Forbidden History - KKK: Secret Societies

Episode Date: November 19, 2024

The Ku Klux Klan is the most notorious white supremacist group in America. Once having over a million members, today it is just a shadow of its former self. Forbidden History investigates today's Klan members, looks at the impact the group has had on America over the last 150 years, and examines whether America is heading for a new race war. Cast List: Lawrence Battiste: Mobile Chief of Police Richard Cohen: Southern Poverty Law Center Michael Frierson: Son on FBI agent, Dargan Frierson Daryl D Davis: Author, Klan-destine Relationships Gary Freeze: Professor of History, Catwaba College Mark Potok: Southern Poverty Law Center Susan Sutton: Indiana Historical Society Alice Von Kannen: Author & Researcher James, Ken, Mackenzie, Monica, Richard: KKK Members Eric Meyers: Narrator Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains mature adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. The Ku Klux Klan is still the most notorious white supremacist group in the world. But from its small beginnings, how did it grow to such huge numbers? How has the clan continued to cast a dark shadow over American society? And what has been its true impact?

Nowhere else in American history is such terror so widespread without organization. It was war between North and South. The Klan is the oldest terrorist group in the United States and in a sense really the original one. The initial clan was set up very privately the most secret of secret organizations. The Ku Klux Klan is a peculiarly American phenomenon, but hate and white nationalism is an international one. We go inside the KKK today to reveal the truth about the most notorious white power group. The Ku Klux Klan was born here and thrives here.

I didn't say thrived, I said thrives here. The advantage of having a secret society is that nobody knows what your numbers are, nobody knows where you are. I think the Ku Klux Klan will be with us as long as we have people with hate in their hearts. And I think the real threat from the white supremacist movement probably takes a different form today. Is America heading for a new race war? You cut off its head, you think it's dead, and eventually it grows another head. These are folks who have kept away from the cities who want their countryside preserved. They endlessly see an invader, and they endlessly see that any change,

whether it is with a flag or a law or a custom, will endanger them. them. We have always had political extremism of one stripe or another, but never in such a kind of criminal form as we see it in the clan. Civil war has never ended. It's still the fight that America fights for its own identity. Southerners are still Southerners. They've been hundreds of years.

Northerners are still Northerners. What saves us are all the new people who come and keep between us. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, many ex-Confederate soldiers, perils, raided the streets in white sheets and hoods in an attempt to attract young men to join their new social group, the Ku Klux Klan. They saw the abolishment of slavery as a threat to their country and God-given rights. As a result, clan membership quickly grew to millions across the whole southern United States. Secrecy was paramount as their crimes worsened, often committed by senior society figures. Well, the clan initially arose and pretty much a direct response to what happened at the end of the Civil War,

the freeing of the slaves and ultimately the making of citizens of the slaves. It began in a small town in Pulaski, Tennessee, near the Alabama border, and really what it was initially was a kind of prankster society. There were six ex-Confederate officers who got together, who were bored in this small town, and decided to form a little club. They used the Greek name for Circle, Ku Klux. and that is where the name Ku Klux Klan comes from. They dressed up in all kinds of wild outfits.

This pretty quickly turned into more or less harassing black residents in the area, making fun of them. They would do certain kinds of things like dress up in such a way that was supposed to suggest that they were the ghosts of Confederate officers from the Civil War. The story that six young men met to form a kind of social club with a kind of mystical circle in it is pretty. probably has a kernel of truth.

But I have always believed that the Klan started in places like Pulaski, Tennessee, because it was in the edge of what was a cotton growing area. Almost everywhere you find the Klan in 1866 and 1867, it is young men trying to resurrect their lives in places where cotton had once been king, and they wanted to restore that. The initial clan was set up very privately the most secret of secret organizations. No one really knew for certain who was in the clan, but the only name connected with it was the ex-Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. It developed into a movement essentially of small, like-minded groups that popped up in various

places around the South. until about two years later, 1867, where a meeting was held in Nashville where Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate general and slave master, was made The Grand Wizard, which was the title for the leader of the Ku Klux Klan for the very first time. Forrest really led the clan through its very most violent period and in effect terrorized, in particular in the Republican Party, into staying away from the polls, into backing away from any kind of political work and so on. The first Civil Rights Act with any teeth was passed in 1871, along with something called

the Enforcement Acts, and they were passed because of the violence being perpetrated by the clan. They were passed by President Grant, who had had enough. And he also declared the clan a terrorist organization, which meant that if you were discovered to be a Klansman, you could be hanged. And so the membership was very secret, and we really don't know how many... Historians play games, make estimates, maybe 15% of the white males, but we don't know. In fact, by the beginning of the 20th century, it's estimated that the first wave of Ku Klux Klan membership

had seen it grow to 5 million people, some 25% of the South. We know very little about the ritual of the clan. Again, these men, they lived underground like moles. We do know about the dress. They were always masked. Very often they would wear cloaks. Generally, it was putting a potato sack or something over your head, putting something around you to hide who you were getting on your horse and riding out. Even in the early days of the clan,

its members wore masks to hide their identity, which at the same time gave them a distinctly menacing appearance. These gentlemen of the South definitely definitely did not want anyone to know their identity. And that was the chief point in being masked. The mask is the only thing that would remain with the clan through all of its days, is that they had to cover their faces

because they were too cowardly to come out and say who they were. They didn't want anyone to know who they were. I've seen pictures of clan riders. You do see the occasional conical-looking cap, but the conical cap, as we know it, It's been connected to a dozen things, including, ironically enough, the Uden Hood, the Jewish hat that the Germans often made the Jews wear in earlier centuries. But it's believed that the later clan connected it with the Spanish Inquisition.

Today, the mask and the conical hood have become the most powerful symbols of the clan and of white supremacy. To me, the clan has always been a very logical manifestation of rural life. that you band together for survival, that you go through certain rituals that give you power, in a place that often makes you feel powerless. By banding together, that power can manifest itself far more effectively than through individual protest or, shall we say, individual acting out.

The Klan has an ethic of the group dynamic that I think reappears each time the Klan reappears. A Klansman or Klanswoman they come from all walks of life. So they have different perspectives. But one thing they all hold at the top of their priority list is preservation of the white race.

Behold the fiery crawls! Still brilliant! It shall birth right as morning. For all decades! Look, despite the fact that the clan today is incredibly weak, the reality is that individual Klansmen still pose a very real and significant danger,

at least to people immediately around them. Christian religion, a symbol of faith and hope and love. Amen. Amen. Coming up, we visit a clan meeting in North Carolina. Tell the story of an FBI agent who infiltrated the clan. And we investigate the brutal lynching of a black man in Mobile, Alabama in 1981. The Ku Klux Klan is the most notorious white supremacist group in America. But how did it grow to such huge numbers during the last century?

What impact has it had on U.S. politics? And what influence does it still have today? There are estimated to be about 5,000 Ku Klux Klan members in the USA, nearly all of them, in the southern states. They regularly gather for rallies, barbecues, and even cross-burnings. Its members include teachers, accountants, hospital staff, and even local politicians. Many clan members are in the members. Klan members are in the military and carry concealed weapons.

A gathering in Roxborough, North Carolina, allowed our producers in. This is a social gathering that we're having. It's part of the Kuklux and the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. And our goal here today is to have a meeting to gather our white race together and wake up white America and let them know what's going on in the world. Our race, our history, our culture, our heritage comes from

thousands of years of history and we don't want to lose it. Well, being, this is the national rally and brothers from all over the states are coming in. And it's a good place where we're all together and can do this. We're part of this organization to help save our history because we are losing our history. I want my son to grow up knowing what's right. I mean, you know, black and white dating just ain't. I don't agree with it. The son needs to learn and know how I feel. You know what I mean? That's what we're here for, fighting for.

Every day. That's what I join for. That's what I want my son to say. I mean, it's all about the white kids. That's what we're here for for the future generations to teach them. If nobody teaches them, they won't know the truth. The clan has always brought the family along because if what they're trying to perpetuate is family and what they perceived to be the pure family values. It's very much like farm life always was. The kids learned the chores from early on. They increased their ability to do the chores as they matured,

and when the adults aged out, they took their place. The clan today is really a shadow of its former self. The clan is the oldest American terrorist group, and probably will be the longest lived. Two members of the Ku Klux Klan were, arrested today in connection with the death of a young black man who was beaten and hanged from a tree in Mobile, Alabama. The FBI says Michael Donald was killed in a random act of clan revenge with the murder of the white police. On March 21st, 1981, a 19-year-old African-American

man named Michael Donald was stopped by Klansman in Mobile, Alabama. He was then viciously beaten, hung from a tree, and dragged down the road tied to a vehicle. It remains one of the most brutal racist attacks in American history. We spoke to local police chief, Lawrence Batiste. We are headed to an area of town where Michael Donald was hanged by a number of individuals in his community, which claimed association or ties with the clan. The death of Michael Donald created a feeling of fear and apprehension, didn't really know where you could and you could not go as a result of Michael Donald's death.

We first became involved in the Michael Donald case by really reading about in the newspaper. You know, there was this talk that it was a drug deal gone bad. We were suspicious of that always. The FBI and the Justice Department broke the case. You know, we saw the two people who were convicted. One person had pled guilty. another person was convicted at a trial, then the rest of us thought, you know,

it wasn't just these two fellows. There must have been something more behind it. The Klan had a long, long history of violence, and we began to investigate the case, you know, quite extensively. We're currently on Michael Donald Avenue. This sign here is a landmark for Michael Donald. It says on March 21st, 1981, 19-year-old Michael Donald was abducted, beaten, killed, and hung from a tree by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

To have a black man hanging from a tree sent a message that racism still exists. It may exist in secrecy, but it still exists, and that there are people in this community that have a stake in saying, we don't want you guys here. And so it did send a loud message. Sent the message that you need to be careful about where you go, when you go, and who you go with. A dramatic decision today in a courtroom in Mobile, Alabama. A judge has sentenced a member of the Ku Klux Klan

to death for the murder of a young black man. What happened to Michael Donald was a terrible thing. These men who lynched him, one of them's been sentenced to death, and one of them was in jail for the rest of his life, and that's where they should be. But you can't hold the organization responsible. That's why we proved that the Klan had a policy or a custom and practice of care

carrying out its goals through violence. We had a very graphic thing from the Klan's newspaper. The Klan's newspaper was called the Fiery Cross, right? The idea was we're purifying Christianity and, you know, this is what black people deserve. You turn the page and there's a black man lynched. And, you know, that was a message, you know, that violence was okay, that black people deserved to be lynched.

The vicious murder of Michael Donald at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan was a tragic illustration of just how far the clan was prepared to go during the last century. And that tragic incident proved what many still fear today that the clan has an extreme element who are willing to torture, maim, and kill in the name of their dangerous ideology. My dad got out of Army Air Corps in World War II and went directly into the FBI and was an FBI agent from, say, 1948 to about... He came to Greensboro because Greensboro was one of the centers of the racial unrest in the 60s.

He was assigned to work on the clan and develop informants in the clan through a program that Hoover called Co-Intel Pro White Hate, which was basically investigation of all the white hate groups in the United States. He was fortunate to get a lot of people at the top of the North Carolina clan, the United Clans of America in North Carolina. His primary informant was George Dorset. George Dorset was a house painter and a preacher. He had a very powerful fire and brimstone speaking style. The devil has a roaring line. And that meshed well in the clan because he was one of the primary speakers at the rallies. So he became sort of the fiery voice of the clan in North Carolina.

The peanut, right, God denied, atheist, agnostic infidels. My dad, you know, he told me many times that he approached Dorset four or five times before he was willing to actually cooperate with him, give him information. I think there was a reluctance initially to work with the FBI, but I think the money was good. Over the years, Mr. Hoover sent my dad many letters of commendation. Many of them were for work he had done in the racial field. He was one of the top FBI agents recruiting clan informants in North Carolina. With expanded jurisdiction in the fields of organized crime and civil rights, the FBI scored decisive blows against Ku Klux Klan violence.

As is well known now, George Sir Seth, was also the informer. He was in a sense the snitch, even at the time he was rallying the troops. Frankly, I don't think anyone's ever come to grips with that, even he, before his guilt or whatever it was he ended up with. He essentially was doing something I think that he truly believed in and at the same time selling it out. So you could argue that George Dorset was the true realist. He knew that the days of the clan were measured. They were number. they would end, but he wanted to get the truth in as long as he could. There's little doubt that the FBI had some success with their infiltration of the Klan,

but that led to deeper radicalization of splinter groups, which went further underground. Despite the jokes making their way around the South that half the people in any Klan meeting were FBI informants. That wasn't true. The Klan was being reborn. It was being reborn quickly. There were lynchings by the score, there were beatings, there were people being threatened. It was very much a replay of something that I think most northerners and intellectuals thought was long dead. It was a replay of the old clan. Secrecy has always been vital to the Ku Klux Klan. Susan Sutton from the Indiana Historical Society has found a small figurine

which was used to indicate if a meeting was a full clan event, or whether non-Klan members were also present. The statuette would stand at the point of entry for members. And the story is that if both arms were in place, then the people present were all members, and it was safe to speak about anything. If the arm was not in place, then there were people present who were not members,

And so any kind of secret business was not to be discussed. He says on the bottom, K-I-G-Y, which means Klansman, I greet you. And of course, he's only greeting them if his arm is in place. The advantage of having a secret society is that nobody knows what your numbers are, nobody knows where you are. And as far as the way the clan viewed itself,

in terms of their state. secrecy. They had no shame about being secret. They knew that being so secret inflated their numbers in people's mind. The so-called mystery and sexiness of the clan is such that we actually have tiny little clan groups popping up in places like Australia and Germany and so on. There's a kind of weird romance associated with it. Although the numbers are rapidly diminishing, the clan still has a passionate following in the South. A gathering in Roxborough, North Carolina, allowed our producers in as they prepared a large cross for the evenings burning.

Some members claim that a new war is coming, where the white majority will, as they put it, take America back. The lighting of this cross represents Jesus Christ is the light of the world. He is our existence. He is the reason that we are on this earth. And so we light this cross in honor of what he has given to us. We're not the first to do this. You know, this has been done for hundreds and hundreds of years.

This is our Confederate battle flag. What it represents is our Confederate soldiers in the South. In 1958, the Confederates, the Confederates, or the Confederate veterans, soldiers, were brought in as U.S. veterans, veterans and their gravestones are being desecrated. The flags are being torn off of them and nobody's doing anything about it. They're destroying us. They're trying to kill us. They're wiping us off the face of this planet. And we want to wake up America and put a stop to it. And now then they're trying to take the clans out of our history, out of our history, out of our southern heritage.

And y'all got that looking good. Then once they get rid of our southern heritage, they will not be satisfied until they destroy the heritage of this United States. A cross lighting represents the light of Jesus and how he shines down over all of us. It is important because our biggest thing is our Christian base. Our kids definitely need to know about their heritage and where they came from. They need to be proud in their race and know that it's okay to be white now. When you are inducted or initiated into the Ku Klux Plan, you go through a secret ritual, a secret initiation ceremony in which you give an oath,

and you give a pledge to preserve the white race, to preserve white womanhood, you give your life, you also make a promise never to reveal any clan business to aliens. An alien is anyone who is a non-clan member, and to always uphold the values and policies of the Kuklux Klan. Young white people, they see the movement for Black Lives Matter, and they say, gosh, we're losing the country. What about us? You know, and so they try to figure out a way to kind of express

what in their mind is ethnic pride in kind of a warped way. We've seen plenty of cases of young people in the North with Confederate flags. Well, what can that mean? That's not the historic Confederacy. It's just an expression of whiteness in their minds because they feel embattled. There are no real boundaries in this.

It's just part of a social movement that takes your money, organizes your energies and engages your families. You get everything in one package. You get the costumes, you get the ideology, you get the family concerns. It has elements of the church, it builds community, and most of all, it keeps out the alien. It promises you that your children will have a future

that you control, not they. The Ku Klux Klan is the most famous white supremacist organization in the United States. It originated at the back end of the 19th century when it attracted a massive following throughout the southern states, and it's still active today, although with just a fraction of the membership. After what was known as the first wave of Ku Klux Klan members in the late 19th century, a second wave flourished early in the 20th century. For the most part, it attracted ordinary law-abiding citizens who were regular members of

society. But of course, there was always a constant undercurrent of racially motivated hatred. The Ku Klux Klan returns to the South, complete with traditional white hoods. One of its leaders was a politician named D.C. Stevenson, who was appointed state leader or Grand Dragon of the clan in Indiana. In 1925, he was tried and convicted for the rape and murder of a young white woman, Madge Oberholzer, a state education official. His trial, conviction, and imprisonment ended America's belief of clan leaders as law-abiding citizens. It was an enormous scandal at the time. Klansmen at the grassroots quickly began to learn that this was not what they thought they had joined.

And very quickly, we'll call them, more respectable members in each community began to distance themselves. I mean, the case of D.C. Stevenson was a remarkable one because, of course, the clan had spent most of its history railing on and on about protecting the virtue of white women and chastity and all those good things. So here is essentially the most important clan leader in the country who is found guilty of the incredibly savage rape leading to death of a white woman. You have to remember that Stevenson chose the venue for the trial. It was in Noblesville, heavily clan area at that time. And 12 white men on that jury listened to her deathbed statement and they wanted to hang him. The best they could do was second-degree

murder and they gave him second-degree murder and they recommended life. Despite the outrage over the Stevenson case, the clan remains strong in the southern states. Its notorious white gowns and hoods and its cross-lightings and ceremonies all continued to attract a loyal following. Darrell Davis is an author who's written about the Ku Klux Klan. He also has a collection of of KKK robes. This is the robe of an imperial wizard. This is called a myoke, a blood drop emblem. The red circle, the white cross, and the red blood drop.

These black lines here, they form caves. There are four of them. And they stand for knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The White Cross, of course, represents Christianity. And the blood drop means that they will shed their blood to preserve the purity of the white race. I think, you know, the Klan has the best, you know, uniforms out of all of the fraternal organizations out there, you know. I looked into masonry and all like that over the years, and I found it quite born.

And then with the Klan, it never gets old. Darrell Davis has the uniform of a Baltimore police officer. He was not an undercover police officer in the Klan. He was a bona fide clan leader on the police force. This is in recent times, just back to the 1970s. The clan is still thriving, and is thriving more and more every day with the advent of a black president being in office, with the advent of more and more people coming into this country, immigrants,

who do not have white skin color. The clan sees that as a threat. So that's why we're seeing the rise in recruitment efforts. We're seeing the rise in lone wolf attacks. Because they're thinking is, hey, if the Klan can't do it and the neo-Nazis can't do it, and if you want to get it done right, do it yourself. Ten thousand white women were raped by a black man. Because the Klan of the 60s was so much a terrorist organization,

membership was extremely secret. There was certainly infiltration at certain points by law enforcement. But by and large, in the South, the Klan had very good connections to police departments. So there were police departments like Birmingham, Alabama, that were essentially allies. of the Klan, and that was true all around the South. You know, you found very often that police officers would be secretly members of the Klan. It was very much a secret society because, of course, it was engaged in terrorism of the most extreme kind. The focal point of every Klan gathering for over 100 years has been the lighting of a huge cross.

It's a symbol of their strong Christian faith, but it's said to also have a darker meaning. The cross-burnings were usually part of clan rallies. The cross-burnings announced an event. They weren't part of the ritual. The ritual was very much patterned after the ritual of all other organizations at that time, who all were patterned after the Freemasons. And they all followed suit. You rose through levels.

You became a goblin. Officers were called things like Cleegels. Their book of ritual was called the Cloran. Raising money was called a clobocation, and the money was called collect token. The burning of a huge cross is still very much part of KKK ceremonies today. And despite the differences and rivalries that exist between different clan groups, it's one element that unites them all. Clan groups sometimes get together during the year for different occasions.

These are rival groups, but they might have a barbecue, a pig roast, some kind of gathering, and they will have a cross-lighting ceremony. It's called a cross-lighting when it's done ceremoniously. When it's done as a threat or intimidation, it's called a cross-burning. It's kind of a unity in brotherhood. But it's all fake. There's no foundation for it. It's all quicksand.

Because as soon as they leave, there's still rivals with one another. They don't join forces. And then every now then they'll form a federation of clan groups. But it's like having three chefs in the kitchen. You can't have three Imperial Wizards in the same clan group. You know, it's just too much ego, too much power, and they quickly disband. While efforts are being made to move away from the imagery associated with the KKK's racial hatred, the question remains, are they still capable of posing a threat?

What does the future hold for the KKK? The clan really has been a generational phenomenon. If you think about it in the broadest context, the people who first met in Pulaski had children and grandchildren who would then join the clan about a generation later. And those people had sons and grandsons who joined the clan about a generation later.

There have been three waves and three broadly speaking generations that have attempted to keep the South in its traditional mode. That may be going away today, but there are remnants of it still around. The Ku Klux Klan today finds itself at a crossroads. Its aims and its racist beliefs appear more out of touch than ever before. In July 2015, the Confederate flag was lowered for the last time outside the State Capitol building in Columbia, South Carolina. They pull a Confederate flag down,

but then you've got the New Black Panther Party with their monument that they have, and they can openly preach that they want all white people dead. The Ku Klux Klan is not hate. We love our race. We love and believe in the perpetuation and a preservation of the white race.

That's what we want. I'm not sure the Klan will ever die. And that's a sad thing to say. At this point, the membership of the Klan is pretty sad. Five to eight thousand probable. That doesn't count all the organizations that have been spawned by the clan. The Oklahoma City bombing was carried off by, what, three guys? And essentially one guy caused that kind of grief and death and destruction.

So it doesn't take a lot of people to cause social chaos. We have to face up to the ugly fact that the American South has taken a very long time to recognize the humanity of all black people. and that when the clan manifest itself in any wave, the reservoir that is underneath white Southerners is often that brutalization of African Americans. The enduring impact of the Ku Klux Klan is that it delayed the true promise of being America,

that it kept the American South from truly joining the rest of the nation in a manner and a fashion that would have given it true, equality. And in that way, it harmed not just the region, but it harmed the rest of the nation as well. I think there's just too much history wrapped around the clan, the invisible empire, night riders are sexy and appealing to certain kinds of people. So I think that probably for the foreseeable future we will have little clan groups around the United States and elsewhere. I've traveled over the world, I've never been to a country that didn't have a race problem.

I don't think the clan will ever die. I just think at this point it's a joke. All these groups are morphing and diminishing. Are they necessarily going to disappear totally? No, I always believe in the 95%. But what we don't have anymore is the South the Klan really wanted to defend. It's going away. The KKK has a dark and violent history,

but its actual membership is now a small fraction of what it was a century or more ago. Its current members rail against a perceived marginalization of their way of life and against migrants and a lack of resources for who they see as true white Americans. They threaten that a war is coming, where white Americans will take their country back. But today in this fast-moving, technology-driven, and multicultural world, their old-fashioned and racist views seem wretchedly outdated and out of touch. much.