Part Two: The Grifters Who Resurrected the KKK

It's two days after you heard our last episode, but it's just minutes after we recorded the last one. But in those minutes we've grabbed us a dorito or three. There are so many derritos in here there. They are interesting, they're delicious. I mean, how do you guys like the tapato ones? That's spicier than I expected, Because that's spicier than tapatio is. It's got a real kick if that's what you're looking for. Tapatia is my go to U sauce. So I'm like at crystals. I grew up with crystals hot.

You know who would not have liked tapatito doritos? K I'm gonna I was hoping that was a seamless transitionless transition to the KKK. Well, then we should keep talking about tapatio. I was hoping for another reason to not like the KKK. So in Part one we talked about the Original Clan, which was a terrorist organization that started as a bunch of drunk frat boys pretending to be ghosts and turned into a murder gang headed by a

former rebel general. Finding how that works. Part two we're going to talk about the rise of the KKK in the nineteen twenties, which was an order of magnitude larger than it was in the eighteen sixties and a hell of a lot weirder. This is not going to go where you think it's going to go. This is a weird story. Keep saying that a lot harder. It's hard to a magic super excited because it's already weird. It's already weird. Our Grand Magus and our you know queen.

There there's no queen, Imperial Emperor. There are some king Kleigels in this one. I don't know what a klegal is. I do. It has to deal with the Grand the Grand Kegels. The Grand Kegels came later. We're not part of the clan. They didn't come later that. That was very good, Cody, that was very witty. W We're gonna check out for the rest of the episode. You know what, just dial tone for the rest of it. You guys got your dose a comedy. You want to go get

a drink. Thanks for stopping by, stopping by, all right, here's the episode. In nineteen nineteen, a pamphlet started circulating amongst the townships and villages of the American countryside. On its front was a drawing of a klansman on a rearing steed. The title was the Ku Klux Klan Yesterday, Today, and Forever. The flyer's purpose was to announce the glorious rebirth of the KKK. It opened up by defending the first clan, the ku Klux Klan. The Invisible Empire was

the great idea that's capitalized of American reconstruction. We say American reconstruction for the reason that all America was affected by reconstruction influences. It actually says influences, and I guess that the racists. This is what the President models his tweets after. I was going to say more capitalizing and like the South most of all, yes, but nevertheless all

all is capitalized for the great threat. Great threat is capitalized to the white race that loomed on the horizon of the South, would have spread through the entire nation had not the white robe of the ku Klux Klan kept unrevealed those courageous and devoted hearts that were consecrated to saving the Anglo Saxon civilization of our country, protecting the homes and well being of our people, and shielding

the virtue of womenhood. The original ku Klux were not outlaws all caps or moral degenerates all caps, nor did they perpetual outlaw rate, which is a great way we don't use that. I really like this is the clan and they're terrible, but I really like satisfy claimant. They were men of moral and social standing, and their leaders

were men of sterling character and unquestioned culture. They reverently bowed to the soul of real law all caps, and swore to enforce its principles of justice, protection, and the pursuit of happiness. That strong arm fought valiantly for the preservation of the integrity of the race against the cruelty of base, unjust and tyrannical legislations and insufferable conditions, no joke. I feel like that's formative literature for Trump. Like, I mean,

he grew up reading this. He's definitely got some better words in there. I think. I mean his dad's there's rumors that he was in the clan during this. I mean, like this is the kind of and they've got drafts of these things, like laying around the Trump household when he was a kid. They got the moral degeneracy there that. Yeah, although I got a promise, this is not gonna go where you're thinking now. I read a book for this episode, to the Second Coming of the KKK by Lynda Gordon.

I want to advocate reading both of the books for this podcast because they're both good. But Lynda Gordon's book is really special. It is almost unbelievably dense. I've rarely in my life encountered so much information from so many different sources consolidated into a single book of this size. I'm just kind of in awe of the amount of work she must have put into it, and like how

like it's it's really good. We're only using fractions of it for this episode, but it is a fantastic book, so I really recommend giving it a read if you're interested in the history of American radical right wing extremism. Now, this book claims that the second KKKS rise was directly inspired by the release of a movie, Birth of a Nation. In Birth of a Nation was a fanciful story about the first KKK and how they saved white women from Ray Peppi Friedman. It was the first film ever shown

at the White House. Woodrow Wilson fucking loved it, saying, quote, it is like writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is also terribly true. Maybe America's where as present if you're getting this guy's opinion on it, what with the whole Nazism and and that with what with a lot of things. William Joseph Simmons, a doctor from Atlanta, Spanish American war veteran and minister, was a

huge fan of the movie. When he got back from serving garrison duty during the war, he drifted around a number of jobs, showing no aptitude for anything, and joined fifteen different fraternal orders. Now, today, for rats are just something that a chunk of college kids do, But back in the day, there was very little going on, and most men were in a fraternal order of some type. Many were in multiple It was an extremely popular way to have something to do and feel like part of

a community. So community is important, very important. Simmons was desperate for a community, but none of the groups he joined fit the bill. He was a fan of Birth of a Nation, and he'd been inspired by the lynching of Leo Frank, a Jewish man falsely accused of rape and murder. None of them, Bill, they weren't quite evil and fired by the lynching of It's not really inspired me, Like, what about? What about it? Simmons started reading about the

original clan. He bought a copy of the original KKK prescript, mixed in a little bit of Masonism, and tried to start up his own fraternal order, essentially cause playing as the Ku Klux Klan. Simmons is KKK was just as racist as the original, but was also differently bigoted. It ranted against quote the hairy claw of Bolshevism, socialism, syndicalism, i w W, is UM and other isms. I w W.

The International Workers of the World are very influential grouping unions. Yeah. Uh. He believed that these forces were quote seeking in an insidious but very powerful manner to undermine the very fundamentals of the nation. Yeah, first letter in nations capitalism. Yeah, I knew this was going to be right into the vein for you. So when the KKK had last ridden, socialism had not really been a buzzword in America. Marx and Ingles had only published the Communist Manifesto in eighteen

forty eight, and ship traveled slowly back then. Social democratic parties were starting to become a thing in Europe by the late eighteen sixties, but most of the US was off doing its own thing. The assassination of William McKinley by a Polish American anarchist in nineteen o one really helped to pour gas on that whole fire. Simmons started advertising for KKK two, this time It's Clannier. In nineteen fifteen.

He fully reloaded or Electric Boogaloo. You know, you pick your you pick your own sequel title, KKK Harder, you know whatever there's there's. In his promotional materials, he described it as quote a classy order of the highest class, capitalized, no class man, no roughnecks, rowdies, nor yellow streaks. Real men whose oaths are inviolate are needed. His oats are inviolate, inviolate in violent. Yeah, they're not going to break their oaths and their bond class of higher class, very good class,

very classiest men. It was not exactly an instant hit. Only a few dozen people signed up at first. Simmons went out of his way to find a few very old former clansmen to join. He proclaimed himself the Imperial Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and started holding meetings. Now, unlike the original clan, they didn't start off doing anything out in the world. This was just a place where grown men went to engage in weird ass quasi magical rituals with other masked men. It

was LARPing. LARPing as the KKK, who were themselves larpert circle circles, circle circle circles inside of circles exactly. Now. In order to codify some of these rituals and established standards for his new organization, Simmons published the KKKS Holy Book in nine guys want to guess what it was? Called? The uh Clanmicon, the tone of the the Martian demon clanonomy Goblin. What is it? The Kloranl's that's so bad. You can find the whole chloron online. It's it's it

is beyond parody. Everything about this episode is beyond parody. I'm just I can't tell you how excited I am literally jumping out of his now. Yeah again, you can read it for yourself if you decide that as an experience that will spark joy in your life. It is online. I'll put the link in the thing. It's all there now. The Kloran promises education in character spelled with the K and no age, honor and duty, not spelling, though not definitely not spelling never been one of the KKK strong points.

To give you some info on the organization's founding principles, I would like to read y'all the Ku Klux Creed. Yeah, of course, of course it's stilled with a K. We The Order of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan reverentially acknowledge the majesty and supremacy of the Divine Being,

and recognize the goodness and providence of the same. We recognize our relation to the government of the United States of America, the supremacy of its constitution, the Union of States, they're under and the constitutional laws thereof, And we shall ever be ever devoted to the sublime principles of a pure Americanism and valiant to the defense of its ideals

and institutions. We avowed the distinction between the races of mankind as same has been decreed by the Creator, and we shall ever be true to the faithful maintenance of white supremacy, and will strenuously oppose any compromise thereof in

any and all things by the Creator. Citation needed. One of the things that has pointed out in the fantastic Linda Gordon book The Second Coming of the KKK is that this was not radical the time, the KKK was speaking very much to the majority of white Americans, and that is very important for everything that comes. The ideology of this group is not fringe in any way, shape or form. They're preaching to the choir. They are not

radicalizing people, and that's critical. No one's getting radicalized here. Everyone's a white supremacist while I'm gonna start a white supremacy group. Yeah. Now, about two thirds of the Kloran is made up of incredibly dense, utterly preposterous ceremonies. I'm going to read a quick and random exerpt from the clans naturalization ritual A k A. Their induction of new members, so you can have an understanding of the special tenor of this ni unreadable tone. Cody, you look so excited.

I'm going to read all the titles. So starting off, we have the Clad speaking with K L A D D. Were the aliens from the world of selfishness and fraternal alienation prompted by unselfish motive desire the honor of citizenship in the invisible empire and the fellowship of klansmen, to which the klexter responds, Has your party been selected with care? To which the Clad responds. These men are known or vouched for by klansmen in clonclave as symboled clon. The

Cluxter responds, have they the marks? The Clad asks or says. The distinguishing marks of a klansmen are not found in the fiber of his garments or his social or financial standing, but are spiritual, namely, a chivalric head, a compassionate heart, a prudent tongue, and a courageous will, all devoted to our country, our clan, our homes in each other. These are the distinguishing marks of the klansmen, Oh, faithful Clxter,

and these men claim the marks. The Clxter next says, what if one of your party should prove himself a traitor, to which the claud says, he would be immediately banished and disgrace from the invisible empire without fear or favor. Conscience would tenaciously torment him, Remorse would repeatedly revile him, and direful things would befall him. The cluster asks, do they know all this? The claud says, all this, they now know, they have heard, and they must heed. Klexter says,

faithful clad, you speak the truth. I'm gonna be gonna be a lot of caves. It's gonna be a lot of kys going on, a bunch of bunch of real dorms. It's not even that racist, Like there's a little bit about white supremacy in there, but it's mostly just really dense nonsense rituals, likening sprint here and there like you do with cilantro. Yeah. Yeah, Now, the first two thirds or so of the Kloran are made up of frustrating,

stupid rituals. How you open and closed meetings etcetera. Then at the end of the book, Simmons wrote a lecture. It reads like a particularly bad D and D source book written by a racist. Here's him describing the South prior to the rise of the First Clan. Ignorance, lust and hate, all capitalized sees the reigns of the state,

capitalized and riot, rapine and universal ruin reigns supreme. The highest form of cultured society was thrust down at its noble neck, was forced under the iron heel of pernicious passion, who yielded a potent scepter of inquisitorial oppression, and the very blood of the Caucasian race was seriously threatened with everlasting contamination. I would have been a would have been a pretty good clan. Later back, Yeah, you really really,

I got that voice down, I know it. Don't don't explore that too much spoil We're about to get to in Evans really prominently here. Yeah. An important thing to realize about the nineteen twenties clan is that while they were racist, they were first and foremost a social order. Their meetings probably weren't any more racist than the average Masonic meeting at the time. We have minutes from a

lot of individual clavern meetings. Individual groups were called a clavern, and many of them never because they were so cool. Lynda Gordon points that that many of them never even brought up racial subjects other than in like passing. So the Second Clan was racist, but not more racist than mainstream society. It didn't stand out now. Simmons ran the clan for five years, and as with every other endeavor

in his life, he was bad at it. During his reign, the group had only one public outing, a march of the Veterans Parade that included twenty black men. He paid to put on robes in order to pat out his numbers, like whatever you do, do not take this, not take but as a point, like it's not the racism is in the focus, because he's clearly like, wow, I just want us to look big, right, want my club to be cool. I want everyone to show up my cool club.

That's very cool, very cool. So he did make enough money to buy Baptist Lanier University in Atlanta because it was heavily in debt, and he tried to turn it into a whites only university for racists. Twenty five people enrolled and it went bankrupt. So Simmons was forced to go looking for help. Fraud universities, huhd universities. So Simmons, he's going bankrupt the KKKS and severe debt. He's got to go find help. And he found it when he met two veterans of the fairly new PR industry, Elizabeth

Tyler and Edward Young Clark. They ran a publicity agency that had already helped the Anti Saloon League on its rise to prominence. Clark's dad had been a Federate colonel and on the Atlantic Constitution and influential newspaper. Elizabeth was his wife. She'd grown up poor and married at fifteen. And if you ignore the whole helping to found the KKK of it all, she's a pretty inspiring feminist story. It's hard to know that other party. It's really harding

clan part. Here's the second coming of the KKK quote. The team saw a lucrative client and Simmons's new clan group. The minute we said ku klux, Tyler recalled editors from all over the United States began literally pressing us for publicity. By nineteen twenty, she and Clark had convinced Simmons that they could grow his new clan, that it had national potential. To realize that potential, it had to multiply its bigotry.

The alleged threat from black people would not reverberate among Northerners at a time when so few African Americans lived outside the Southeast, so Simmons hired them, signing a contract that gave Clark and Tyler an astonishing eighty percent of any revenue they brought in from new recruits. Since Simmons had gotten nowhere with his new organization, he undoubtedly thought that he had nothing to lose in giving them fourfeits

of anything they could bring in. Tyler and Clark became in practice head of the clan for two years now. They turned Simmons into a polished speaker, engendering and exploiting fear. He would warn that degenerative forces were destroying the American way of life. These were not only black people, but also Jews, Catholics, and immigrants, the big city dwellers who were tempting Americans with immoral pleasures sex, alcohol, in music,

notably jazz. Choice of music there, interesting choice of music. We're almost to the big reveal very excited. Like the original clan, the Second KKK used newspapers to stoke the buzz around their organization. Simmons would give exclusive interviews where he came across as super suave and cool, and the clans membership would grow. Newspapers ran advertisements that included KKK application forms, press releases ran like rain on front pages

of the nation. By the summer of nineteen twenty one, the new KKK reported a membership of eight hundred and fifty thousand. Now this is almost certainly an exaggeration, but the real number was surely in the hundreds of thousands. Incredible growth over roughly a year of PR blitzes. And this is where it gets fun. The story sort of splits.

One half is the tale of the various assault and murders and attempted political coups by clansmen over the next several years, and the other story, the bigger story, is the tale of the clan's true purpose. It was an MLM, a multi level marketing scheme. It was amid the KKK, the Second KKK. It was a motherfucking cayramids. I'm so excited. Wait if he didn't literally read the headlines like the

dapper k there's a shipload of those. Yeah. Now we're gonna talk about how the clan became a pyramid scheme, but first we're gonna talk about some things that are legitimate products and services, the products and services that advertise on this show and or content platform. M hmm, I did it by Derrito's We're back. We just had a handful of tapatio de ritos, which are spicing our way through this tale of racism and profiting off of phrase so grifting racists. What excuse me, M L limbs in

the far right, I am surprised. I'm going to leave right now because I'm so spurious. I've had a great Harvard paper called Hatred and Profits under the Hood of the Ku Klux Klan. I'm gonna quote from that now. The organizational structure of the Ku Klux Klan in the nineteen twenties, designed by the Propagation Department, was a hybrid that combined features of other fraternal orders with a multi level marketing firm, with two distinct sets of reporting hierarchies

that operated more or less independently. One hierarchy was made up of the clan's members from the lowliest rank and file to the highest leadership. This hierarchy corresponds to the social club aspect of the clan, the arm that intimidated the blacks and foreigners and attempted to influence political outcomes. In addition, however, was a nearly invisible parallel hierarchy of clan recruiters organized like a modern multi level marketing firm,

which represents the financial arm of the plan. This highly incentivized sales force was responsible for recruiting new members to the clan, and almost all of the financial rewards accrued to either the handful of top leaders or the individuals in this auxiliary hierarchy. It was a money making scheme made up like PR hacks is fascinating. Yeah, it's sucking wild, right, I hadn't have so many emotions, some of them confect with each other. Uh, this is amazing. It's a great scam.

It's an objectively great scam effect an effective scam. Um. Take note. Clark and Tyler, the PR agents who made the KKK grade again, brought in more than eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars in their first fifteen months. That is roughly ten million dollars and slightly over a year. Now, Simmons got a much smaller cut of this, but he's still got rich. They even gave him a twenty five grand bonus, which was like three dollars. Good for him.

He he was like six years you know. Now, this money came from a variety of places, which I will get to in a second, but it's important to know that Simmons, Clark, and Tyler were all pushed out by nineteen two. Simmons was bought out and another new guy named Hiram Evans was made the Imperial Wizard. He'd been hired as a recruiter initially, but once he was the Imperial Wizard, he was able to fire Clark and Tyler,

which he did so. The people responsible for actually getting the second KKK off the ground weren't around for most of what happens next, but they set all of this into motion and they got rich off of it. The KKK would have died with Simmons indebted and disgraced, but that is distinctly not what happened. These two pr wonderkins had created an incredible profit making model, one that would act as a cash spigot for a bunch of greedy racists and caned millions of Americans in the process, so

tail as oldest time, tailor as oldest time. First off, here's how the clan was organized is from that Harvard paper quote. The Grand Wizard or Emperor just the nominal chair of the body, with the Imperial Wizard acting as the chief executive and aided by a fifteen member Imperial Cloncilium.

These included the Claliff first vice President, the classic second vice president of the Cloak card lock Shore, the clud Chaplain, the click Rap Secretary, the Clayby Treasurer, the Clad Clayby, the clad Conductor, the clarago a tin Man inner Guard, the Clexter, the outer Guard, the Clonsole General Counsel, the Nighthawk Courier, and the four cloakn auditors. These individuals were responsible for keeping the clan's books, providing in house legal advice,

and serving as a clan cabinet. Did you like bananas plug racism into like a random letter generator and just like what some of those are even based off real word? What is the click rap like claf okay, like you clearly the chlorine? What the fund is a clud or I'm still stuck on the cleat um. I'm also ashamed to share an initial with this. It has been ruined for me. Yeah, you only got one K. Though you only got one K. If you were the KKK, you'd

have like a shiploaded ka clad clo. Yeah no, and that's still one shy and I don't even want to go down that. Back back to the story, the clan's worldwide operations were split up into several realms, one for each state, each run by a Grand Dragon. The states, the states, I don't know. Man. At the bottom of the organization were the Ghouls, organized into claverns, which were headed by Exalted cyclopses. Not did you see does a

the goals Exalted cycles The Exalted Cyclops heads a clavern. Yeahs, like like they know, like like gnomes, Like like why would you just like say you were goals. Goals make up a clavin Googles, Googles make up a clavern. There the rank and file of the clansmen, sorry, I'm sorry, and they're headed by a grand Grand Cyclops. Is absolutely more than I ever wanted to know. I Exalted Cyclops, these are like getting get that right to these things.

I'm never going to forget and I'm not copy about it. Yeah, you know it's stuck there forever. Now. Yeah, if you think about the KKK is a political or militant organization. Outside of the silly names, this structure makes sense. But once you understand the financial dimensions, well, it becomes very

clearly a Pyramids game quote. Clan members generated an enormous amount of revenue each Google paid a ten dollar initiation fee equivalent to a hundred and ten and two thousand eleven dollars six fifty to buy an official clan robe, which costs roughly two dollars to make, an annual membership fee of five dollars, an imperial tax of a dollar eighty and Klansmen were also encouraged to purchase other clan sanctioned merchandise, including swords, bibles, helmets, dry cleaning, and life insurance.

Joined the clan was not a cheap undertaking. Using the numbers above, the first year of membership cost twenty three thirty roughly two hundred and fifty dollars in two thousand eleven dollars, and subsequent years were six dollars and eighty cents approximately seventy five dollars in two thousand eleven dollars. At its peak in nineteen four, the clan conservatively generated annual revenue from all sources of at least twenty five million,

equivalent to three hundred million in current dollars. Only a small portion of this revenue was required to fund basic operations. It was a Pyramids game, it was it was. It was a racist Pyramids game. And I'm sorry. The dry cleaning was that for the rope. You gotta keep those white robes clean. You ever worn a white robe, quick, Katie, it's gonna haven't you know? I haven't a white as

about it though. Yeah. The problems that come from wearing drink shoppy one you like, bloody up somebody everything, It shows everything everything, especially racist. Where the swords like Brandon, It's like yeah, yeah, there were course there were branded swords. Fullest question. This economic growth was possible thanks to an enormous sales force started nineteen twenty one by r PR Friends and soon over a thousand people strong. Each Grand Dragon, the state clan heads got to fifty out of each

ten dollar membership fee. Members also paid a one dollar yearly tax, which went to the Grand Dragon. Fifty cents of every six dollar and fifty cent clan roade went to him as well, So the Grand Dragons make bank, and so did the sales force. The US is split into nine domains, with a goblin in charge of recruitment. For each, the goblin hires a King Klegal who hires a bunch of Klegal's the regular grunt sales force of the endeavor. They made four dollars off of each membership.

The remaining three fifty was sent up the recruiting structure, with the person in charge of sales in the state, the King Klegal getting a dollar, the regional sales overseer a great Goblin, got five cents, the national sales overseer and Imperial Kleigal got a dollar twenty five, and the two most powerful men in the clan, the Imperial Wizard and the Grand Wizard, split se They were doing that

for the whole country. Kleigels were paid for recruiting new members, and once someone joined, none of the ongoing revenues went to the sales force, so the big cheeses. The ongoing revenue is where it's at, so the salesforce gets a cut of the initial went whenever recruits someone and then the big cheeses get anything else that they buy. So the Invisible Empire sold robes, flags, dry cleaning services, candy,

every kind of thing. Imagine, I'm gonna quote again from the second Coming of the Ku klux Klan quote a klux ER's nifty knife every word in that has felt with a K, which was described as a quote real hundred percent knife for hundred percent Americans could be bought for a dollar five. A member could buy a broach for his wife, A zircon studded fiery cross. A larger cross that a man could wear on the watch chain

he displayed across his chest cost two ninety. For only five dollars, you could get allegedly a fourteen carrot gold filled ring with a tin care It's solid gold clan emblem on a fiery red stone. Also for sale, we're phonograph records and player piano rolls with clan songs. Advertisements for this merchandise appeared to newspapers across the country and in flyers at large clon vocations. The Clans for Profit Life Insurance Plan claimed three million dollars with the policies

in nine, a dubious figure. It claimed to provide burial insurance as well, but the service never actually materialized because it was a scamp. Now the KKK also offered a spectacular vacation getaway. I found an ad from sometimes It's well, just you wait, I'm gonna hand you the ad Katie, and you can describe it to the readers. Now. It's from some time in the twenties Duke University, which is

where I found this host. It didn't know exactly win and it talks about you know what, I'm just gonna I'm just gonna describe this ad Katie, a right to all the clans and clansmen of Texas. And then there's like a little image it says cool Coast Camp, the healthiest road to the coolest summer. Are all those words spelled with a K, Cool Coast every yes, every single one that you could imagine, and the coolest summer, Cool Coast Clan Camp, the healthiest road to the coolest summer.

To read some of this things, yeah, you're getting a little bit of that ad copy. While I greetings we the grand Dragons of the Realm of Texas and the great Titans of the five Provinces in Texas, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan hereby officially endorsed the annexed proposition of Klansmen C. T. Gilliam of this is the realm of Texas, the realm of Texas. Really into that he proposes to give a high class service to the Klansmen of Texas at a minimum cost. Yeah. Right. That goes

on back to you what a knife? That says knife? You know my favorite things to heart against it being like you don't know, you, you don't know, you don't know what it's cut. The clan would have hated Swiss, They would have hated a swisser because Swiss army knife. That's like race mixing for tools. They're a threat to knife civilization. Now. The Cool Coast camp AD is a really fun document to read. For one thing, it brags repeatedly and pointedly about how much shade their beaches because

everybody is really white. Guess what it recommends as the most sensible thing to wear. She a big Mexican sombrero. What is that? Like? Those are the exact words, Those are the exact words, Mexican sombrero. Oh, there is no shortage of bigotry in the ad, but it is kind of the classic wholesome, mainstream nineties American bigotry as opposed to what we would expect from the clan today. I'm going to read, for example, a section idled the family that's sort of advertising this camp to the rest of

the family. Wonderful Mother's This camp spelled with the K is deeded to you. So cool, so RESTful, no work whatsoever, no drudgery, no worry. The fiery Cross guards you at nights, and an officer of the law with the same Christian sentiment guards carefully all portals. Beautiful daughter, A beautiful camp needs beautiful ornaments, no dust to avoid, shades natural and shades artificial to keep away the freckles. Cool with a K in every way, the time of your life, and

all caps. Put a bug in Daddy's ear and hug him tight. He will let you come. The sentiment reflected through humanity by the rays of the Fiery Cross makes you as safe in our camp as at home. And mother's arms. Mother's arms is capitalized too. The prize of a concrete Lizzie no idea, I have no idea. No. The only thing with the sea that spelled with the sea, I don't know what the concrete Lizzie is. But that was the prize given any person who could find a

more wonderful spot in America that this is a sex thing. Yes, yes, it's a fucking thing. They were all funk guys in the K a concrete Lizzie age. Oh no, all right, yeah, at a low cost, at an affordable cost cost. It's affordable cost because Texas coast is kind of shitty. The realm of Texas, Texas does not have a nice coast. Speaking as a Texan, don't go to Galveston, all right,

that wasn't a concern. Good good. The KKK recognized that children represented an incredible potential market so far untapped by the powers of commercial racism. They opened three auxiliary groups for children. The Junior KKK, starting in ninety three, was literally just a child's version of the KKK. One new Junior k KK chapter announced its opening by blowing a horn and lighting across and the leather j on fire. Oh no no. For young girls, there was the try

K club. Club is spelled with the K, modeled after popular sororities at the time. Now, there was plenty of racism in the try K. Historian Christina du Rocher described the central message of their propaganda as quote, white girls should remove themselves from contact with all blacks, a passive way of preserving white supremacy. But the tri K Club

was first and foremost a social club. I found an illustrated collection of the KKK sheet music on Google Books because Internet, and it included the ritual of the tri K Club, which seems like it was probably patterned off the Cluron. It includes a pledged song of this racism sorority. I'm gonna read just the first verse. We pledged you our friendship true through happiness and tears. The tie that binds our hearts to you will hold throughout the years.

Beneath this flag that waves, above this cross that lights our way, you will always find a sister's love in the heart of each tri K. I'm I got no, this is this is good for? Yeah? Yeah, burning cross is a little weird. Yeah it was. Yeah. You don't know how why it's lit up. It's just illuminated in flame. Yeah, it's weird. How prescient you're saying that is about to be now. Hiram Evans, who ousted the pr People at the end of nineteen twenty two, and became the next

Imperial Wizard. Still wanted to make money, but he was also someone for whom straight up racism was a huge part of the appeal. Here's the second coming of the KKK. His first career as a dentist might seem modest. One of his rivals liked to call him a tooth puller, and he took advantage of the impression, calling himself the most average man in America so as to normalize the clan.

His short, plump stature added to his everyman image. In fact, he was capable of serious violence, and Dallas, where he joined the clan in nineteen twenty, he had organized black squads that kidnapped and tortured at least one black man. Dallas, by the way, used to be known as the most racist city in America around this time, the city of hate,

and it was actually a really cool story. The Dallas Morning News crippled the clan in that city by like having reporters find where their meetings were and takedown notes of all of the license plates they saw to like figure out which elected members and who was in the clan, and like published that ship like morning News did a lot of damage to the k docs, the docks, the fucking fascists. Yeah, did a great job. So yeah, Dallas

Morning News is anti fall. I guess Evans decided that the clan should be more than an MLM, It should be a political party. He moved the KKKS headquarters to d C and established a magazine, Fellowship Forum, that was not explicitly tied to the KKK, but existed to further its political aims. The Fellowship Forum build itself is standing

for pure Americanism. There were also in a number of the documents I read the sentiment America First, which I apparently came from the KKK before it became the center of Charles Lindberg's organization. You found that on a lot their documents. There was also just recently come out that there was talk about a wall at one of the big colon vacations they held like a guy talking about we need a silver wall and keep out immigrants, but he was not talking about one at the Mexican border.

He was talking about a wall of laws to stop people from like Italy. They really hated Catholics, um so racist, but different different fundamental concepts. Lifted dress it up a little differently, put it over there, one of the Mexicans, because they need stay in the shade when you go to the cool coast. Scared. Oh good god. Soon after chaking charge, Evans realized that the leader of the Indiana KKK, David Stevenson, had some potential. He put him in charge

of recruitment for seven states. Here's that book again. I'm nobody from nowhere, really, but I've got the biggest brains, he boasted. I'm going to be the biggest man in the United States. But Stevenson was a fraud several times over. He claimed to be the millionaire son of a wealthy businessman and who have earned a decoration for bravery in World War One. In fact, he was the son of

a Texas sharecropper. His education at a parochial school ended with the eighth grade, and his stint with the army was as a recruiter in Iowa. He boasted of owning a wholesale coal supply and auto accessory companies, but in fact worked as a salesman for someone else's coal company. He married at least three women, drank, heavily, got into fights, beat his wives, and attempted to rape several other women, but the motherfucker could talk and convince people to join

the KKK, so he stayed. Under his leadership. Twenty three percent of the native born white men in southern Indiana joined the KKK. He refused to be called by his name, going by the Old Man. Stevenson made millions off of his racist down line and was able to buy a mansion and a yacht. We'll come back to him later. He does get his just desserts. So he wasn't comfortable with all the lofty titles. The old Man, the old Man,

I'm gonna be the biggest man in America. Yeah. For a good long while in the early nineteen twenties, the Ku Klux Clan was everywhere. At its height, as many as four million Americans, roughly four percent of the country were members. It is to this day the largest explicitly racist organization in American history, if you don't count the Confederacy. Yeah, yeah, four million. Now, the clan did not draw in that

many members by focusing on the racism up front. Was always there a calm backdraft in their propaganda and at every outing. But they knew you'd catch more flies with honey than with water. Enter the clon vacations. These were gigantic outdoor events, akin to massive state fairs or even carnivals, which they held in order to draw in new members and foster solidarity with clans members. Here's how the Nation

described one such gathering. On July four nine, for instance, a crowd estimated it between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand attended a clan picnic in Cocomo, Indiana. The clon vocation boasted six tons of beef, fifty five thousand buns, twenty five hundred pies, and five thousand cases of soda.

Children had their own play center, while adults could take their pick of entertainments, including a boys singing quartet, a talkie film so his performers, a six round boxing match, and a daredevil who performed aerial acrobatics on the wing of a circling plane. Yeah, all right, it sounds like, sounds like and that was the idea we hold this, not like we're going to try to get all the races, but like we're just holding throw a big party for white people and then maybe they want to join the

clan and then we'll get more money. Yeah, thousand burgers. They also charged admission and stuff. They made a profit like fifteen twenty grand, which three dollars as a shipload. Yeah, they cleaned up. And the biggest of these was in twenty four had like two thousand people show up, the largest clan gathering ever and like a lot of people didn't know it was necessarily like, oh, this is like for the clan stuff. It's like no, I'm going to go to a fund. But it was like it was

like it's the clan. It's yeah. It wasn't weird then, like that people met and fell in love there. I bet they did that. A lot of a lot of clan babies, a lot of clon vocation kiddies. Wasn't the reason pull like about like the number of people in America who like are okay with white supremacy and neo Nazis and stuff, And it was about four p s

something like that, thank you. It's about i'd really like recently like last year, yeah, which is a lot of racists In fucking Toronto, twenty three thousand people voted for Faith Goldie and explicitly neo Nazi candidate Canadians, So and they're Canadians. Things are going well, things are going great. Wasn't like a fun barbecue to go to. So it's with thousands of buns, thousands of speaking of thousands of buns. Ads, we're back. We're talking about Clon Vocations, the KKKS primary

method of recruiting new klansmen. I hate these words. Way too many ks being set up in here. I slightly cringe every time cringe with the k Yeah, clingel. Large cross burnings were also held at Clon vocations, but unlike the first and ladder types of cross burnings that were familiar with to day, these were not primarily hateful spectacles. So like a cross burning is like the most racist thing you can do. These were not like they were pro Protestant and everyone knew the clan was anti Catholic.

But the cross burnings were more like a fireworks show, like they would they would compete to see who could build the biggest like crossing which were like fifty ft tasson, which were too big to even burn. They would like funk up. Sometimes they would make gigantic crosses and covering with light bulbs, like it was like a look at this cool thing that we're doing a little bit of that because they weren't like going to like black people's

houses and putting them on their lawns. Like that may have happened out in the Sticks sometimes, but like the main purpose was to like entertain people. That was the goal of the Cross things. Um, so this context, but when you're out in the wild much more usually we will be getting to that. I will be talking about the violence and stuff. But from what I read, cross burnings not a huge part of the violence at that point.

Like that was more of like a show anything that you did at the big events, and the violence was the violence. The clan did describe themselves as the Army of the Cross. And I do want to really point out how much anti Catholic bias was critical to this too, because they were super racist against Catholics as well as

black people in Jews. And I guess you're not racist against socialist, but they didn't like socialist anybody that wasn't like, Yeah, that wasn't a very specific kind of hardcaring member of the very legitimate organization. Yeah. The Klansmen also played highly publicized baseball games, often against teams of people that they

defined in their propaganda as aliens. The second coming of the KKK notes quote the Youngstown clan team challenged the Knights of Columbus, and the clan played Wichita's crack colored team, the Monrovians. The clan lost. Finally, in areas of clan strength, it operated sandlot teams that played in recognized leagues, sometimes semi pro teams. Indiana, a clan stronghold, fielded a dozen such teams. These leagues might plan adiums, in the newspaper

coverage might list all team members, no secrecy here. In Los Angeles the clan team played a three game charity series against the Benigh Breath team, and in nine in Washington, d C. The clan played against the Hebrew All Stars. Newspaper coverage typically treated the clan team like all others, with no particular attention to clan politics. Thus, baseball function to normalize the clans that it could appear as a be nine club akin to the Elks, or again a

labor union KKK playing the Benigh Breath ball. That was the thing that happened in history. Yeah. Now, while all this was going on, there were clavern's who took to the KKKS more traditional activities, violently oppressing minorities. A number of clavern's exercised vigilante justice. That is an important story which I've waited until the end to cover. That's because I think it's important to understand what the Second Clan

was in context. The first Clan was awful and a clear terrorist organization, was viewed by most Americans as a terrorist organization, at least outside of the South. But the only real ethos of the Second Clan was making money. The racism and bigotry was just there because in nineteen it's sold. If the same pr people that had hatched this scheme were around today, they may would have made a fraternal order that was super woken PC because there's more money there now. Like they were. I'm sure they

were racist too, but that it wasn't about that. It was about making the money and the clan. Again it is it's important to understand if you're gonna understand the twenties that everyone knew the clan was racist, but everyone was racist, like the woke people were racist, like our grandparents were racist. Every everybody was. It was yeah, it's only a griff because of the money making structure, wasn't Yeah, Yeah, it was not considered extreme ye, not radicalizing anybody or anything. Like, yeah,

now what we're going to talk about. The violent part was extreme, and that is an important factor, but that was an ancillary thing that happened because of the original KKKS history and because a lot of racists are violent. The violence was not primarily the goal of the organization. It was the Pyramids game. Yeah. So in the early nineties, urban crime rose by in the United States. Clan propaganda heavily emphasize these rising crime rates and build the clan

as like their predecessors regulators. Much of this crime was driven by prohibition, and prohibition was a cause that KKK firmly supported. Also, women's voting rights. There's a feminist angle to the clan too. We're not gonna get into enough of it here, but there was a women's auxiliary KKK very popular, like the clan was because one of the two pr people who found this was a woman. Was one of the first organizations in American realized like, well,

women are voting now, so they have political power. They also have more money now, so we should go after them. We should get that, we should get that fucking money. Well that did. Yeah. In the kkk K feminist icon, the KKKA is important, super important, not just men in the clan these days. Yeah uh. Some people even called

the clan the mill wing of the Temperance movement. Generally, klansmen and individual Claverance were willing to use violence against black people, of course, but also any other bugbear of that era's right wing. They carried out a raid that arrested fifty two bootleggers in Anaheim, got a hundred and twenty five people arrested in Indianapolis, again bootleggers in the Northwest.

They spent a lot of time threatening labor organizers. One Oregon Kleigel sent out this morning, if you are the mouthpiece of American labor in this locality, warn and do not endorse the above principles, then you should be a fit subject for a vigilance committee. I found another piece of sheet music in the KKK that looks forward, this regulator depiction of the KKK. It's titled there's a Klansman watching you. O. You guys want to sing this for me? Cody,

that's all you get. Yeah, you're right, you did the other thing. And also you're the musician. There's a class of people patriotic in their work, always on their guard, always watchful, misspelled, and alert. They all make good citizens. They're friends of Uncle Sam. They fight for right with all their might. They're called the ku Klux clan. Um that the verse keep going, man, you will find them about in the country. You will find them in town.

There as thick as bees in clover. You can't tell him. They're Oh, you may think that you're gone to fool them. Have a cow? What you do? The ku Klux clan or always watching, sure, watching you. There's a second verse that I will not do Wow. Wow, that was a virtue. Also performance. Let's that's how it goes. So where did they sing this again? What was records? They had records. They had a publishing press and a record press. Like you're having a dinner party, like, let's put on the

new clan record. You guys heard there's a clan has been watching you fire. Yeah. Oregon and Oklahoma were particular centers of clan vigilance committee violence. The Second Coming of the KKK summarizes quote three Oregon cases known as the Oregon Outrages, captured widespread press attention when night writers terrified their victims with such lynching threats. JF. Hale A piano salesman.

White was accused of illicit sexual affairs, and the would be Lyncher's demanded that he break off the improper relationships, and may have also been targeted because he owed money that a klansman was having trouble collecting. Sam Johnson, described as part Mexican, was accused of stealing chickens and being an idler. Arthur Burr, an African American bootblack, accused of bootlegging,

received the worst treatment. Vigilantes abducted him and took him to the very crest of the Siskiyou Mountains, where they strung him up and let him down three times. Releasing him, they fired revolvers near his feet, demanding that he leave

the era permanently, yelling can you run inward. Though charges were brought against three groups of clansmen, in each case, juries acquitted the culprits on the grounds that because the victims were morally bad, their vigilante punishment benefit of the community.

By contrast, Oklahoma, Indiana, Kansas, and southern Illinois locations that were as much southern as northern experienced a great deal of actual clan of violence, whippings, tar and featherings, and lynchings, and all four places, some degree of racial segregation was in place, and clan violence helped to keep it in place.

And Oklahoma, clan provoked violence became so widespread, with a reported one flogging for every night of the year, that the governor placed parts of the state under martial law.

Clan efforts got him impeached in nineteen three. Oklahoma law officers sometimes handed suspects over to clan whipping parties or even participated in the beatings, and Kansas clansmen abducted an anti clan mayor, tied him to a and laid thirty stripes on his bare back, and bloody Williamson as one southern Illinois county became known the local clan and the Anti Saloon League merged into the Williamson County Law Enforcement League,

which soon became run by the clan. Attacks on the operators of the wide open bars produced lethal battles in nine twenty five, involved a gunman and the deployment of military forces, and ended by forcing the anti clan sheriff out of office. These armed skirmishes killed twenty people. So do not want to be ignoring the violence is still happening, but it wasn't the overarching like, it wasn't the purpose. The clan was more about money. But also the violence

was occurring within the society was fine with us. This is not a counter cultural act. Again, they were acquitted generally when they were brought to trial because most people were fine with what Most white people were fine with what they were doing taking care of business because the government's not gonna do it. So horribly violent, but not horribly violent against the wishes of the majority of their

white Protestant country. And in fact, we're kind of saying as heroes by a lot of people, which was true only in the South. For the original KKK North was not. It's a gaming of racist Batman exactly. And America has always loved the vigilante badass that's the punisher. But racist. Yeah. In nine the KKK even carried out an attack on the home of the young Malcolm X when he and his parents lived in North Omaha. Here's a quote from

Malcolm's autobiography. It actually is how his autobiography starts. When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan writers galloped up to our home in Omaha, Nebraska, one night, surrounding the house brandishing their shotguns and rifles, they shouted for my father to come out. My mother went to the front door and opened it, standing where they could see her

pregnant condition. She told them that she was alone with her three small children, and that my father was away preaching in Milwaukee. The klansmen shouted threats and warnings at herd that we had better get out of town because the good Christian white people were not going to stand for my father's spread in trouble among the good Negroes

of Omaha. With the Back to Africa preachings of Marcus Garvey, my father, the Reverend Earl Little, was a Batist minister, a dedicated organizer from Marcus Aurelius Garvey's u n I, a United Negro Improvement Association. With the help of such disciples as my father, Garvey, from his headquarters in New York City's Harlem, was raising the banner of black race purity and exhorting the Negro masses to return to their ancestral African homeland, a cause which had made Garvey the

most controversial black man on earth. Still shouting threats, the klansmen finally spurred their horses and galloped around the house, shattering every window with their gun butts. Then they rode off into the night, their torches flaring as suddenly as they had come. It was terrifying. Yeah, it's horrifying now. Like all good and bad Pyramids games, the clan had

to come to an end. It was finally brought down, not by the US government, because probably most of THEIS government's fine with it, but by the incompetence, greed, and corruption of its leaders. It's always, it's always that with these kinds of far right gangs. Philip Fox, editor of the Imperial night Hawk, a major clan newspaper, was sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering another clansman he considered a rival. Hiram Evans called it a personal affair. Governor Ed Jackson

of Indiana, a klansman, was indicted for bribery. Officers of the Klan Bank were also indicted for embezzlement and grand larceny. There were countless scandals and arrests, a fight with the FBI that led to nineteen people being charged. Members caught drinking and bootlegging and paying for back out the abortions. They picked a fight with jed Gar Hoover. Not a smart guy to pick a fight with, really bad guy to pick a fighter in that period of time. They

did not win that fight. The final nail in the KKK's coffin was the conviction of Indiana Grand Dragon Stevenson, who talked about earlier for kidnapping, raping, and murdering his secretary. Now only the classiest, high class. I mean, I was waiting to be like white collar, like a tax thing, saying, like a terrible thing. He did well. And here's here's what. It's actually even worse than it sounds because he did not technically murdered her. He raped her and assaulted her,

and then she killed herself. But the jury convicted him of murder because they believed he'd ruined her, which is also why she killed her. Else, it's like even worse than just because it's the twenties and it was a garbage time to exist. Yeah, it's it's messed up. But Stevenson went to fucking prison. Uh I think so? Yeah, he was convicted a second degree murder. Um. Yeah, my ninety seven, the KKK had gone from its high of like four million members to less than three d and

fifty tho active members nationwide. It never quite went extinct entirely. Men continue wearing clan robes and being racist up until the modern day, but the giant money making and political enterprise that it once was fell apart. Are there still dues? I mean maybe an individual chapters, but there's no you know, not the structure of saying it was. Yeah, there's some people that try to be that, but like it's pretty

shadows of themselves. The legacy of the KKK outside of its existence as an MLM and the vigilante violence had inspired, is unclear. During its height, the KKK was extremely politically active, but there is substantial debate as to whether or not

it actually influenced politics on a mass scale. A number of clan backed candidates were a less did and the clan was a massive fundraiser, but that Harvard Studies analysis claimed that the actual political achievements of the group were fairly minimal just because those people were already gonna get elected. They weren't elected because there are clansmen. Everybody was fucking racist. They're just happy to be in the clan. However, in the conclusion of the second coming to of the KKK.

Linda Gordon makes this note. Some scholars and contemporary observers have seen the nineteen twenties Northern Clan as a failure because it was short lived and because its campaigns against Catholics and Jews did not manage to confine them to second class citizenship, but transience is common to most social movements. Moreover, at the Clan Declient in part because it had triumphed

in several respects. State eugenics laws providing for forcible sterilization of those of defective stock spread the thirty States, and those labeled defective were typically the poor and people of color. The biggest clan victory was immigration restriction, and Imperial Wizard events repeatedly claimed credit for its passage. I mean, it is pretty disappointing that their eventual like downfall er decline was not because people started to know better or like

people stood up like this whole story. I'm sitting here thinking like, yeah, but when is it like oh this person like there's this big altercation and people started just public opinion started to change. Nope, it was they were fine with the racism and the vigilante murder. It was the abortion thing that really back Alley abortions really turned America against him through it. I know, the wall stuff,

the immigration stuff. It's always so fascinating, Like why do you think these things aligned with Like maybe it's even like you recognize that other people who aren't white have invented things you like, like sombreros guys without Mexicans. How are you going to go to the cool coast you're able to go to the cool coast scamp. You're gonna have a bad time. You're gonna have a bad time with the cool coast scamp. You wouldn't got anywhere there

playing the Benigh breathin baseball. Jeesus, that is fascinating. That was a twig. That was it. And now I know what MLMs too level marketing. Yeah, it's a really important in the politics of today. Yeah, I just hadn't heard that abbreviation Money Lives Matter. There is a direct line between the strategy behind the KKK and the strategy behind am Way, which is the source of the fortune of beth Sie of Vos. But we can't. We don't have time to talk about her. We don't have time to

talk about her. Yeah, that sage us into the next episode. Yeah, we will be doing another thing very soon. Uh. Plugs, plugs, plugs, plugs, fus check us out on the internet, Twitter, Twitter, dot com, slash some more news. I was getting there, okay. It seemed like you were just like passing it off. No, no, no, you said on the internet. That's pretty um are YouTube show. Also some more news our podcast, even more news. Yep. That on the Twitter personal Twitter, it's Katie Stolen. We'll

get good at this one day. Give them money. Some more news Patreon dollars to go to there, go to there. Um. You can find me on the internet at I right okay, on Twitter, I have a book called A Brief History of Ice. It's not about the plan. It's about me putting a friend in the hospital with dangerous drugs. It's fun, it's a good time. Everybody. Everybody enjoyed it. Twitter and Instagram. You can find this show at at Bastards pod uh website behind the Bastards dot com. Dorito's I Love You