that Klan was fearful of the changes in immigration and were fearful of those whom they believed subverted an ideal, Protestant moral standard. He argued that it was an interest group for "average white Protestants" believing their "values should be dominant." Earlier on, the
University of Notre Dame was established near
South Bend, Indiana, as Northern Indiana's industrial cites attracted large Catholic populations of European immigrants. In May 1924, students there blocked the Klansmen when they scheduled a regional meeting in the city, causing counterattacks, and the football coach
Knute Rockne kept the students on campus to avoid further violence. In Alabama, some activists joined the Klan to fight the old guard establishment;
Hugo Black was a member who campaigned and won a seat in the U.S. Senate by focusing on anti-Catholicism. In rural Alabama, the Klan enforced
Jim Crow laws, and its members resorted more to violence against Black people for apparent infringements of the social order of white supremacy. Racial terrorism was weaponized in smaller towns to suppress Black political activity; Elbert Williams of
Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize Black residents to register to cast their vote, and Jesse Thorton of
Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for not addressing a police officer as "Mister." , a Ku Klux Klan
Grand Dragon, at
Stone Mountain, Georgia, on July 24, 1948.|alt=
Later Ku Klux Klan organizations (1940s-present) In 1944, the second Ku Klux Klan was disbanded by Imperial Wizard
James A. Colescott after the
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) levied a substantial tax liability against the organization. Two years later, in 1946,
Samuel Green established a new Klan group at a ceremony on
Stone Mountain, operating primarily within Georgia. Green was succeeded by
Samuel Roper as Imperial Wizard in 1949, and Roper was followed by
Eldon Edwards in 1950. Based in
Atlanta, Edwards attempted to rebuild the organization by uniting disparate Klan factions across the
United States. However, these efforts were short-lived, as internal rivalries and competition among regional groups led to renewed fragmentation. In 1959,
Roy Davis was elected to succeed Edwards as national leader. Edwards has previously appointed Davis
Grand Dragon of
Texas in an effort to consolidate their organizations, and Davis already led the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Texas,
Arkansas,
Louisiana, and
Mississippi. During 1961 and 1962, Davis held rallies in
Florida and other southern states to recruit new members. A longtime associate of William J. Simmons, Davis had been active in the Klan since its reorganization in 1915. The
White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan formed later in 1964 after breaking away from the Original Knights. According to an
FBI report published in May 1965, the Klan had splintered into fourteen separate organizations with a combine membership of approximately 9,000.
1950s–1960s: Klan activity during the civil rights era After the national organization's decline, smaller independent groups adopted the name "Ku Klux Klan", along with some variations. They had no formal relations with each other, and most had no connections to the second Klan, except for the terminology and costumes. Beginning in the 1950s, individual Klan groups in
Birmingham, Alabama resisted social change and the Black individuals' efforts to improve their life and standing, leading to bombings of houses in transitional neighborhoods; the city was nicknamed "
Bombingham" due to the concentration of bombings. Since white individuals worked in the mining and steel industries, there was access to these materials. Alabama Klan groups closely allied with the police under the tenure of police commissioner
Bull Connor and operated with
impunity; Connor allowed Klan members to attack
Freedom Riders in 1961 for up to fifteen and twenty minutes before sending in the police. Due to failures to protect the Freedom Riders, the federal government established intervention and protection. In Alabama and
Mississippi, members of the Klan tried to forge alliances with governors' administrations. In Birmingham and other places, the Klan bombed the houses of civil rights activists, sometimes weaponizing physical violence, intimidation, and assassination directly. Due to this
disfranchisement of Black people, most could not serve on juries, which were
all-white and could demonstrably deliver biased verdicts and sentences. A
Southern Regional Council report, a racial equality organization in Atlanta, suggested that the homes of 40 Black southern families were bombed during 1951 and 1952; victims were mostly social activists, but some were those who refused to accept or uphold racism or were innocent bystanders. ,
Chaney, and
Schwerner were three civil rights workers abducted and murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Notorious murders and bombings During the 1950s and 1960s, Klan members carried out a series of highly publicized
murders and
bombings that drew national attention and condemnation. These incidents include the 1951 Christmas Eve bombing of NAACP activists
Harry and
Harriette Moore in
Mims, Florida, the 1957 murder of
Willie Edwards Jr. in Alabama, the 1963 assassination of NAACP organizer
Medgar Evers in Mississippi, the 1963
16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, and the
1964 murders of civil rights workers
James Chaney,
Andrew Goodman, and
Michael Schwerner in Mississippi. Other cases from this period include the 1964 murders of two Black teenagers,
Henry Hezekiah Dee and
Charles Eddie Moore, the 1965 killing of
Viola Liuzzo in Alabama, the 1966 firebombing that led to the death of NAACP leader
Vernon Dahmer, the murder of
Clarence Triggs, and the 1967 bombings in Jackson, Mississippi, targeting
Methodist activist Robert Kochtitzky, a
synagogue, and residence of
Rabbi Perry Nussbaum.
Resistance Considerable Klan resistance occurred among African Americans and white allies to the Klan. In 1953, newspaper publishers in
North Carolina in
W. Horace Carter and Willard Cole shared the
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their campaigns against the Klan "at the risk of economic loss and personal danger" with convictions of "over one hundred Klansmen" and an "end to terrorism in their communities". In a North Carolina incident, the Klan burned crosses at the homes of two
Lumbee Native Americans for associating with white people in 1958. When the Klan held a nighttime rally nearby, hundreds of Lumbee surrounded them—gunfire was exchanged—causing the Klan to be routed at what became known as the
Battle of Hayes Pond. The
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had paid Klan informants, especially in Birmingham in the early 1960s; however, the FBI's relations with local law enforcement agencies and the Klan were often ambiguous.
J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI at the time, had more concerns about possible Communist links to civil right activists than about controlling the Klan. In 1964, the FBI's
COINTELPRO program began attempts to infiltrate and disrupt civil rights groups. The government revived the
Enforcement Acts and
Klan Act from Reconstruction days to extend federal enforcement of citizens'
civil rights and as a basis of investigations and indictments when it came to notorious cases, including the 1964
murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner and the 1965 murder of
Viola Liuzzo. In 1965, the
House Un-American Activities Committee had started an investigation into the Klan, investigating its front organizations, finances, methods, and divisions.
1970s–present: Klan activity , 1977 When federal legislation that prohibited segregation and enforcement of voting rights passed, Klan groups opposed the court-ordered
busing to desegregate schools,
affirmative action, and the more open immigration in the 1960s. In 1971, Klan members used bombs to destroy 10 school buses in
Pontiac, Michigan. By 1975, there were known Klan groups on most college campuses in Louisiana, including the
Vanderbilt University,
University of Georgia,
University of Mississippi,
University of Akron, and
University of Southern California. The Klan was also involved in intimidating
Vietnamese refugees in the
Galveston Bay Area. The Klan utilized terroristic means in order to achieve their objectives.
Notorious cases On November 3, 1979, the Klan and the
National Socialist Party of America killed five communist protesters in
Greensboro, North Carolina, now known as the
Greensboro massacre. The
Communist Workers' Party had sponsored a rally against the Klan in an effort to organize predominantly Black industrial workers in the area. Klan members drove up with arms in their car trunks and attacked marchers. In 1980, following a Klan initiation rally, three Klan members shot four elderly Black women in
Chattanooga, Tennessee: Viola Ellison, Lela Evans, Opal Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, and a fifth woman, Fannie Crumsey, was injured by flying glass in the incident. Attempted murder charges were filed against the three Klan members, two of whom—Bill Church and Larry Payne—were acquitted by an
all-white jury. The third defendant, Marshall Thrash, was sentenced by the same jury to nine months on lesser charges. He was released after three months. In 1982, a jury awarded the five women $535,000 in a civil trial. After
Michael Donald was lynched in 1981 in
Alabama, the FBI investigated his death, and the U.S. attorney prosecuted the case. Two Klan members were convicted for his murder, including Henry Francis Hays. After exhausting the appeals process, Hays was executed by
electric chair for Donald's death in Alabama on June 6, 1997. It was the first time since 1913 that a white person had been executed in Alabama for a crime against a Black person. With the support of attorneys
Morris Dees of the
Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and state senator
Michael A. Figures, Donald's mother
Beulah Mae Donald sued the Klan in civil court in Alabama. Her lawsuit against the
United Klans of America was tried in February 1987. The all-white jury found the Klan responsible for the lynching of Donald, and ordered the Klan to pay $7 million, but the Klan did not have sufficient funds to pay the fine, and they had to sell off their national headquarters building in
Tuscaloosa.
Neo-Nazi alliances and Stormfront In 1995,
Don Black and Chloë Hardin, the ex-wife of Ku Klux Klan grand wizard
David Duke, launched a small
bulletin board system (BBS) called
Stormfront, which later developed into a prominent online forum associated with
white nationalism,
Neo-Nazism,
hate speech,
racism, and
antisemitism in the early 21st century. Scholars and monitoring organizations have cited Stormfront as an example of how extremist groups have used the Internet to recruit supporters, build transnational networks, and facilitate research, growing into "what may be the Western world’s most popular forum for so called 'white nationalists' to post articles" and "engage in discussions". Kevin C. Thompson has noted that the "stigmatised and disenfranchised societal groups", such as the Ku Klux Klan, "are using cyberspace technology as a means of organising themselves in the face of mainstream social rejection and restrictions", providing a "substantial benefit" to these groups. In a 2007 report, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) stated that many Ku Klux Klan groups had formed strong alliances with other white supremacist organizations, including
neo-Nazi groups. According to the ADL and other observers, some Klan organizations have become increasingly "nazified", adopting the symbols, styles, and, in some cases, organizational practices associated with
white power skinhead and neo-Nazi movements, a development that has broadened their potential alliances but also blurred distinctions between historically separate extremist traditions.
Current developments The modern Ku Klux Klan is no longer a unified national organization; instead, it consists of numerous small, independent chapters operating across the United States. A 1999 ADL report estimated that the Klan then comprised "no more than a few thousand members organized into slightly more than 100 units". Nearly two decades later, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported in 2017 that "at least 29 separate, rival Klan groups" were active nationwide, while noting that they frequently compete for members, dues, media attention, and claims to historical legitimacy. The decentralized structure of these chapters has made them more difficult for researchers and law-enforcement agencies to monitor, and estimates of total membership vary. Analysts believe that roughly two-thirds of Klan members reside in the Southern United States, with most of the remainder concentrated in the lower Midwest. Although the Klan's overall membership has declined for several decades, scholars attribute this trend to a combination of factors, including the organization's limited ability to adapt to online communication, its long history of violence, competition from other extremist groups, and a broader decline in the number of young activists willing to join formal hate‑based organizations. At the same time, membership patterns have not been uniform. In 2015, the number of Klan chapters nationwide increased from 72 to 190, a development the SPLC linked to broader growth among several extremist movements, including both Klan and Black separatist groups. A 2016 SPLC analysis found that hate groups in general were increasing in number in the United States, In 2006, J. Keith Akins argued that "Klan literature and propaganda is rabidly
homophobic and encourages violence against
gays and
lesbians," noting that since the late 1970s the Klan had increasingly targeted LGBTQ+ communities. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Klan groups also produced
Islamophobic propaganda and distributed anti-Islamic flyers. The
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has provided legal support to various Klan factions in cases involving
First Amendment protections, including the right to hold public rallies, parades, and marches, as well as the right to field political candidates. In February 2019 in
Linden, Alabama, the local weekly newspaper
The Democrat-Reporter featured an editorial written by
Goodloe Sutton titled the "Klan needs to ride again." It urged the Klan "to return to staging their night rides" due to tax proposals to raise taxes in Alabama. In an interview, Sutton suggested that Washington D.C. could be "clean[ed] out" by way of lynchings to "hang all of them", also referring to hanging "socialist-communists" and even compared the Klan to the
NAACP. The editorial and his subsequent comments provoked resignation calls from Alabama politicians and the Alabama Press Association. The
University of Southern Mississippi's School of Communication, where he was an alumnus, removed him from its Mass Communication and Journalism Hall of Fame and "strongly condemn[ed]" his remarks. Sutton was stripped of a distinguished community journalist award he was presented in 2009 by
Auburn University's Journalism Advisory Council. Sutton expressed no regrets; he said that the editorial was intended to be "ironic" and "not many people understand irony today."
Current Klan organizations The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) maintains a current list of Klan organizations. According to a 2011 list, there are eight large Klan groups in existence today: the Bayou Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Church of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the
Knights of the White Camelia, the Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, affiliated with the
Aryan Freedom Network, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by
Thomas Robb, which claims to be the largest organization in America today, the
Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, thought to be the largest Klan chapter, and the
White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. == Outside North America ==