Ku Klux Klan

Parade of the Ku Klux Klan in Washington, DC in 1928

Burning cross as a striking symbol of the clan (2005)

The Ku Klux Klan ( KKK , English Ku Klux Klan ) is a racist and violent secret society , which especially in the southern states of the USA is active. The Klan existed from 1865 to 1875 and from 1915 to 1944 as a unified organization. Since 1950 there have been several independent groups under this name.

After it was founded on December 24, 1865, the main aim of the clan was to suppress blacks . His acts of violence were initially directed against black people and their protectors as well as against the numerous former northerners who wanted to benefit from the reconstruction of the south ( Reconstruction ) after the war of civilization . It was a paramilitary group that tried to achieve its political goals through terror and violence, and was disbanded around 1870. In 1915 the Klan was re-established as a nativist mass organization. With up to four million members (1924), this clan pursued a policy of white supremacyespecially towards African Americans , but also a militant anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism . After the Second World War , different, independent groups formed as the Ku Klux Klan, which committed various acts of violence from verbal intimidation measures to various physical attacks to murders against actual or supposed representatives of the American civil rights movement .

The members of the clan, the origin of the name of which is not completely clear, call themselves Knights of the Ku Klux Klan ( Knights of the Ku Klux Klan ). The organization's clandestine , secret political network is known to members as the Invisible Empire . There are close ties between the clan and other racist groups such as the World Church of the Creator , a religious community that in the past has inter alia. attracted attention through the spread of racist computer games on the Internet. There are branches of the Klan in Canada, Australia and several European countries, including Germany (see list of Ku Klux Klan organizations ).

etymology

The name Ku-Klux-Klan comes from κλκλος kýklos , the Greek word for circle - the corresponding English word circle can also stand for a secret association, a circle of initiates. The co-founders of the Ku Klux Klan, Calvin Jones and Richard Reed, proposed this name to the other four members during the third meeting, whereupon one of them expressed the idea of choosing Ku Klux as the name. The word clan was added because on the one hand it made sense to designate a circle in this way, and on the other hand it was an alliteration , which is why it was also spelled with K. According to another thesis, the name Ku-Klux-Klan is onomatopoeic based on the sound when a gun cock is cocked. Other theories see the naming as a reference to the secret society Seven Confederate Knights , which was established by Confederate prisoners in Union Prison on Johnson's Island , as well as to the student fraternity Kuklos Adelphon , which was founded in 1812 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . Another explanation, which was uttered for the first time by the author couple Romine, who sympathized with the clan, sees the origin of the term in the Maya deity Kukulkan . According to this hypothesis, during the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, many of the residents of the founding town of Pulaski came into contact with legends about Kukulkan as the god of light and a successful fighter against darkness, in which the later members of the clan meant their own struggle against freed slaves, carpet excavators and Recognize Scalawags .

history

The Reconstruction-era clan

Costumes of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan headgear in the Levine Museum of the New South, North Carolina

Cowl of the Ku Klux Klan in the Levine Museum of the New South, North Carolina

founding

The original Ku Klux Klan was founded on December 24, 1865 in Pulaski , Tennessee . The founders were six officers of the American Civil War the defeated Confederacy : Calvin E. Jones, John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, John C. Lester, Richard R. Reed and James R. Crowe.

This original clan had no political purpose. The Klan only got a political dimension when it was recognized that former slaves were intimidated by the clan members' nightly masked rides. The Klan soon received an influx from all over the southern United States because the southerners refused to accept the equality and equal treatment of blacks and whites introduced by the northern states.

Unlike the following generation, the first generation of the clan was not anti-Semitic and accepted Jews as members, including the doctor and later pioneer of hydrotherapy in America, Simon Baruch .

Federal Congress in Nashville, 1867

The founding members soon lost control of the clan. In order to combine the numerous local groups as a common organization and to put them under uniform leadership , a federal congress of the KKK was organized in Nashville , Tennessee, in early 1867 . At this meeting they gave itself a constitution and elected the former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest for the first Grand Warlock ( Grand Wizard ) of the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest's power was more symbolic, however, as the individual sound groups continued to operate independently of one another. At that time the Klan had about half a million active members and innumerable sympathizers across the south.

Mississippi Ku Klux members arrested in September 1871

That clan of the reconstruction period prevented blacks from exercising and exercising their then newly acquired civil rights . It did so through intimidation , arson , physical violence , kidnapping and murder . In addition, many of the clan's abuses involved sexual violence against women. However, the Klan was not only directed against the former slaves, victims of the Klan were also the so-called scalawags (English for a stunted animal, in the southern slang name for collaborators with the Yankees , war profiteers and civil rights activists), members of the Republican Party and the United States Army and its administration (see carpetbaggers ).

First assassination attempt

“ Senator Ashburn was murdered at Columbus , Georgia. Fifteen guys with masked faces vomited Ashburn's house, which was on one of the busiest streets, broke into his bedroom, shot him in cold blood in the presence of the housekeeper [...] His crime was that he was the most influential member of the Republican Party in Georgia . His assassination is the first expression of life by the Ku Klux Klan, an association whose stated purpose is to murder those who support the policies of Congress. This is supposed to 'liberate' the south. Outstanding persons in Washington have already received threatening letters in the name of that order. Generals Grant and Meade take the matter very seriously and have issued orders to 'suppress the widely ramified killer club with all their might'. Among those threatened in Washington is General Buttler , who is currently leading the case against the president in the Senate. "

- Report in the daily mail of May 10, 1868

Dissolution in 1871

After the passing of the so-called Ku Klux Acts , a series of laws intended to curb the acts of terrorism in the south, and a failed attempt by the federal leadership to bring the Klan members to reason through Nathan Bedford Forrest, the latter officially dissolved the Klan in 1871. But when it was dissolved, it became clear how little the Great Warlock's actual power was: only in Arkansas and Tennessee his orders were obeyed, and in Alabama , Georgia , Mississippi , North and South Carolina , on the other hand, the extent of violent crimes actually increased .

Political meaning and actual end

The Klan only gradually disappeared, but not because of public pressure, but because it had basically achieved its political goals and thus overtook itself: in 1874 the Democrats had again obtained a majority in the House of Representatives , and two years later their sole rule in the south was de facto restored.

Despite everything, the actual political power of the KKK during the reconstruction period is often overestimated today. He was never even remotely able to restore pre-war conditions, either politically or on the basis of terrorist attacks.

The Klan in the 20th century

Re-established in 1915

On February 8, 1915, D. W. Griffith's epic film The Birth of a Nation premiered in Los Angeles . Based on the book The Clansmen by Thomas Dixon , the love story against the backdrop of the Civil War and the Reconstruction Era was a great success; The film saw one million viewers in the first year and grossed $ 10 million by 1932.

The effect of the film on the population was so enormous that the hatred of blacks increased and the clan again received broad support in the southern states. It was felt that the black beasts had to be stopped.

The former Methodist preacher William Joseph Simmons used this mood, evoked by the hit film and the general opinion of the American public at the time, to see the Civil War and its causes and effects as a mistake, to resurrect the Klan: On Thanksgiving Day 1915, he held the first admission ceremony of the 20th century on Stone Mountain east of Atlanta . He expanded the clan's mythical repertoire to include the burning cross of fire, which is now widely known as the symbol of the KKK. He also took this symbolism from Dixon's book, which in turn referred to Scottish myths.

This new clan experienced a brisk influx, mainly because the atrocities of the reconstruction period had already been forgotten and had been replaced by an image of the heroic in Griffith's film. Part of the heroic of the clan were the imaginative clan titles; so the upper clan leaders were called, for example, Grand Dragon (Great Dragon), Grand Cyclops (Great Cyclops) or Imperial Wizard (Imperial Warlock).

Together with Edward Young Clarke , who is responsible for clan propaganda , Simmons built the Klan into a profitable company. For commercial and ideological reasons, the new clan turned against new immigrants , politically active workers and trade union officials , intellectuals , Jews , Catholics and opponents of the alcohol prohibition that existed from 1920 to 1933 , the so-called Nassen ( wets ). The Klan went from a long-forgotten regional paramilitary organization to a national movement that was no longer limited to the southern states.

The Evans Era 1922–1939

Grand Wizard Hiram Wesley Evans

Disagreements between the clan leaders meant that first Simmons, and later Clarke (who then founded his own clan, the Supreme Kingdom ), left the KKK and in November 1922 Hiram Wesley Evans , a dentist from Dallas , took over the leadership of the clan.

In the 1920s, the clan spread across the United States. Under Evans, he rose to become a powerful secret organization that managed to vote hundreds of judges, sheriffs, and mayors clan-friendly, and even developed a partnership with the Pillar of Fire Church, founded by Methodist Alma Bridwell White . New members paid a $ 10 entry fee to join the sound troops. The Protestant church was used by the clan to show when the clan was moving to a new city: members of the clan attended the Sunday service (after prior consultation with the pastor) and left a donation, which was accepted and blessed by the pastor. When that happened, the people knew that the clan was now in their town too.

Because the Ku Klux Klan now also uses the American flag and sacred Christian symbols such as For example, if he used the cross and thus met the self-image of the white, Protestant majority population in the USA, it was easy for him to recruit new members in view of the growing dissatisfaction in the white middle class. The clan had 3 million members in 1922 and was at the height of its influence in 1924 with around 4.5 million members. Some active Ku Kluxers were even respected politicians in the Senate , House of Representatives, or at a lower level. Even individual presidents are said to be members of the Klan. Under Evans, the clan was politically most active, and the terrorist acts increased immensely. The KKK defied existing laws and acted as a separate power in the state. In the course of emancipation , women also joined the KKK and founded their own groups such as Women of the Ku Klux Klan . In the meantime, up to 500,000 women were members of the Ku Klux Klan. During these times, however, the Knights of the Flaming Circle , which organized against the Ku Klux Klan, also emerged.

On September 15, 1923, the state of Oklahoma even imposed martial law as a measure against terrorism and the murder of the secret society , a measure which, however, could not diminish the influence of the KKK. However, there were more and more disputes, splits and separate clan foundations. Evans had to go to civil courts several times, which further declined the reputation of the clan. In 1925, the Great Dragon D. C. Stephenson was charged by a court with the rape and murder of a teacher who was active in a program to overcome illiteracy. Following his life sentence, Stephenson exposed lists of numerous clan bribes. As a result of his revelations, several politicians had to resign. Ordinary members were deterred and the number of members dropped enormously.

Funeral of a member of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey (June 1931)

The reason for the further decline in membership was also the media-reported crimes of the Klan, which contradicted the Klan's self-portrayal of the keeper of law and order , and the general negative press. In 1928 the number of members was only a few hundred thousand. In addition, there was the global economic crisis , which hit the clan heavily. After the crisis he was unable to take advantage of the increasing poverty and discontent, and instead the white lower and middle classes became more involved in groups opposing the clan, such as the trade unions .

Ultimately, Evans was forced to sell the Klan in 1939. No longer a secret society since 1928, the clan regained some popularity in the 1960s.

Second World War

The two buyers, James H. Cole Scott and Samuel Green, tried to deal with the Nazis to ally. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war by the German Reich , however, ruined their plans. After tax demands by the state, they had to officially dissolve the Klan a second time in 1944.

1960s

Simultaneously with the emergence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s, there was a revival of various clan organizations. The most significant of these were the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the state of Mississippi , led by Samuel Bowers . In the south, Klan supporters put considerable pressure on blacks not to vote. So were z. For example, in 1960, 42% of the Mississippi state's population was black, but only 6% had a registered vote and just 2% actually voted.

The revitalized clan groups were responsible for violent attacks against blacks and civil rights activists in cities all over the south such as Jacksonville and St. Augustine in Florida , Birmingham and Montgomery in Alabama, and Meridian , Mississippi. Despite all these efforts, the new clan was not strong and by the end of the decade the strength and membership had decreased to practically zero.

The FBI also began systematically infiltrating the clan through paid informants. As a result, some murders (including those of the leaders of the civil rights movement COFO) could be solved. Despite the clear evidence, the state of Mississippi declined to bring charges. In the case of the murdered COFO leaders, the US Department of Justice finally intervened, which led to the conviction of the murderers. A conviction was usually the exception, as the perpetrators were often acquitted by sympathetic jury members.

Slowly a change took place and more and more clan members were indicted, initially mainly by the Justice Department at the federal level. The main reason for the decline of the KKK was the increasingly prevalent civil rights movement. From then on, the popularity of the Ku Klux Klans continued to decline until the number of members was estimated at just 1200 members in the late 1960s.

The investigation into the 1964 murder of Klan members of civil rights activists resumed and closed in 2006.

1970s

Since strict racial segregation could no longer be enforced and the clan had less than 2,000 members, the organization was only relevant in discussions about racial segregation in everyday life and the quota system (proportion of black students).

It was not until the new leader David Duke , who tried to improve the image of the Ku Klux Klan through his serious demeanor and skillful handling of the media, that the Ku Klux Klan experienced a slight upswing, so that the number of members rose to 3500. But Duke's demeanor and his politics met with some criticism from within his own ranks, so that some groups split off in order to try again to achieve their goals by force. In 1979, in Greensboro , North Carolina, members of the American Nazi Party and the Klan murdered five communist protesters in a raid .

In 1975 (and again in 1991) Duke ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Louisiana Senate ; In 1979 he left the management level of the clan. In 1988 and 1992 he applied for the office of President of the United States to no avail.

1980s

In the early 1980s, the FBI investigated supporters of the clan for the Atlanta child murders , but found no evidence of their involvement.

Another major blow to the Ku Klux Klan was when in 1987 the largest remaining Klan group, the United Klans of America , had to be dissolved due to a civil lawsuit. The anti-Klan organization Klanwatch advised the mother of Michael Donald, who was murdered by the Klan, to file this (further) lawsuit after her son's murderers had already been convicted. The united Clans of America were fined $ 7,000,000 for inciting acts of violence and murder by their leaders, which they could not pay. All of the group's property was transferred to the plaintiffs and the group was dissolved.

Sporadic acts of violence continued, but the Klansmen held back more, as they realized that, unlike in the past, they could now also be sentenced to death .

1990s

In 1997, clan member Henry Hays was executed for the murder of Michael Donald . He was the first white man since 1913 to be executed in Alabama for the murder of a black man.

Since 2000

At the beginning of the 21st century, the number of members was estimated at 5,000 Klansmen. The Klan does not appear as a closed organization, but is divided into individual independent sections across the United States.

Since 1995 the clan has been targeting black parishes. In recent years, more than 180 African American churches have been destroyed by arson attacks. It is believed that the KKK was involved in these arson attacks.

Since the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008, the Ku Klux Klan has seen new growth. In his present day self-image he relies on a more modern and bourgeois appearance.

In recent years, the Klan has increasingly sought contact with other right-wing extremist movements.

On April 13, 2014, a 73-year-old Ku Klux Klan member shot dead three people in two Jewish facilities in Overland Park , metropolitan Kansas City . The perpetrator was arrested.

On November 16, 2014, the hacker collectively Anonymous took over the clan's Twitter account and attacked the website until it was no longer accessible. Furthermore, lists of names and pictures of members of the clan were published on pages attributed to Anonymous.

doctrine

The Ku Klux Klan sees itself as a radical Protestant organization. From the early 1900s to the 1940s, hundreds of thousands of fundamentalist Protestants (mostly from the Midwest, but eventually also from the South) saw the KKK as part of their faith . Millions more viewed the KKK's methods as reprehensible and extreme, but nonetheless recognized the members as full Christians and agreed with the clan's opinion that white Protestants were born superior to other groups. At the time, the oppression of blacks, Jews, Catholics, and homosexuals was seen by many as part of God's plan.

The KKK members see themselves as patriots loyal to the constitution ; upon admission to the clan, an oath is taken on the US Constitution . Some American neo-Nazis therefore reject the KKK as too moderate.

Signs and symbols

Ku Klux Klan symbol: the burning cross of fire

Confederate War Flag

Variant of a Ku Klux Klan flag

In contrast to the Klan in its original 19th century manifestation, which had no flags or symbols, the 1915 version focused on the use of the US flag, as evidenced by materials and photographs from the 1920s, the height of this clan.

In the 1950s and 1960s, some sound groups tried to appropriate the war flag of the Confederation (see St. Andrew's Cross ) in order to use it in the fight against the desegregation in the southern United States. This identification with southern symbols has largely not been recognized by historical activists in the Midwest, which dominates the clan. In its fragmented form, some instances of the KKK still use the Confederate flag of war and the US flag, but without official recognition.

The most famous symbol of the KKK is the burning cross. It is supposed to symbolize the light of Jesus Christ as the clan sees itself as a radical Protestant organization.

There are two theories about using the white hooded robes:

The robes represent spirits of the Confederate soldiers who fell in the Civil War and who rose from the dead to take revenge on their enemies. Meetings therefore usually take place under cover of night.
The white hooded robes symbolize purity and cleanliness, in contrast to the groups perceived by KKK members as dirty and inferior, such as the African-Americans.

The hooded robes are reminiscent of the hooded cloaks (see Capirote ) that penitential brotherhoods wear in processions during Holy Week ( Semana Santa ) in Spain and some parts of southern Italy, but there are no other connections to the Ku Klux Klan.

Political influence

The second Ku Klux Klan gained in importance and spread from the Midwest to the South and Northeast until 1925 and at that time counted many politicians among its members. The Klan also used to make election recommendations on the occasion of the presidential elections.

A former clan member of national importance was Hugo Black , Judge at the Supreme Court , which rejected the racist views of the Klan later and often ruled against the court majority, in accordance blacks. Carl Sagan said of Black: "As a young man he wore white robes and scared blacks, as an old man he wore black robes and scared whites."

The late Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia was also a former member of the KKK. He stayed away from the Klan on several occasions and described joining as his biggest mistake.

The Klan outside of the United States

There was and still is a clan in Canada. In the central western province of Saskatchewan , the Klan influenced the government from 1929 to 1934 under James Anderson .

In Australia, a former member of the One Nation Party , Peter Coleman, built a clan in the late 1990s. In the 2000s, there were attempts by the KKK to infiltrate the Australia First Party .

The European offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan are the European White Knights of the Burning Cross . According to the clan, there are subgroups in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Greece, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden.

The clan in Germany

In Germany there was a Ku Klux Klan offshoot in the 1920s. The group called the Knights of the Fiery Cross is said to have consisted of about 350 members. It was dissolved in 1930. In the post-war period, new small clan groups emerged, most of which were based on the US clan. In Germany, US soldiers stationed in Bitburg founded a KKK offshoot with racist Germans in 1980 . In 1991 a Klan group was formed again, which disbanded in 1992 after the initiation of a preliminary investigation. Previously, among other things, a magazine (Das Feuerkreuz) from the environment of the KKK was distributed. In 1992, alleged supporters of the KKK in Brandenburg are said to have almost beaten a Nigerian asylum seeker to death and thrown into a lake.

In the early 1990s, the freelance film editor Michael Born produced a report for SternTV about an alleged Ku Klux Klan in the Eifel. The post was later discovered as a forgery. The costumes were self-made, the actors were friends of the journalist.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the later informant Carsten Szczepanski tried to found a German offshoot of the Ku Klux Klans. He invited journalists from RTL plus to cross-burn with Dennis Mahon ( White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan ) . He also published two issues of a fanzine called "Das Feuerkreuz", consisting of articles from US clan magazines. In the mid-1990s, around 20 neo-Nazis met near Jena and burned crosses. The NSU members Uwe Böhnhardt and Beate Zschäpe and the NPD politician Ralf Wohlleben also took part . At the time, the Gera public prosecutor brought charges after they found photos at Zschäpe showing blazing wood and people giving the Hitler salute . In the spring of 2013, the Bundestag NSU investigative committee questioned Corelli (Thomas R.) from Saxony-Anhalt . He is said to have been one of the co-founders of an offshoot of the KKK in Baden-Württemberg and held the rank of Kleagles (recruiter).

In 2012 it became known that two police officers from Böblingen had been members of the European White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan for a few months in Baden-Württemberg . This branch is said to have existed from 2000 to 2002 with around 10 members. The case was also explosive because the police officers are colleagues of the murdered police officer Michèle Kiesewetter . In addition, it became public that the case had been kept secret by the authorities for ten years. In 2004 disciplinary proceedings were carried out, which ended with a reprimand for the officers. The two were admitted to the Ku Klux Klan with a blood ritual at the Geyersburg in Untermünkheim ( Schwäbisch Hall district ), but left again after a few months. Both were still in service in 2012. In October 2012, Reinhold Gall confirmed the suspicion that an employee of the Baden-Württemberg Office for the Protection of the Constitution should have informed the leader of the Schwäbisch Hall Ku Klux Klan offshoot that his phone was being monitored. This employee was then transferred to another state authority in the same year, the process was not further clarified at the time. Achim S., known in the Ku Klux Klan as Ryan Davis, who trained as a Grand Dragon in the USA, founded the Swabian Klan group in 2000, attracted attention by participating in NPD events and was a soloist the neo-Nazi bands Wolfsrudel and Celtic Moon . In 2003, Achim S. met with the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, where he testified that the police had boasted that they had arrested a “ negro ” and then came to the cell disguised in white robes. In November 2013, the Ministry of the Interior confirmed in a confidential briefing to the State Parliament Interior Committee that the group had been founded by S. According to S., there was a group of ten to twenty police officers in Stuttgart whose unifying element was a clearly right-wing extremist view of the world to six officers sought proximity to the secret society. A policewoman who worked for the drug squad and who had a strong hatred of black people is also said to have had contact with the clan. According to the Südwest Presse , two former members of this group are now active in the NPD.

A cross-burning near Grabow ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ) caused a stir in 2011 , which made German media aware of the clan. The cross-burning is said to have been organized by a clan group around a self-appointed bishop from Berlin.

A former member mentioned in an interview in November 2012 that the clan had also met in Sulzbach / Murr , Ansbach and Hesse .

The Office for the Protection of the Constitution of North Rhine-Westphalia announced in 2013 that there had been an Internet presence for Teutonic Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Germany - District NRW since July 2011 . The number of members is under ten, some of them were already known as right-wing extremists. In November 2011, a performance by David Duke was planned in Cologne , but he was arrested and expelled before his planned speech.

As of 2018, according to the authorities, there should be four associations as well as two closed groups in social networks that relate to the Ku Klux Klan.

On January 16, 2019, there was a major raid against 17 people throughout Germany. The police investigated against 40 members of an association that is said to be called the National Social Knights of the Ku-Klux-Klan Germany . It is said to be a presumably violent network. More than a hundred weapons, such as knives and machetes, but also alarm guns and compressed air weapons , were found during the searches .

literature

Shawn L. Alexander: Reconstruction Violence and the Ku Klux Klan Hearings. Boston, New York 2015.
David Mark Chalmers: Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. Duke University Press, Durham, NC 1981, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8223-0772-3 .
David Cunningham: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era KKK. Oxford et al. 2012.
Katrin Flückiger: Terror under the Stars and Stripes: White Supremacy in the USA. VDM, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-0378-8 .
Linda Gordon: The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition. Liverright, New York 2017, ISBN 978-1-63149-369-0 .
Felix Harcourt: Ku Klux Kulture: America and the Klan in the 1920s. University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2018, ISBN 978-0-226-37615-8 .
Stanley F. Horn: Invisible empire. The story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866-1871. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston 1939, especially An Introduction in pictures to the story of the Ku Klux Klan. Page 6 ff.
Dale W. Laackman: Selling Hate: Marketing the Ku Klux Klan. University of Georgia Press, Atlanta 2020, ISBN 978-0-8203-5809-3 .
James H. Madison: The Ku Klux Klan in the Heartland. Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2020, ISBN 978-0-253-05218-6 .
Michael Newton, Judy Ann Newton: The Ku Klux Klan: An Encyclopedia. New York, London 1991.
Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded Men: The Ku Klux Klan in Germany. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 .
Elaine F. Parsons: Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction. Chapel Hill, NC 2016.
Thomas R. Pegram: One Hundred Percent American: The Rebirth and Decline of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s. Chicago, Lanham, MD 2011.
Frank Pfeiffer: Brief world history of fascism: origins and manifestations of fascist movements and systems of rule. Edited by the Forum of German-Speaking Anarchists (FdA). Edition Assemblage, Münster 2013, ISBN 978-3-942885-41-6 , pp. 117 ff.
William Peirce Randel: Ku Klux Klan. Scherz Verlag, Bern and Munich 1965, licensed edition for Bertelsmann-Lesering, book no. 3416/7
Andreas Riffel: The Invisible Empire - the Ku Klux Klan from 1866–1871 as a secret society. In: Frank Jacob (Ed.): Secret Societies: Kulturhistorische Sozialstudien / Secret Societies: Comparative Studies in Culture, Society and History. Würzburg 2013, pp. 237-273.
Allen W. Trelease: White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. Baton Rouge, London 1995.
Wyn Craig Wade: The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America. 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, New York 1998, ISBN 978-0-19-512357-9 .

Literary and cinematic reception

The Ku Klux Klan - A History of Hate 114-minute documentary by David Korn-Brzoza for Arte (France 2019)

The Aryans (2014 documentary; Mo Asumang interviews Ku Klux Klan members)

The Birth of a Nation ( The Birth of a Nation , Feature Film 1915)

The Prisoners of the Ku Klux Klan ( Storm Warning , feature film 1951)

Cursed They Are All ( The Klansman , 1974 film)
Based on a book by William Bradford Huie , et al. with Lee Marvin , Richard Burton and OJ Simpson .

Betrayed ( Betrayed , 1988)

Mississippi Burning ( Mississippi Burning , 1988 drama)

The feature film, shot by MGM in the USA, deals with the murder of the three civil rights activists James Earl Chaney , Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in Neshoba County , Mississippi, on June 21, 1964 by members of the Ku Klux Klan (see Edgar Ray Killen ).

The Assassination ( Ghosts of Mississippi , 1996)

The Jury ( A Time to Kill , 1989), novel by John Grisham , and the film based on it, The Jury ( A Time to Kill , 1996)

Die Kammer ( The Chamber , 1994), novel by John Grisham, and the film based on it, Die Kammer ( The Chamber , 1996)

Black Klansman , 2014, book by Ron Stallworth , and the film based on it ( BlacKkKlansman , 2018)

Web links

Commons : Ku-Klux-Klan - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wiktionary: Ku-Klux-Klan - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

US Hate Groups Map: Ku Klux Klan. Southern Poverty Law Center .; accessed on October 11, 2020
Ku Klux Klan. In: adl.org . Archived from the original on January 26, 2007 .; accessed on October 11, 2020
John Simkin: Ku Klux Klan. In: Spartacus Educational. January 22, 2020 (English).; accessed on October 11, 2020
SEF Rose: The Banner of the Ku Klux. In: The Ku Klux Klan or Invisible empire. L. Graham, New Orleans (La.), 1914 (English, reproduced on archive.org).; accessed on October 11, 2020

Individual evidence

↑ Jonathan M. Bryant: Ku Klux Klan in the Reconstruction Era. In: New Georgia Encyclopedia . November 8, 2020, accessed October 11, 2020 . G. Ward Hubbs: Searching for Freedom After the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman. University of Alabama Press, 2015, ISBN 978-0-8173-1860-4 , pp. 47 f.

↑ James Michael Martinez: Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan: Exposing the Invisible Empire During Reconstruction . Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham (MD) 2007, ISBN 978-0-7425-5078-0 , pp. 8-10

↑ Rosengarten, Dale (ed.), Rosengarten Theodore (ed.), A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, Columbia 2002, p. 34.

^ Sexual violence: Riffel, Andreas: The Invisible Empire - the Ku Klux Klan from 1866 to 1871 as a secret society, in, Frank Jacob: Secret Societies - Kulturhistorische Sozialstudien, Würzburg 2013, pp. 237-273.

^ Ku Klux Klan. In: Tages-Post , May 10, 1868, p. 2 (online at ANNO ).

↑ Stefan Aust , Dirk Laabs : Heimatschutz. The state and the NSU series of murders. Pantheon Verlag Munich 2014, pp. 135f

↑ "Hooded Americanism" by David Chalmers.

^ Howard Zinn: A People's History of the United States . Harper Perennial, New York 2005, ISBN 0-06-083865-5 , p. 382.

^ Vander Zanden, James W. (1960): "The Klan Revival", American Journal of Sociology , Vol. 65 (5): 456-462, 456.

↑ KKK leader arrested after 40 years ( memento of August 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

^ Ku Klux Klan in: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk

↑ About the Ku Klux Klan ( Memento from February 13, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), in: archive.adl.org

^ Philip G. Asante: The Truth about Racism: Its Origins, Legacy, and How God Wants Us to Deal with It . WestBow Press, Bloomington 2014, ISBN 978-1-4908-2608-0 , pp. 89, 90

↑ Ku Klux Klan - Affiliations ( Memento from January 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), in: archive.adl.org

^ Anti-Semite shoots three people in Kansas , n-tv , April 14, 2014

↑ Anonymous takes on Ku Klux Klan , n-tv , November 18, 2014

↑ Semana Santa: Spain's hooded repentance. In: faz.net . March 24, 2005, accessed April 23, 2018 .

↑ Eric Pianin: A Senator's Shame. In: washingtonpost.com . June 19, 2005, accessed August 21, 2011 .

↑ BBC: Ku Klux Klan sets up Australian branch

↑ NZ Herald: Dark mystique of the KKK

↑ Sydney Morning Herald: We have infiltrated party: KKK

↑ Daily Mirror: We expose vile racist biker as British leader of the Ku Klux Klan

↑ Frederik Obermaier , Tanjev Schultz : Hooded men. The Ku Klux Klan in Germany . Munich: DTV. ISBN 978-3-423-26137-1 . Pp. 17-31.

^ Reichstag protocols : c) Procedure of the Berlin political police in the question of the "Order of the Knights of the Fiery Cross": Vol. 390, 204th seat. P. 7292D.

↑ Reichstag protocols : 1924 / 28.7: Procedure of the Berlin political police on the question of the "Order of the Knights of the Fiery Cross"