The day 30,000 white supremacists in KKK robes marched in the nations capital

[IronLionZion]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/08/17/the-day-30000-white-supremacists-in-kkk-robes-marched-in-the-nations-capital/?utm_term=.2918cf9bdbbf



The Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its popularity when more than 30,000 members — racists and anti-Semites marching 22 abreast and 14 rows deep – paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Aug. 8, 1925.

“White-robed Klan cheered on march in nation’s capital,” read the front-page headline in The Washington Post the next day.

The gathering dwarfed the hundreds of white nationalists, Klan members and neo-Nazis who descended on Charlottesville Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The rally turned into a riot as the white supremacists clashed with counterprotests, leaving 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead and many others injured.

Nearly a century ago, the Klan was welcomed to segregated Washington by its white residents, as the breathless coverage in The Post demonstrated.

“Phantom-like hosts of the Ku Klux Klan spread their white robe over the most historic thoroughfare yesterday in one of the greatest demonstrations this city has ever known,” read The Post’s account.

This was the time period when the United Daughters of the Confederacy put up statues and monuments all across America, including states with no confederate history.

It was also the time when a fine progressive Democrat from the North decided to fire black federal employees mainly in manager or supervisor positions and implement segregation in federal departments under the pretext of rape prevention. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_events_segregation.html

[ismnotwasm]

1. K&R

[frazzled]

2. Yes, many of the statues date from that period.*

And that is why it is perfectly legitimate to remove them. They are not historical monuments: they are the remnants of a movement to reinstate hate.

*Many other of the statues were erected in the 1890s, as Jim Crow laws were coming into being, or in the 1950s, in opposition to the burgeoning civil rights movement in the South. The vast majority are not relics of the Civil War Era; they are white supremacist reminders and warnings.

[Lithos]

3. Not quite true

Most statues come from an earlier time period peaking around 1900 and coincide with the deaths of most of the veterans. The period discussed here is from the post WW1 period.

[frazzled]

8. I think my statements cohere pretty much with that chart

We see the ascent begin in the last years of the 19th century, reaching a peak around the time of the article posted in the OP about the massive Klan rally, in the mid 1920s.

Then it begins to decline, and there is another, smaller bump during the Civil Rights era--that it is smaller is largely due to its confinement to the Southern states.

[Lithos]

9. You are making several assumptions

That the Klan is 1) Directly related to the DCR and 2) the Klan's rise corresponds to the DCR, and 3) The Klan during the 1920's (when the march happened was based on the South.

None of these are true. While the Alt-Right does inherit it's agenda from the KKK, it's related to the Nativist Second Generation of the KKK which was based out of the Urban Midwest and sprung up as a reaction to immigration in the 1920's changing the demographics of the Urban Mid-West as well as the corresponding reaction to Industrialization. This in turn had an earlier group called the "Know Nothings" which found support to those in 1840 New England who felt threatened by the influx of Catholics from Ireland and Germany.

My other point I want to make is that none of this really has to do with Southern Heritage - it's just an opportunity. Most of those who were on campus came from out of State from places like Ohio and California. I'm not defending keeping up the memorials - even those which were just placed to honor the local dead need to go - such is the taint which these bigots have placed. Even if they had been martyrs of the highest order, the taint these bigots have given things makes them highly toxic and they need to go. I am very frustrated though with how people in general keep resurrecting the dead and making very stereotypical and highly revisionist statements to serve their purpose. I am also concerned people are making the wrong conclusions and thus missing the bigger picture.

First, the KKK of the 1920's represented a wholly different group of bigots than the KKK of today and a group which is the basis for Trump's ideology. It was not based in the South and had nothing to do with Neo-Confederatism.

Background:

The Klan has had roughly 3 main phases of life. The first was post Civil War and lasted until the End of Reconstruction. The Second Coming of the Klan was from 1915 to 1940 with the height in the mid 1920's; the third with the rise of Civil Rights and focused primarily on White Supremacy.

The first Klan was formed to intimidate the freed slaves and to overthrow the Republican dominated State Governments in Reconstruction. It was declared a terrorist organization in 1870 and shut down by the US Government.

The Klan's second rise in 1915 was based in nativism related to a general bigotry against Blacks, Jews, Catholics and Immigrants and focused on Isolationism and found its greatest strength in the Mid West urban areas. I believe reading at one point that Indiana at one time boasted the greatest membership for a given state. The emphasis was not on Southern symbology, but rather a twisted interpretation of Patriotism and Protestantism. They attacked whites as equally as blacks; the Jewish ADL was formed as a result of these attacks. In addition for racial/ethnic concerns people were killed for perceived moral violations. They opposed Unions. They also did not use the Confederate Flag or care about rewriting Southern heritage, but rather surrounded themselves with the US Flag and tried to be uber-Patriots. In the 1960's you would have called them John Birchers; today they are Alt-Right fronted by the more media-savvy Fox News and Breitbart.

See this interactive map on the rise of the Second KKK

https://labs.library.vcu.edu/klan/

The third rise of the Klan in the Civil Rights era did adopt Southern iconography as it was focused primarily to support segregation and was decidedly a rawer form of White Supremacy. This is the group that has adopted Southern revisionism. But again it was a resurrection in name only - adopting the rituals and iconography, but with a different bigoted agenda and only reaching a much smaller base.

What we are seeing today is the third generation of Nativist politics - a far broader and more dangerous group as it is a broader and bigger than the smaller KKK and Again, the second KKK was a bigoted nativist movement opposed to immigrants and those who were different and was based in the Urban Mid West which at the time was seeing a huge demographic change due to immigration along with the rise in Industrialization. It bares a very striking resemblance to the bigoted and nativist "Know Nothing" party in the 1840's which was based in New England and reacting to the rise of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany and the rise of Industrialization. Both groups were led by political opportunists who prayed upon their membership for both power and money.

[Danascot]

4. Was Trump's father there?

nt

[dalton99a]

5. And Fred Trump was arrested in the same time period

Memorial Day 1927

[DanTex]

6. "PRAYER FAILS TO HALT RAIN AS PARADE ENDS" lol n/t

[IronLionZion]

7. Dont leave, Mueller exhorted. God wont let it rain.

But the rains came, washing out the demonstration, and many left.