So the KKK was basically a huge group of people that didn’t like Jews, Catholics, Communists, or immigrants. They basically didn’t like anyone that wasn’t like them. They would lynch and murder blacks that just came back from the army. From 1918 to 1927 the number of lynchings increased a lot. There were 416 blacks that were killed in the south. Two black men tried to vote in 1920 and the KKK went and attacked the black neighborhood. There was a lot of violence and many, many black homes and churched were destroyed. The KKK was mostly focused on the south, Midwest and west, but there were also some members that were in New England. Some members burned down an African American school. There was a very violent group within the KKK called the Black Legion. They were from the Midwest.In 1920 the KKK set 200 saloons on fire and they didn’t like bootleggers. The KKK finally decided to have their main office in Dallas, Texas. Little Rock, Arkansas was the home of a KKK group of women. The first leader was a president of the Arkansas WCTU. They supported Prohibition and that brought a special bond between the members throughout the country. Sometimes members “overlapped” between some prohibition groups and the KKK. They sometimes had activities that they planned together.
The KKK got together in Oregon and they came from California and they got these klaverns. Klaverns are just like basic meeting places for members of the KKK. They had the highest percentages of white men together in the country. They got up to 14000 members. They made like almost 60 klaverns in like 2 years. They were mainly against Catholics. There was a law that was passed in Oregon and kind of like approved by the KKK that said that any school-age kid had to attend public school. This was the KKK’s attempt at getting rid of Catholic schools in Oregon. A lot of states passed the Blaine Amendment which said that the government had to stay out of religious schools and like they couldn’t shut them down.The KKK majorly affected the political changes in a lot of states that were mainly in the center of the country. They were mostly in the Midwest, North, and South states. They also moved into Canada because a lot of Catholic immigrants went there. At this time there were over 4 million members and it was 20% of the white, male population in most states and in some place it was 40%. Most of the members came from the Midwest states. The KKK went to California and took over the City Council, but was overruled in a special election. In some stated the KKK was kind of going for a social and political change. In 1925, the KKK was huge in the political force in Alabama. They were changing public schools, enforcing prohibition, and working on roads. They changed things that helped the lower class white people. This guy with the last name of Black was elected as a senator and then became part of the Supreme Court. I’m pretty sure that he had some connection with the KKK. Bibb Graves, a KKK head chapter, won the election to become Alabama’s governor.
There was a second Klan and they were both Republicans and Democrats when before they were only a Democratic organization. They really supported Prohibition. In the South the Republican party was not powerful at all. The South Klan stayed Democratic and hired like Democratic police people and other type of government people who were Democratic.They went to Indiana because there were a lot of politically strong people there and they wanted them to join the KKK. They went there and became very strong. In 1920 they had the most powerful KKK ever. When Edward Jackson became governor that is when they became even more powerful. There was a murder and the KKK was found guilty and that totally destroyed their reputation. In 1926 they were getting pretty bad. An author named Stetson Kennedy talked really bad about the KKK and that made it so many people didn’t want to join the Klan anymore. In 1950, Stetson wrote a very good selling book that destroyed the image of the KKK and made them become even smaller.
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