Part One: The Birth of the Ku Klux Klan

In Episode 44, Robert is joined by Katy Stoll and Cody Johnston to discuss the origin and rise of the Ku Klux Klan.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
What's cracking my pebbers? This is that? Is that how
we should open it? Sophie? Is that bad? Do you
look ashamed of me and ashamed of where you work?
And all of that? Shouldn't use shouldn't use that. Mick
is literally climbing up on the roof. I think to
jump off. I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards

(00:25):
the show. We tell you everything you don't know about
the very worst people in all of history, one of
whom is me Based on the reaction everyone had to
that introduction with me today in the studio trying not
to make eye contact with me because of their deep shame.
Are my friends Cody Johnston, Katie Stole that's okay. I

(00:46):
just cocked my head kind of quizzically. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
you were the most the most forgiving of that. All right,
we'll roll with that. I mean we did. There's no
taking it out. You can't edit audio. It's not like it.
So how's everybody doing today? All Right, I've got a
bit of a cold. I don't I'm feeling well and

(01:07):
I made the mistake last night. I've been cooped up
all week and so it was like, I really need
to get out. And so I went out with some
girlfriends and I had one and a half drinks and
it was a mist a set myself back. Also, should
have read the label warnings. I've had sudo fed in
my system, so I just like amplifies your drinks. It
was fun and then it wasn't. Yeah, you just like

(01:30):
throw your immune system for a loop. There. Well, anyway,
here I am if I know one thing that will
boost your immune system. It's spending roughly two hours learning
about the Ku Klux Klan. That's what my doctor said.
It's time to take our medicine. It's time for everyone
to take their medicine. I have that trump doctor of

(01:51):
the guys. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like
someone Hunter S. Thompson would have done drugs with and
then like walked away from like this is this is
too far? Is that photo that looks like somebody photoshopped
out a gun he was holding. It's pretty beautiful. What
a great doctor. Well, today we're talking about the birth

(02:12):
of the Ku Klux Klan UH and in UH in
part two we'll be talking about the second clan, because
they're two distinctly different things. So let's start with the
the o g KKK. On April nine, eighteen sixty five,
General Robert Elie surrendered to General Ulysses Simpson Grant near
Appomatox Courthouse, Virginia. It is, in my imagination, one of

(02:33):
the most satisfying moments in American history. You've got this
this rich, fancy, slave owning asshole and like his like beautiful, pristine,
bright uniform, handing over his sword to a working classman
grew up poor in a filthy uniform who has just
been drunk off his ass for the last thirty some
odd years of his life. It's just a great moment
to me. It's nice. Thousands of white supremacist soldiers who's

(02:54):
been the rest of their lives knowing that an army
commanded by this man and that included black men who
had previously been owned by them, had whooped them. It's
a nice, you know, nice to think about. Wonderful. It's
a good moment. It's a good moment. But it brought
a lot of resentment and anger among the Southerners. You
could see that happening really piste off some people, and
they stayed piste off resentment, and it has just been simmering,

(03:22):
like we've just every now and then we get a
president who's good enough to take the top off the
pot because like over but it nobody turns off the heat. Yeah.
So yeah, that's the situation. After Appomattox. You've got in,
you know, swelling back into the Old South from these
armies that Lee had commanded. You've got tens of thousands
of young men, many of them wounded, all of them

(03:42):
armed and experienced in doing violence, roaming the countryside looking
for excitement. Uh, and really hateful still of of black
folks that do away turns out terrible spoiler. Yeah, that
did not just would just like you know what, I
as racism lost, Your argument was better. So they didn't

(04:05):
really think the war was over. Well, they all got
the point that you can't fight the American government, but
they did not get the point that we should stop
fighting for racism. The debate was. The debate was not over.
They just like, yeah, we can't make more cannons than
those guys. They learned that lesson. So one of the

(04:25):
major sources for this podcast was a book called They
Called Themselves the KKK by Susan Barteletti. She opens her
book by quoting a number of white Southerners reactions to
the end of the war, including one former slave owner
from Virginia whose first reaction to the Confederacy surrender was
to ask about her now former slaves, if they don't
belong to me, whose are they? Pretty emblematic of the

(04:46):
additudes that you were not quite getting it. Yeah, So
here's a quote from that book. Before the war, each
slave was worth about one thousand dollars or thirteen thousand dollars. Today,
the average slaveholder owned between one and nine slaves, and
some of the wealthiest planters owned hundreds. Many slaveholders expected
the federal government to compensate them for their great monetary loss.
The wife of an Alabama planter bitterly described her family situation.

(05:08):
We had all our earnings swept away, wrote Victoria Clayton.
The government of the United States as the credit of
giving the black man his freedom, while it was at
the expense of the Southern people. Okay, okay, I'm not confused. Yeah,
I'm citing this not because I think both sides are
valid here, but it's important understand the temperature that the
South was at at this point in time. If we're

(05:30):
going to understand the rise of the first ku Klux Klan.
It started in Pulaski, Tennessee. Have you ever heard of Pulaski, Tennessee. Yeah,
it's that's about it. Yeah. Yeah. There were six former
Confederate officers, John Lester, Calvin Jones, Richard Reid, James Crowe,
Frank McCord, and John Kennedy. These men were pissed that
they'd lost the war, and they were also bored. War,

(05:53):
for all of its faults, offers a great deal of
excitement for able bodied young men. It turns out, board
and racist is a dangerous combination. John lay Lester later
recalled in his book quote, we could not engage at
once in business or professional pursuits. A few had capital
to enter mercantile or agricultural enterprises. There was a total
lack of amusements and social diversions, which prevail wherever society
is in a normal condition. So everything's fucked up because

(06:15):
of the war. Still, the South has been pretty ruined.
These guys are just they got nothing to do, right,
so they start hanging out in the law offices that
belonged to Calvin Jones's dad. Because these are all pretty rich,
upper middle class to upper class kids, and they were
all frat boys. They had all been in fraternities before
the war, and that will be very relevant here. Fraternity

(06:36):
is important, no matter the kind. Yeah, the fraternity just
important to have a fraternity's important, doesn't matter what they're about.
So at first they mostly drank and talked politics in
one of their dad's offices. Uh. This was going on
in eighteen sixty six. Now, in that April, President Johnson
had vetoed the Civil Rights Act. Congress had passed it

(06:58):
in anyway, but John's was a you wouldn't call him
a woke president vetoing the Civil Rights Act. Mac indion
on that. Yeah. Um. Now, the Civil Rights Act, when
it was pushed through by Congress, overruled the Black codes
that most Southern states had enacted to restrict the rights
of newly free blacks. There's been a race riot in
Memphis that May, which had been caused by a carriage
crash involving a black man and a white man. Basically,

(07:20):
there were a lot of racial tensions and the crash
would sparked them. Led to three days of writing, forty
six black people killed and two white people killed. So
this was all going on when these guys are meeting
in their dad's law office eighteen sixty six. The war
has just ended now. Depending on the source, I've read
that the decision to make a secret society from these
guys was made in either May, right after the Memphis

(07:41):
rioting or on Christmas Eve. Either way, it was somewhere
in the latter half of eighteen sixty six, and somewhere
yeah it's it really fits one way or the other. Um,
But it was sometime in the later half of eighteen
sixty six when John Lester told his friends, boys, let
us get up a club or society. Yeah, well, said
everyone talked, well that club society. Let us get up

(08:06):
a club or society now. Prior to the war, the
Kuklos Adelphon had been a famous college frat for many
Southern men. Kappa Alpha, as it was more commonly known,
had been founded in eighteen twenty five. Before it was
disbanded during the Civil War, there had been numerous k
A circles throughout the South. The word cuclose itself means
circle in Greek, and something about that imagery was inspirational

(08:27):
to the six Confederate veterans drinking in Dad's office. Now.
One of these men suggested they called themselves ku Close,
and another modified that to ku Klux because he thought
it sounded better. The word Klan was added to the
end since it also means circle. Susan Barneletti notes that
Ku Klux Klan can be literally translated to circle circle.
James sounds better than Ku Klux Club or Ku Klux Society, society,

(08:51):
Klux Boys, the Ku Klux Boys. James Crowe, one of
the former Confederates, noted, quote, there was a weird potency
in the very name ku Klux Klan. The sound of
it is suggestive of bones rattling together. Now, I'm all
about admitting brilliance wherever I find it, even in the
branding of racist assholes, And the name Ku Klux Klan is,
unfortunately an example of really good marketing. The proof and

(09:13):
that is the fact that there's still people gone by
the fucking ku Klux Klan today. You know the name works. Yeah,
that sharp consonant sound, it's you know, it's the Coca
Cola of racism. Now, after they locked down the name,
the six young frat brose did what frat brose do.
They wrote out a list of dumb rules, secret rituals, handshakes,

(09:34):
code words, and hazing guidelines for their new club. They
also created fanciful titles for themselves. Frank McCord would be
the president, but since president was a boring name, they
called him the Grand Cyclous. John Kennedy was the vice
president a k a. Grand Magi. James Crowe was the
Master of Ceremonies a k a. Grand Turk, and Calvin
Jones and John Lester were nighthawks or message like some

(09:57):
fantasy game. Yeah, so it's nerdy something like it's always
that nerdy twerpy like Grandga's like Hitler and his fucking
cowboy books. You know it's it's or Himmler and his
pretending he was a dead Danish prince and making everyone
dressed like knights, like buying all It's young kids who

(10:21):
read too many books and want to like be that
badass swinging a sword around and then get in power
and they're the hero. But like the enemy is like everyone,
not racism. They just can't bear the mondanity of normal life.
Guys like this, Like there's always that feeling of like
post war like young men have nothing to do. You know,

(10:41):
later on this would happen again and we do football.
We do football, like they're like, we gotta do with
the KKK. Yeah, And I've heard it said. And there's
a couple of different charity groups in parts of the
Middle East, I know in Egypt in particular, that aimed
at like stopping young men from radicalizing. Like the best
way to de radicalize a kids in the Middle East
is like soccer clubs and stuff. Nothing else. You give

(11:03):
them something like intern but like fun activities. Yeah, yeah,
I mean they do that different inner city programs to
reduce youth crime and after school programs. They're good. They're
they're good. And that's kind of how this starts. So
one of the weird things is that it doesn't start

(11:24):
off super racist. So I'm going to read another quote
from they called James o KKK James School, that's his
real name. What go on? Quote their organizational work done.
The Klansmen rated a linen closet. They pulled white sheets
over their heads, cutting two holes for eyes in another
for their mouth, and they raced outside and leaped destride
their horses and swooped through the town streets, whooping and

(11:46):
moaning and shrieking like ghosts. So I'm gonna guarantee you
they're drunk, drunk, just just like drunk Tennessee boys dressing
like ghosts. Yeah, it's so silly, you the little baby,
and look in their taste. Let's go, let's go ra
pretend to be ghosts. Like, hey, look what I found.

(12:08):
So the gang found an abandoned house to gather, and
so they didn't need to do their sewing and stitching
at Dad's office anymore. And for the next few weeks
they just kind of had fun with it, put on
their robes and then ride their horses through the country,
ruining or making parties, depending on whether or not the
partygoers enjoyed the side of a bunch of men pretending
to be ghosts. It wasn't racist. They weren't targeting black people.
They were just like fucking with everybody pretending to be

(12:30):
ghosts riding around, and it was like everyone was bored,
so like, yeah, this is something lar ping trolls. Interesting, Yeah,
interesting it Yeah, here's where it leads. Some clansmen were
silent during these rides. Other spoken low, gravelly voices that
they thought made them sound like dead people. At this stage, again,
there was nothing outwardly super hateful about the KKK was

(12:50):
just much of weirdos riding around. The club quickly made
a name for itself, though in part because eighteen sixty
six was an incredibly boring time to be alive in Tennessee.
John Less, one of the founders, wrote later, quote, its
mysteriousness was the sensation of the hour. Every issue of
the local paper contains some notice of the strange order. Now,
the Pulaski citizen of the local paper was key to
the rise of the first KKK. Its editor had a

(13:13):
younger brother in the clan, and in general it seems
like he did everything in his power to make the
KKK seem irresistibly cool. Notices like this were published in
the paper, ostensibly submitted anonymously by mysterious hooded individuals. Quote,
take notice the ku Klux Klan will assemble at their
usual place of rendezvous, the Din, on Tuesday night next
exactly at the hour of midnight, in costume and bearing

(13:35):
the arms of the clan, by or of the great Cyclops.
Now it's signed. That's really I'm going to read so
many ridiculous k names. You guys are going to so
tragic about how this starts. We're dressing up his ghost.
We're pretending to be dead. It's like we're already dead.
It's like they're just showing their pain. They're like, I mean,
maybe they probably saw some ships. Civil war is a

(13:56):
rough thing to say, you know, they're just expressing their
angsts are as. Yeah, yeah, it's you could see how
if like there had been trained therapists back then and
one of them around, he could have like guided this
in a positive direction. And it's like, oh, this could
be a healthy thing to do, Like yeah, like dress
up as your friends who died in the war and
let's you know, let's work through this ship. Yeah you could.

(14:19):
It's possible. It could have been pushing. Now, many local
men soon joined the clan. Most of them were Confederate veterans.
Like the founders, these people generally seemed to be the
crem of Southern society. Doctors, prominent churchmen, and respected former
Confederate officers. I'm going to guess, and awful lot of
them went by colonel in their daily life because it

(14:40):
was the South in the eighteen sixties and every third
man was a colonel. Now, for some early klansmen, the
thrill must have been the chance to see August. Members
of society debase themselves in preposterous hazing rituals. For example,
the KKK had a secret initiation. First, the initiate would
be blindfolded and asked ridiculous questions for the sole purpose
of embarrassing him. After he'd answered enough, the Grand Cyclops

(15:01):
would say, place him before the royal altar and a
door in his head with the regal crown. Then they
would all chant an oath, which the oath was, oh,
would some power the gift to give us to see
ourselves as others see us? And then after the initiate
finished reciting these words, the blindfold was untied, revealing a
mirror that showed the man himself wearing a regal crown,
which was in fact a donkey hat. Now they called

(15:25):
themselves the KKK. It doesn't go any more detail, but
the Southern Poverty Law Center describes that donkey hat as
two large donkey ears. So it's like a joke. It
was like, oh, yeah, silly you are, yeah, fun, And
then everyone would laugh at the guy looking silly in
the thing. And that was the initiation. So it's like
it's like some hazing, hazing, not hating that doesn't sound
so bad. It doesn't sound so bad. It sounds good.

(15:47):
I want to join, it sounds great. I'm selling the
clan right now. Works. It's kind of edgy, kind of fun,
kind of fun. You can see the appeal. Especially it's
eighteen sixty six and they're fucking nothing. Really really is
a driver for some awful, awful behavior. Yes, it's very
sad actually to me and like sylpathetic. Yeah, that's where

(16:11):
it starts. So in his book Ku Klux Klan Its Origin,
Growth and Disbandment, John Lester claims the clan spread almost
by accident at first, essentially as an old timey meme quote.
During the fall and winter of eighteen sixty six. The
growth of the clan was rapid. It spread over a
wide extent of territory, sometimes by a sudden leap. It
appeared in localities far distant from any existing dens. A
stranger from West Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas visiting in

(16:33):
a neighborhood where the order prevailed would be initiated, and
on his departure carry with him permission to establish a
din at home. These dens were loosely connected in any
central control by the grand cyclops of the Pulaski clan
was more formal than literal. It's hard to say those words,
it hard to listen to them. That won't even qualify
as silly. By the time we get done with all
the titles, they're going to be I know so. At first,

(16:57):
at least, according to one branch of scholars, the kk
K was mostly a way for board young white veterans
to drink and play pranks on themselves and others. Since
all these guys were racist as fuck, the relatively good
hearted pranks against their fellow white people soon gave way
to distinctly less fun pranks against black people. Luckily for us.
Back in the nineteen thirties, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had of
a bunch of interviewers go out and talk to former slaves,

(17:18):
because people were very old at the time, but there
were still a bunch of them alive, and these people
were asked about their experiences with the KKK, which had
just had its second resurgence in the nineteen twenties. So
I'm gonna read you a quote from Henry Gary of Birmingham,
Alabama relating the tale of an early clan prank. Now,
when these interviewers would talk to these former slaves, they
were given the explicit order of preserving their diction as

(17:39):
much as possible. And I am not going to read
that an exact diction because I think that might come
across as like a caricature. I'm gonna try to translate
it as well as I can. There's also a hell
of a lot of in words in these There's a
debate to be had when you're reading like a scholarly
document about whether or not you read the inn word
to preserve like the call, I'm not going to say it,
because I think that's a really good but there's a
debate who likes saying it racist? But like if you're

(18:03):
like a lecture in your Confederate documents, there's an argument
to me, but I I don't. I'm just not gonna
say so. Here's uh Henry Gary of Birmingham, Alabama, relating
an early clan attack or prank. My daddy went over
to where he was sitting on his horse at the well.
Uh then he the klansman said, and word, get a
bucket and draw me up some cool water. Daddy got
a bucket, fill it up and hand it to him, Captain,

(18:25):
Would you believe it? That man just lifted the bucket
to his mouth and never stopped till it was empty.
Did he have enough? He just smacked his mouth and
called for more, Just like that. He didn't stop till
he drunk three more buckets full. Then he just wiped
his mouth and said, Laurie, that share was good. It
was the first drink of water I've had since I
was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Now. Other interviewed
freed people claimed that the water trick was accomplished by

(18:45):
the klansman holding a bag under his robes that they
poured the water into right, so they would have like
a tube running from their mouth they'd pour it in
or something like that. Klansman also stole bones from dead
people so that they could pretend to rip off their
own arm and then hand it to a freed person.
The goal was to ski are black people so that
the newly independent black farmers would move away and black
citizens would stay out of predominantly white areas. John Lester

(19:07):
claims that the switchover from the prank based clan to
being regulators, as he puts it, happened accidentally when they
realized that black people who walked past their din got
scared by the lictors out guarding the door. When asked
their names, these lictors would reply, a spirit from the
other world. I was killed at Kickamauga. So these guys
are pretending to be dead Confederate veterans and they realized that, oh,
this is scary to people, and they start taking it

(19:30):
further and taking it further. So we're going to talk
about where this all leads and how it leads to
an orgy of unspeakable violence. But first, are you guys
in the mood for ads? The only thing I want?
It's like sunshine on my soul, all right, products, And

(19:52):
we're back talking about the k K K. So I'm
gonna read you another bit from John Uster sort of explaining,
you know, the evolution of the clan from like harmless
pranks on everybody to really just screwing with black people. Yeah,
just a prank. Bro. It's not quiet until it's just racism, bro.
Kind of like read it, it's just racism, bro. Quote.

(20:17):
In a short time, the lictor of the Pulaski Din
reported that travel along the road which he had his
post had almost entirely stopped in the country, it was
noticed that the nocturnal perambulation of the colored population diminished
or entirely ceased. Wherever the ku Klux appeared. In many
ways there was a noticeable improvement in the habits of
a large class who had hitherto been causing large annoyance.
And this way the clan gradually realized that the most
powerful devices ever constructed for controlling the ignorant and superstitious

(20:39):
were in their hands. Even the most highly cultured were
not able to wholly resist the weird and peculiar feeling
which pervaded every community where the ku Klux appeared. Every week,
some new incident occurred to illustrate the amazing power of
the unknown over the minds of men of all classes.
Circumstances made it evident that the measures and methods employed
for sport might be effectually used to subserve the public welfare,
to suppress lawlessness and protect property. So that's how they became,

(21:03):
in his words, a band of regulators really just stumbled
into it. Yeah. He says that their goal was to
protect property and preserve peace and order. Oh was it?
Now We're just cops, bro, We're just cops. Just fake
ghost cops. The realization of the power of terror. Yeah, yeah,

(21:23):
exactly under Ryan Reynolds movie The Realization of the power
of terror. I actually think the power of terror. That's um,
that's international. Okay, it translates. So tals quickly began to
spread across the Old South and communities of freed Black
people that ghosts of dead Confederates or men pretending to

(21:44):
be the ghost of dead Confederates had started to wander
the earth. Lester says that KK came in suddenly realized
that this, yeah, give them another way to dominate their
former slaves, and he and other races claim that the
clan's tactics were powerful because freed people were superstitious. Testimonies
from former slave who experienced KKK raids makes it clear
to me, at least, that superstition was not the issue
of the day. Here is freedwoman An L. Rick Evans.

(22:08):
The Ku Klux Klan just come all around our house
at nighttime and shooting the doors in the windows. They
never bothered anybody in the daytime. Then sometime they come
in the house, tear up everything in the place, claim
they were looking for somebody, and tell us they're hungry
because they ain't had nothing to eat since the Battle
of Shiloh. So superstition is probably not a major fact.
They're shooting into your house. It's like, we're ghosts. I'm

(22:28):
not scared of them being spooky. I'm scared they're gonna
kill me. There's dozens of them and they're shooting at
my house like it's I don't think they're ghost And
she was like a little kid at the time. They're
shooting at me, like, and it was clearly like, if
you're a black person this situation, the smart thing to
do was like, oh, yeah, you're ghosts. Yeah. So the

(22:57):
claim grew throughout eighteen sixty six. By April of eighteen
sixties seven, it had enough influence that when the Tennessee
Democratic Party held their first midterm convention to pick candidates
for the upcoming elections, the first elections since the war,
every clan leader in the state was invited. They called
themselves the KKK. Historians agree that the timing of these
two meetings was significant. It suggests that the Southern Democrats

(23:17):
wanted to ally with the Ku Klux Klan in order
to create a secret empire powerful enough to overthrow Republican
rule and battle reconstruction policies. No longer was the klu
Klux Klan a social club. With this secret meeting, they
became a paramilitary organization. So we can't fight the Union
on the battlefield, that's real clear to us. So we
need to fight them as a political entity to still

(23:39):
get as much of our way as possible. And if
these guys are murdering people in the streets and suppressing
black people from voting, that helps our bottom line. So
this is what the Democratic Party decides at the time
in Tennessee. Yeah, it's a new war, different war, it's
a different kind of war. Yeah. So during this convention,
the clan laid out the official prescript declaring that they

(24:02):
quote reverently acknowledged the majesty and supremacy of the Divine
Being and recognized the goodness and providence of the same.
We recognize their relations to the United States Government and
acknowledge the supremacy of its laws. So that sounds nice
and patriotic. What wasn't stated, but was very clear from
the context, is that the KKK didn't think all of
the U. S. Government's laws were valid, just like they
didn't think that all U s citizens deserve to be citizens. Now,

(24:25):
during that election season, the RNC put together a document
as well, a guy named or the sorry d NC
put together a document as well. Oh no, sorry, this
was the RNC, because they are publicly the Republicans were
putting together a document on like sort of. They sent
a guy named Shares around the South to um observe
the different kinds of people and classify Southerners into groups
that they could try to figure out a strategy for
winning elections in the South. Still, even though again the

(24:46):
Republicans had very little power electorally in the South for
you know, most of the post war period. So oh,
how things change. So this guy Shares divided the Southerners
he met into four distinct groups. Here's how we disc
the largest group of Southerners. They quote have no definite
ideas about the circumstances under which they live and about

(25:06):
the course they have to follow. Their intellects are weak,
but their prejudices and impulses are strong, and they are
apt to be carried along by those who know how
to appeal to the latter. So that's his description of
the bulk of the South. He noted that these people
had all been thoroughly convinced that furtherir armed resistance the
state was not the answer, but he warned that they
were still willing to do violence if the right justification
of rose. The KKK in essence weaponized these men uh

(25:30):
and that fact was clearly its goal by this point.
So once the Klan Prescript was completed, the Ku Klux
Klan declared itself the Invisible Empire. They divided the nation
in the different realms, dominions, and provinces, and prepared for
their organization to expand across the nation. The goal was
for the clan to be its own secret country of
racists inside the United States, with its own government dedicated

(25:51):
to the overthrow of every aspect of real society that
was not focused around white dudes. The pre script included
a list of titles for all their members. Okay Okay,
okay okay. The officers of this Ku Klux Klan shall
consist of a Grand Wizard of the Empire and his
Tin g I, a Grand Dragon of the Realm and
his eight Hydras, a Grand Titan of the Dominion and

(26:13):
his six Furies, a Grand Giant of the Province and
his four Goblins, a Grand Cyclops of the Den and
his two nighthawks, a Grand Magi, a Grand Monk, a
Grand exchequer, a Grand Turk, a Grand Scribe, a Grand Sentinel,
and a Grand insign. The body politic of this clan
shall be designated and known as ghouls. No, no, wait

(26:35):
a minute, real quick, when it's like the Grand Soul.
And so with his eight dwarves, um is that seven
different positions? Does he get? So he gets to a
point his dwarves, Yeah, he gets, he gets his his
his goblin dwarfs, his grand Magizes, his night hawks. Fascinating, fascinating. Yeah,
it sounds like cool cool. It's almost indistinguishable from chunks

(26:59):
of D and D source books that I read. Yeah, yeah,
it really could be. Now. The KKK printed up a
bunch of copies of its new prescript and sent them
out to every den in the country for ten dollars
about a hundred and forty five dollars in modern money.
The clan also picked a leader to go with their
new more formal style and goals, and they picked as
their leader who else but famous racist Nathan Bedford Forrest.

(27:21):
Now Forrest was a former Confederate cavalry general and in
general a very smart guy. Some historians consider him to
be the greatest cavalry commander of the modern era. I've
read people who will argue that it took the European
powers until nineteen fifteen or sixteen to figure out some
of the things he knew at the start of the
Civil Wars. And he's very good at fighting, and it's
like one of these really good enough I mean, I say,

(27:41):
the reason that he was so popular among these people
he's one of these very few guys in the cavalry
who actually fought with a sword on horseback against other guys,
like killed them. Like. So he's the biggest war hero
that the South has alive other than generally like they
gets him in Forest he's the guy. He's the guy.
So he's warrior. And you can see why all of

(28:04):
these kind of want to be guys would flock to
the plan. Fucking Nathan Bedford Forest is in charge. Yeah,
well there you go, smart casting. Smart casting. During the
Civil War, he'd been described as a wizard of the Saddle,
and so his office title was Grand Wizard. Yeah. Forrest
was famous, particularly within the community of former Confederate veterans.
His name attached to the growing notoriety of the KKK

(28:26):
cause it to swell with new blood, many of them
combat hardened former cavalrymen who were super used to killing
people from horseback. Yeah. It's at this point that I
should note that during the Civil War, Nathan Bedford Forest
was the commanding officer of what would be known as
the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the garrison surrendered, Forest ordered
his men not to treat the forts three black soldiers
as POWs. They were all murdered. So that's this guy,

(28:48):
this guy who winds up in charge of the clan,
and we don't know a tremendous amount about his actions
as head of the KKK because it was a secret
and a quasi illegal organization. He's always kind. They're always
covered with that. Damn she it was secret. What I
What I do know is that more than a century later,
a painting of him led to one of the funniest
headlines I have ever seen in the Washington Post. Cody,

(29:09):
why don't you just try to read that quote? I
thought it was very nice v a official showcase portrait
of KKK's first Grand Wizard. I imagine saying is I
thought it was very nice. Old man, just a man
on a horse. It was very nice. Now. Forest claims

(29:31):
that despite the surgeon membership, the KKK brought in only
the best people. Quote this is Nathan Bedford, Forest bed
no bed for bed for that's his nickname. They admitted
no man who was not a gentleman and a man
who could be relied upon to act discreetly. No men
who were in the habit of drinking, boisterous men, or

(29:52):
men liable to commit era or wrong or anything of
that sort. What doesn't seem like they followed their own rules. No, No,
they did not. Susan Barteletti, using primary sources, makes a
strong and not surprising case that this was nonsense, and
she played W. P. Burnett, a seven year old illiterate
man and klansman at the time. Quote pretty and I
everybody in our neighborhood belonged to the organization. The leaders

(30:14):
pushed the poor people into it and made them go
on rates. I was induced to join because they came
to my house and told me if I didn't, I'd
have to pay five dollars and take fifty lashes. Well,
you're gonna get you an army if you whip people
that don't join people can't join us fast enough, either
be racist or will hit you. Well, I'm already racist,

(30:34):
so I'll pretend to be a ghostism into this fake ghost.
Newspapers continue to play a crucial role in this stage
of the clan's development. Rather than just advertising meetings and
drumming up suspense, many newspapers started to carry what we're
known as coffin notices. These were threats to enemies of

(30:56):
the clan and of course any black people who lived
in the area. And here's I I gotta read it.
Here's here's how one of these was written. The Sergeant
and the Scorpion. Already some shall weep, some shall pray.
Meet at Skull for the feast of the wolf and
dance of the muffled skeletons. The death watches set the
last out wur cometh. The moon is full. These losers,

(31:21):
My god, it's someone who at least it's as someone
who was bullied for bringing D and D books to
class when I was in middle school. I kind of
get it. I get it. Maybe you gotta put that
back in the hole sometimes. The Ku Klux Klan was
strong enough by eighteen sixty eight to make a major effort.

(31:43):
In the election, Republican U. S. Grant faced off against
Democrat Horatio Seymour. The clan broke for Seymour. By that point,
racist had hit upon the idea of scaring black people
into not voting and then basically doing everything possible for
their control of the state and local governments to make
Black people kind of close to slaves again. This series
of innovations eventually brought us Jim Crow, but in eighteen
sixty eight it brought k k K and Nighthawks putting

(32:03):
together dossiers on local black people who registered to vote
or gotten some sort of job they didn't think black
people ought to have. The KKK also targeted white people
who planned to vote for Grant, and while their main
focus was clearly political repression of the Republican Party, they
also seemed to decide, well, since we're out here committing terrorism,
we might as well be vigilante cops too, So they
reported on white men who abused their wives, sold liquor

(32:25):
on Sunday, and, according to Barteletti, even quote boys who
didn't mind their mothers. Ryan Randolph and Alabama Grand Cyclops
explained the ku klux did not consider themselves lawbreakers, but
as law enforcers. So the clan would hold regular meetings
to vote on whether or not to punish someone for
selling liquor or being a black eye vaguely near a
white woman. Some people they'd warned, some people they'd whip.

(32:46):
Some people they just straight up murdered. White people were
more likely to start their interaction with the KKK via
a warning. Maggie Stenhouse was born enslaved in South Carolina.
Here's how she recalled one of the clans visit to
her home a warning to her father, who was a preacher.
The client did not like black preachers. Really, we're not
fans of that. The clue klux came, pulled off his
robe indoor face, hung it up on a nail in

(33:08):
the room, and said, where's that Jim Jesus. He pulled
him out of the room. The crowd ran off. Mama
took three little children, but forgotten me and ran off too.
They beat Papa until they thought he was dead and
throwed him in the fence corner. He was beat nearly
to death, just cut all to pieces. He crawled to
my bed and woke me up and back on the steps.
I thought he was dead. Bled to death on the steps.
Mama come back to leave and found he was alive.
She docked him up and he lived thirty years after that.

(33:29):
We left that morning, we switched states, left her farm,
and they would regularly go to the farms of black
people who would like had like right when they were
about to harvest, and run them off of their farms
and take their ship. Yeah to the clan. A visit
like that was a success. They wanted the black family out,
and they got what they wanted. The book they called themselves,
the KKK, gives more detail on these raids. Quote traveling

(33:52):
by horseback, a clanned in might cover to thirty miles
in one night. What is called a raid is a
night's trip, explained James Justice, a state legislator from North
Carolina who was pistol whipped by several clansmen. They may
commit twenty violations of law and one night. Justice estimated
several hundred acts of clan violence or outrages in his
county alone over a twelve month period, and even greater
numbers in the neighboring counties. On a raid, the clansmen

(34:13):
always outnumbered their victims, sometimes forty or more to one.
During the attacks, some clansmen acted theatrically, speaking in fake
foreign accents are gibberish. They claimed to have come from
the moon, risen from a Confederate grave, or traveled from
the depths of Hell to sek revenge, expanding their stories.
I do love that the moon comes into it. He consistent, though,
you gotta like, I mean, where a Confederate ghost? Are

(34:36):
you from the moon? He would just do the moon tonight, guys, alight, alright, alright,
that won't be a goblet. Were moon Cops Cops another
great TV show, I would totally watch Moon Cops. Who
do we get John Goodman? John Goodman? And uh, what's

(34:56):
his name? Crazy teeth? He was in the second Predator movie,
Crazy Teeth, Crazy Teeth. He's also crazy his son is
in Starship Troopers. And also it's a fucking weird looking guy.
Can we have Henry Winkler just for fun? Yeah, we
get it. He would be the commission He was like
the FBI agent. Yes, yes, that's him. Showed Cody the

(35:20):
picture for Gary Busey, John Goodman and Gary Busey. I
can see that way too. Wow, I'm ashamed a little bit.
I mean, I didn't know any of those clues. But
but I'm also excited to see Mooncups. Mooncups. It's in production.
It's in production right now. It's already been green with

(35:42):
Henry Harry Winkler. Henry Winkler, he doesn't have to the commissioner.
He adds something beautiful to everything he touches. So, you know,
it would be nice, like, since you're going to have
these guys who are both loose cannons, if the chief
was actually really calm and chill the moon Cops, yeah,
kind sort of supportive. Yeah, bakes them bad like muffin

(36:04):
baskets after it goes bad. Moon he's the base from
which they springs, the anchor that gives them license to soar. Also,
they're from Hell and their ghosts and their all ghosts
of the Moon. I know there's a lot of casting
agents out or you know Netflix, it's free. Yeah, come on,

(36:26):
you got you're making so many shows. Make mood Cups
just raised our rates. So back to the thing. Ku
Klux Klan spread like wildfire during eighteen sixty eight and
eventually into every former Confederate state as well as Kentucky.
For some reason, South Carolina at the first state to
succeed had the highest clan membership per capita. Nathan Bedford
Forrest told the Cincinnati Reporter that year that the KKK

(36:48):
had a nationwide enrollment of five and fifty thousand men.
This former rebel general claiming to have raised an army
of half a million men cast some understandable uproar. What
with yeah? Five days later, four started saying that the
estimate was fake news, misrepresented by the reporter. He didn't know,
but he said misrepresentative. He said it was bad reporting.
I got to bring some modern times and it's people

(37:10):
get it. But it is the same thing. Because he
said it was thousand people. He lied. Now historians do
regard that numbers fanciful, but it's clear that the KKK
was large during that time, and several hundred thousand members
is very probable in this period. Now, not all of
the clan, as we already stated, we're virulent racists. Many
of them were just poor guys who were like everyone

(37:31):
else in town has joined, and we're going to get
fucking shot at. They're just gonna come by your house
and funk us up, so we might as well join
the clan. Probably, I mean everyone everyone. We're not calling
them woke, but they wouldn't have been fucking with people otherwise.
They're just like, yeah, Julius looks the other way and
not cared too much. Yeah, it was the South in
eighteen sixty eight that counts as woke, not not actively

(37:53):
shooting people who are right. I don't think they have
to die. I'm a progressive. I don't load a bullet
my gun when I fire it near the house of
a You're welcome, You're welcome. Junius Tendall nineteen went on
three raids with the clan. He reported later quote, I
was pressed into the order for They said we had

(38:14):
to keep the Newgros down. They said we had to
keep them from overrunning white people. One of his raids
was to scare off a group of black people who
planned to hold a dance, clearly a threat to white supremacy. Yeah,
here is another quote from that book. They called themselves
the KKK. Today, psychologists explain that people who join groups
such as the Ku Klux klanner and secure and feel
a need to do something that makes them feel powerful

(38:35):
or superior. Perhaps W. E. B. Dubois, historian and civil
rights leader understood clansmen best. These human beings at heart
are desperately afraid of something, of what, of many things,
but usually of losing their jobs, being declassed, degraded, or
actually disgraced, of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans
for their children, of the actual pangs of hunger, of dirt,
of crime. Yeah still fits psychology. Yeah. I always love

(38:59):
to stop by here and hearing passages about today just
as applicable they were human nature. Here, we hurt others
because we are afraid and are in pain. I am scared.
So I'm going to shoot a gun at someone who
doesn't look like me. Oh yeah, they're not. They don't
look like you. They don't they don't look like me.

(39:19):
Who am I? If I don't have someone to hate,
it's their fault. Everything like that. It's their fault for
not looking like me. You go, you know what, That's
not a good way to segue into an AD. It's
a terrible way to segue into an ad. Uh, segways
are nice. They killed that guy, you know, the guy
who owned the copy. This is off the rails as

(39:41):
an AD. Wow, you've tried, though you tried. I didn't.
I did try. Anyone got a product you want to
plug before we roll in, Just a random product, anything
you like. I'm enjoying this coffee that I've been drinking.
I'm not a fan of cold brew usually, but today
it's okay. So if you like coffee, pick up a
bottle of whatever kind of coldbrew we have at the office.

(40:01):
Nobody here remembers the name. Don't tell us the name
would be. If you do, just guess, you'll probably be
right or not. And if you don't want to spend
the money, I'll not just make your own. Yeah, just
let coffee get cold, that's right. Products. We're back in

(40:25):
February of eighteen sixty eight, when super racist President Andrew
Johnson had impeachment proceedings brought against him. The clan threatened
Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican congressman, quote, this is a free country,
and by Heaven, we will not submit to your damnable
laws any longer. If we have not the power to
remove the laws, then we will remove those who make them.
It's a letter they sent him. So there was a

(40:45):
lot of blood letting all throughout the South during this period.
In the run up to the election, South Carolina and
Tennessee were particularly dangerous places, and black people were regularly
beaten or murdered for registering to vote, or helping other
people registered to vote, or even sort of looking like
they might plan on voting someday. A black editorial writer
in Charleston summed up the defiant attitude of many freed people.

(41:06):
If we are to be a massacred because we refuse
to vote the Democratic ticket, if we are to be
murdered in cold blood, then let it come. We can
die but once, and in spite of the Klan's terrorism,
newly freed black men turned out to vote in huge
numbers in Georgia. A hundred of them armed themselves with
rifles and handguns in March twelve miles to vote. There
were countless similar stories, groups of women marching in mass

(41:27):
dozens of miles without the knowledge of their husbands to
donate money to us Grant's campaign and receive a button.
The activism and voting of newly freed black people paid off.
On November third, eighteen sixty eight, Ulysses Simpson Grant was
elected president in a landslide two fourteen electoral votes to eight,
and Grant, I gotta say he gets a lot of
ship in history because there's a lot of corruption in
his administration, which was not super weird for the time.

(41:49):
Everybody was corrupt as for any time for any time.
US Grant was a guy never owned a slave. His
wife did, but he was not a slave owner. Was
not an abo shiinist prior to the war in general
because he was just a hardcore alcoholic and didn't really
have strong opinions on anything, but didn't like slavery, beat
the Confederacy, and as a president stuck his neck out

(42:10):
a number of times to pass laws and push things
that would like aid in like. He was like, these
people are free, they deserve to vote, and was like
it was pretty good about pushing that like and sacrificed
a lot of political capital to do the right thing
in that instance. Not a perfect guy, but if you're
looking at like presidents that weren't shitty for black people
up until like fucking like lb J almost TC might

(42:34):
be the best. Um, I mean f dr to like,
but like he he gets he should get some credit.
Um also smoke dozens of cigars a day, chain smoked cigars,
drank alled. I heard a really cool rumor that the
reason he was so successful as a general because like McClellan,
Lee thought was a way better general than U. S.
Grant Um. But McClellan didn't fucking do anything because he

(42:57):
was too scared to get his army massacred. And so
some stories are well Grant would mainly get wasted after
like planning and stuff. So maybe it was just the
fact that he would like, Okay, this is the plan.
I'm gonna go get ship faced, and like, wouldn't second it.
I've done, and I'm not going to stay up all
night and then panic in the morning. I'm just gonna
get wasted, wake up, hung the funk over and let

(43:20):
this battle happen. And yeah, I like I like U. S. Grant.
He's an interesting guy. Uh So the Klansmen responded to
his election with an orgy of violence. The Republican legislature
in Tennessee passed a law allowing the governor to send
the militia into enforce. You know the fact that you
can't murder people. Uh. Nathan Bedford Forrest threatened to raise

(43:43):
forty men if the Republicans sent in the militia. He said,
I have no powder to burn killing negroes I intend
to kill radicals. There is not a radical leader in
this town, but is a marked man, and if trouble
should break out, none of them would be left alive.
One of these radicals, apparently was William Luke. He was
a white man who had the goal to come down
from Canada and educate freed black people, because as soon

(44:04):
as you know these people were freed, there were suddenly
millions of people who had never gotten an education wanted
to learn how to read the stuff, and so a
bunch of very brave teachers swarmed into the South. Luke
was radical of them. Yeah, I'm not. I'm just gonna
worried about killing radicals. I'm gonna use it. Ghost army,

(44:25):
radical radical teaching people numbers right. So the KKK warned
William Luke to leave, and he did not listen. Even worse,
he dared to fight back. So quote, around midnight, three
klan dens met at a Baptist church where they voted
to take the law into their own hands. On horseback,
they headed into town and overtook the guards. Realizing his fate,

(44:46):
William Luke allegedly told the klansman, I know I've done wrong,
but I don't deserve this. At gunpoint, the Klansman abducted
the five prisoners just outside Cross Plains. They lynched the
four black men from a tall oak tree, the guys
who'd been protecting him. Saving Luke for last. Before hanging,
they allowed him to write a letter to his wife,
who still lived in Canada with their six children. It's
a heartbreaking letter. It's a heartbreaking story. Yeah, but that's

(45:08):
the KKK. The American Missionary Journal reprinted the warning that
one of their teachers received from the Mississippi kkkden to
give you an idea of the sort of warning these
people sent out. And it's going to be m Larpi.
First quarter, eighth bloody moon Ere, the next quarter be gone,
Unholy teacher of the Blacks, begone ere. It is too late.

(45:31):
Punishment awaits you, and such horrors as no man ever
underwent and lived. The cusped moon is full of wrath,
and as its horns fill, the deadly mixture will fall
on your unhallowed head. Beware, when the black clack cat sleeps,
we are the dead and yet live. Who are watching you, fool,
adulter and cursed hypocrite? The far piercing eye of the
Grand cyclops is upon you fly the wrath to come

(45:52):
ku klux Klan. It's pretty embarrassing you talk like that
way that way around your kids, like they save it
all up for these kinds of save it all up
for these kinds of things. They were just if someone,
if if fucking Gary Guy Jacks had invented D and
D in one, we might have been saved a lot

(46:13):
of trouble. Yeah, they just wanted to like talk like
that with their buddies. Really, some impulses that might have
been redirected away from murdering people, just like, let's bring
that over here. Yeah, there's a productive way to do that.
Have you thought about writing short fiction? A sheet off?
Here's some Diecraft was just as racist as you, and

(46:34):
people still read his stuff. If you heard what his
cat was made, don't have it was the inn word. Really, Yeah,
I knew that. I forgot about that. Yeah, it's really bad.
It's really bad. The KKK continued to raid after the
disastrous eighteen seventy election, during which the Democrats lost again.

(46:56):
All this violence was eventually too much for the President ULYSSI. Simpson.
Grant was not a perfect man. He himself would have
been the first person to tell you that. But he
seemed to genuinely believe in legal equality for black people,
or at least more legal equality for black people than
the vast majority of white folks were willing to put
their neck out for him. And he was no fan
of some goddamn confederate raising an army in his country

(47:17):
and terrorizing. I know u s grantacy. They're like a
rebel army. Yeah, and one thing we tell about not
like rebel armies. In April of eighteen seventy one, he
signed the Civil Rights Act of eighteen seventy one into law.

(47:38):
At the time, it was known as the Ku Klux
Klan Act. This act made it a federal offense to
interfere with someone's right to vote, hold political office, serve
on a jury, etcetera. It was basically the y'all have
to start treating Black people like people Act. This act
banned groups of people from conspiring to where disguises to
intimidate or hurt people. Any group accused of these crimes
we tried in federal court. The act also authorized the

(48:00):
federal government to send in troops and to spend habeas corpus.
It's the kind of ruling that can be terrifying even
when applied to racists because of its implications. But there
was no slippery slope into tyranny this time. Mass Arrestive
clansmen followed in its good thing to mass arrest. If
you kind of mass arrest, somebody wouldsmen maybe maybe goblins here,

(48:20):
the dwarves there, low gets in there, I want to
hear Charlie from Always Sunny in Philadelphia read the KKK
right fun not place at all. YEA, many clansmen flip
the country. In South Carolina, two thousand prominent citizens and

(48:41):
clansmen left for Canada. Maythan Bedford Forrest and the grand
tradition of all good right wing gang leaders rolled on
his fellow clansmen in exchange for immunity. Nothing change. That's
a good stuff. That's that ship. He was questioned by

(49:02):
Congress quote from they called themselves the KKK. Despite the immunity.
Forced evaded the questions, often claiming he didn't know, although
men who knew Forest While credited him with a quick
mind and a good memory. Forced repeatedly told the prosecutor,
I do not remember and I do not recall. He
refused to admit his role in the clan, but he
justified the orders vigilante violence, arguing that klansmen defended the

(49:23):
South against Northern Republican aggression and from outrages committed by
black people. I think this organization was got up to
protect the week, said Forest, with no political intention at all.
Forrest claimed to have ordered the clan to disband back
in eighteen sixty eight. He successfully held up under congressional testimony,
and later in a bar was heard telling a friend,
I've been lying like a gentleman. Okay. I love it

(49:49):
so literally, just like I didn't start it. I don't
have anything to do with it. But I think it's
a good club. It's a good club, pretty good club
because the world man. Yeah, I gave him Againnis mabn
him from that playbook History, It's great. Look how it happens.
In the three thousand, three hundred nineteen Clansmen were ultimately

(50:15):
brought in as a result of the government's war in
the KKK. A little over eleven hundred were actually jailed.
Here's the Guardian quote. Maria Carter of Harrelson County, South Carolina,
testified that klansmen broke into her home, pointed a gun
at her husband and frightened him to the point that
he could not speak. They forced Carter's husband to go
with him to a neighbor's house, where the assaulted a
woman so ferociously that Carter remember that the house looked

(50:35):
quote as if somebody had been killing hogs. There. The
men shot and then severely whipped the woman's husband. Carter's
husband was beaten mercilessly. His clothes were blood soaked. In
the next morning, they clung to his body. After Grant
one re election, he went on to pardon many of
the arrested clansmen under the justification this was the only
way to heal the divide between white people in the South.
It may have done that. What is certain is that

(50:55):
by eighteen seventy two, the KKK was no longer a
major force in public life. Fortunately for racists, it turned
out that vigilante violence was never the answer they were
looking for. Gradually disenfranchising black people through the law was
the answer. In eighteen seventy seven, the first Jim Crow
Laws were passed, bring me an end to the brief
period of time where Southern blacks had a notable amount
of political power. The plan would stay buried for decades.

(51:18):
Jim Lester, writing in the eighteen eighties, ended his book
on the KKK with this line, there never was before
since a period of all history when such an order
could have lived, May there never again? He was wrong
about that. On our next episode, we're going to talk
about the phoenix like resurrection of the KKK during the
nineteen twenties. It's going to be a gigantic bummer, but

(51:39):
not the bummer you're expecting. Okay, Yeah, this one goes
some weird places. But before it goes some weird places,
y'all should plug the plugables that you have to plug plugables. Yeah, yeah,
watch our show and show yea our podcast news show.
The videos show is called Some More News is on YouTube.

(52:01):
It's on YouTube. You can check out patreon dot com,
slash some More News on Twitter dot com slash some
more newsweet, and we're on We're on the Twitter Twitter
to thank you for taking that ball and running with you,
Dr Mr Cody, or you can find me on Twitter.
You can find me on Twitter at I right. Okay.
You can find my book on Amazon, A Brief History
of Vice, and you can find me in your heart

(52:21):
anytime you enjoy the satisfying crunch of the Dorrito's corn
based snack. My god, just thinking about Dorrito's. How do
you say that? I really want to you guys want
to grab some Dorritos before? Yeah? Yeah, well let me
let me plug the stuff that's not Doritos and then
we'll have a little derrito break before we talk more
about the KKK. You can find us online behind the

(52:41):
Bastards dot com. You can find us on Instagram and
Twitter at Bastards Pod. You can buy t shirts, reverse
clan robes, and other branded content like cups at t
public dot com. So bye bye and I'll so bye bye.
By the episodes over m h m hm