The History of American Police and the Ku Klux Klan

the greatest bastards of them all, collection of them. Yeah. Uh. My guest in this journey into the history of police stem uh is my friend Jason Petty, better known as the hip hop artist propaganda. Jason, how are you doing today? We'll stop happy Janet. The actual, the actual one day of Independence. Yes, the day that like we as a nation kind of sort of started to begin to try to live up to the promises made at our found except not for women. Um yeah, Still there's still another

We're still waiting for another. Uh, there's another independence coming soon. It's been a rough couple of been a rough couple of centuries, guys. Um yeah yeah. Fun fact, the Mats page A proclamation was two years before this because the war wasn't done and still we were waiting on Texas. And still we were waiting on Texas. And in some ways still are still Yeah, as a Texan, I can I think we're still kind of waiting on Texas, so um in honor of I mean this, it won't be

Juneteenth anymore when these episodes drop. But these two episodes this week, we're we're going real deep into um, the history of racism and policing. Um. That's that's what these next two episodes are going to be. And then after that we're gonna kind of get back to a broader history of policing and come up to the modern era. We'll talk about the war on drugs and cops and stuff. But but this is these two episodes are going to be more focused on something that I think is critical

but not very well known to most people. You know. Usually there's there's one aspect to which kind of what we're talking about is known today, which is that if you if you wound up at a protest recently, which I assume a lot of you have, you may have heard the venerable left wing protest chant cops and clan go hand in hand. Um. And if you're a fan of Rage against the Machine, I'm sure you're familiar with their their similar lines. Some of those that workforces are

the same that burn crosses. Uh and you know, uh, we we talked a bit about how, you know, the sort of story spreading about slave patrols and how that was the origin of policing and how that was you know, partly true but not entirely accurate because it was more complicated than that. This is a case where the the kind of like Pithy Chance uh and social media posts

and stuff actually are really accurate like that. The that's what we're going to talk about today, so in in in a very veiled defense for everybody else that didn't have to live these realities, Like there's some realities like something like a redlining, Like I understand, I understand that there is a wide swath of people. You have to go out of your way unless you're black to know what redlining is because it doesn't affect you. You know

what I'm saying. So I'm gonna give you that. I don't know the script, but I know, based on what the way that Robert's leading in, I have an idea that I'm probably gonna know these stories, but I'm pretty sure you don't because they ain't affected you. You never thought about redlining because you never there was never a time that your grandparents was looking at a neighborhood and was like, we can't live here. And it's not because you couldn't afford to live here. It's because you wasn't

allowed to live here, you know what I'm saying. So I understand that you don't know this. There's probably things in your life, like we could talk about some Native American heritage and stories and stuff like that that you probably would have no idea unless you went out of your way. I went out of my way to learn those things because I understand what it means to be an oppressed person. So strap in, this is about to

be earth shattering for you. It's it's gonna be yes. Um. So, in the immediate wake of the war, you remember, after part one, you know, we kind of ended on slave

patrols just turned in right into police departments. Um. But in the immediate way of the war, a lot of the South, which you know occupied by the United States military, the Union military, um, and millions of black men had suddenly gained the right to vote for the first time, like kind of right around that same period, and historians generally call the the time from eighteen eighteen seventies seven in the former South reconstruction, and it was a time

of great hope for black Americans. Seven black men were elected to public office, including two senators and fourteen members of the House of Representatives, which when you consider that, like a huge chunk of those men had been slaves a couple of years earlier, like that's in that's maybe the rapidest turnaround from not from politically being you know, not a person, to being in power that like has ever happened. Black men and women were appointed to various

government jobs during this period. Freedmen pulled their resources, they formed companies, some of them fought to receive back wages, and even tried to take land from their former masters. It was generally not successful, but attempts were made, and all across the South. Groups of freedmen also formed militias, sometimes using the rifles with which they had served in the Union Army. And obviously, um, a lot of white

folks weren't happy with this. Yeah it worked. It's like, so they go, you know, we're just gonna let them. You forget that, Especially in the South, the vast majority of the population were freed slaves, so just by the sheer numbers. If you let us vote, we're gonna vote in our own people. Yeah, it's you're not going to be in charge anymore. Yeah yeah, yeah, it's so this was a pickle for um, for the white supremacists. We

we we could say that fairly. Um. Yeah. And outside of the transition of slave patrols to police departments, a lot of white people just sort of on their own attempted to put newly freed black people in their place by using the law to to you know, suppress them. Laws were passed throughout the old slave states that banned vagrancy, or being out in public without a visible means of support.

You might recognize this as the same tactic used a little bit later to stop union workers from organizing and other parts of the country. Um so that is kind of we can we we can see some sometimes the exact same tactic being used for very different groups of of oppressed Americans. But it is it's the same thing, Like, what don't we just make it illegal for them to be outside? Yeah? So, um, in this case, vagrancy laws were used to force black people to take employment, generally

a sharecropper. So you make it illegal to be outside without a job. That forces people to take jobs, and since like you don't want to go to jail your choice, like you have to very quickly get whatever job you can get, which means people, you know, the power is in the hands of the person offering you the job, which means they can give you a job that's basically slavery, which is in fact, what a lot of sharecropping job

share cropping one. Yeah, um, so again not quite slavery, but also not nearly as far from being slavery as it really ought to have been. Slavery light, Yeah, slavery light, A little bit of diet. It's like the Coke zero of enslaving human beings that one calorie. Yeah, it is better for you, but not very much better. Yeah, not very much better. Um, and it'll probably give you a brain tumor. Um. I want to I'll cut that bed out off. Coke zero wants to sponsor the podcast, I

will take your money. Yeah, so I want to kick off our quotations in this episode with one from the absolutely critical book that Everybody ought to read the End of Policing by Alex Vitali. Quote anyone on the roads without proof of employment was quickly subjected to police action. Local police were the essential front door of the twin

evils of convict leasing and prison farms. Local sheriffs would arrest free blacks on flimsy to non existing evidence, then drive them into a cruel and inhuman justice system whose punishments often resulted in death. These same sheriffs and judges also received kickbacks and in some cases generated lists of fit and hard working blacks to be incarcerated on behalf of employers, who would then leased them out to perform

forced labor for profit. Douglas Blackman chronicles the appalling conditions of mines and lumber camps, where thousands perished, where the Jim Crow era policing had become a central tool of maintaining racial inequality throughout the South, supplemented by ad hoc vigilante such as the ku Klux Klan, which often worked closely with and was populated by local police. Good little summary of how it all went down. Yeah, yep, so the motherfucking kkk Um. Let's get into a baby. Now.

We've done a whole two partter on the history of the clan, the first and the second clan at least on Behind the Bastards already, So if you want a detailed history of both of those organizations, you can check that out. It's in it's in the Behind the Bastards feed. But I'm gonna give a little bit of an overview before we dig into the cop you know, specific stuff. The KKK formed initially in Pulaski, Tennessee, in eighteen sixty six. The very first like saying Pulaski, Pulaski, Yeah, it's a

fun name of a town. It's a shame all of the terrorism. Anyway, the very first KKK cell was formed by a bunch of board drunk and pretty well off Confederate veterans. They dressed up like wizards, and they gave themselves absurd titles and went out at night, uh costumed as the ghosts of Confederate veterans in order to scare freed black people. One of the KKK founders happened to own the local newspaper, and he published a bunch of mysterious letters from a grand cyclops, all of which made

the clan seem cool and mysterious and powerful. This early meme, and that's really what the KKK was at the start, spread very quickly throughout the South, and soon thousands of white dudes were dressing like ghosts and terrorizing black people, generally while drunk as all hell. Sometimes they wore dresses,

other times they pretended to be aliens. They did this because it was fun, but also because it made their abuse more impactful, and her fantastic book Ku Klux Alain Parsons explains this in a way that I think is really important when it comes to just sort of understanding modern right wing street violence and why a lot of it seems so silly, Like a lot of the ways they dress up and act are so on that surface absurd quote ku Klux endeavored to portray victims entirely rational

fear of their physical violence, as though it were superstition or gullibility. The victim, telling Lee, failed to get the joke, allowing himself to be frightened by ghosts or devils. Get the joke? Yeah, they didn't get the joke. Shot at you, yeah, yeah, you know, while I'm hanging from my neck. Yeah you get it. Yeah, we hung you from a tree and we were dressed as aliens. Don't You don't get the joke?

You scared of aliens? Yeah, yea, there it is. Yeah, fucking fascists are always thinking yeah what Yeah, at some point you have to explain to me and one of these bastard episodes, why far right fascists are just not funny. Yeah, it's because it's not funny. It's because comedy, Um, good comedy requires uh, what's the word I'm looking for here? Um? Empathy? Right, Like you have to understand other people in order to say things that are funny to them. There it is, yeah,

thank you? Yeah, so um yeah, many, if not most, of these early Klansmen were former slave patrol members, and a sizeable number of these early Clansmen, in addition to being former slaver patrol members, were also current law enforcement you know, sheriffs and the like. There was also, outside of you know, even the clan, just a huge amount of vigilante violence directed against black people during this time,

and it all does sort of bleed together. One Edgefield County, South Carolina military officer, like a US military officers stationed in the in the former Confederacy in eighteen sixty six, wrote this quote, Two men white had killed a Negro plus cut the ear off another the evening before about five miles left of my encampment. It is presumed they belonged to a regular organized band of guerrillas which infests

that country. It is practiced among these monsters either to kill or mutilate any colored people who unluckily falls into their power. None of the colored people dared to sleep in their houses at night, but had to take refuge in the surrounding country. Some part of the peaceful, loyal white population are well acquainted with the haunts of these two predators, but dread them. Would they betray them as there is no protective power in the country. They are

a terror to the loyal population at night. These ruffians besotted with drink, rave and tear like prairie Indians through the streets of the city. The civil law is powerless to protect against such desperadoes. That's interesting because it gives you an idea of how terrifying it was during this period, how these people acted. It give you also like a look into the head of sort of I guess what you'd call like a white ally who was also still

really racist against Native Americans. Like yeah, I was like, there's a lot like a prairie Indian. That's what that is of all the whole sentence. That's what I caught where I was like, wait what, it's like you're you're so uh what do we talk? Yeah? I was like yeah, it's like the record skipped where I was just like yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man,

hold up. Yeah, it's kind of like you want to be really proud of like Ulysses Simpson Grant, because you know, as flawed as he was, he beat the Confederacy, he was pretty committed to to black people not being slaves. He was committed to them having their right to vote. He did some really good stuff as present for black people. Real terrible record with the Native Americans, just like real,

real bad. Yeah. Um, so you know we have we do have a couple of of of of founding members of this country that we can be comprehensively proud of. But they're pretty much just Thomas Paine actually when just basically and and John Brown. Yeah yeah yeah. John Brown, there was a neat moment in his history where he was like asked by some white folks he lived around to help them clear out a group of Native Americans from the community, and he was like, I'd rather clear

your ass out of here. Yeah, good guy. John Brown, so um, civil law was often powerless to stop these kind of bands of marauding white terrorists in this insurgence really in this period of time. Um, but civil law was also often on board with this kind of violence. So it was a mix of we really have no resources to stop these people, and we also don't want to stop these people. Uh. And a good example of how this looked comes from the case of Union County,

South Carolina. That town included a virulent cell of clansmen roughly organized around a local criminal named Bill Fawcett. Now, Fawcett had been a member of another anti black gorilla band known to Union troops as Slickers previously, he and his friends seemed to have slid rather seamlessly into becoming clansmen once that was the hip new way to be

racist terrorists. Fawcett was repeatedly arrested for disorderly conduct and violence, but he had good connections to local law enforcement, and he and his friends were also tied heavily into the wealthy gentry in the Union County, so they never really did any hard time because they were good smugglers and they helped keep the rich people in the County well supplied with tax free liquor. One of the wealthy men who supported Fawcett and his vigilante activities was James Rice Rogers.

He sold the illegal liquor that Fawcett smuggled and he was also the county sheriff in eighteen seventy. So that's back around the uh and again we're seeing kind of the same thing we are seeing in like the big you know, northern cities in this period of time where the police are intimately tied with vice, right you know. Um So, on the night of December thirty one, eighteen seventy, Union County was struck by a series of violent rates. And this kind of originated from a clash between white

and black folks that still very complex. It started when two of Fawcett's and set out to deliver a barrel of illegal whiskey and they were stopped on the road by a checkpoint of black militiamen. And these guys were actually from two different black militias who had set up patrols in the area they lived because there were bands of armed clans been writing about and those clansmen had killed people recently. Um, not just black people, but also

like white Republicans in this period. Um, so they yeah, yeah, they're they're killing Republicans. Republican meant something different back then, Yeah, sure did so. Um, there's these bands of you know, armed klansmen running around killing people, and so black folks set up militias to protect their neighborhoods, right, so they're doing like armed community self defense. And this this group of faucets you know men start driving up to one of these uh, one of these checkpoints with a barrel

of illegal whiskey. Um, and this militia holds Fawcett's men up and they demand their hand over the whiskey. Um. It's kind of unclear if they're just if they just want the whiskey because they're like, oh hey, let's get some whiskey, um, or if they're more like you guys are sketchy as hell. Um, you kind of seem like the clan dudes, because these guys were both probably klansmen who have been riding around and like, we want to

see what the hell is up. And obviously these these white dudes did weren't willing to like listen to what a bunch of black militias said, and they write off. And so the black militiamen opened fire at their wagon. And I'm gonna quote from historian A. Lane Parsons here. Perhaps it was important to the pickets or those who fired, that white men not dismissed their armed demands and drive

breezily by. Such pickets were part of how power operated in Union, and to mobilize the resources to set one up only to have it dismissed might have serious consequences. Perhaps the shots were not about the whiskey at all. There is some reason to suspect that Stevens, who's one of the men driving that whiskey train, having passed through the organized group, would have headed straight to Fawcett, which might well have led to trouble, not unlike that which

was caused by shooting. So like they might have been worried that these people were gonna go back to the clan and try to organize an attack on the picket and so, and trouble definitely followed, you know, them shooting at the wagon. Both the Fawcetts men immediately got out of the wagon and fled, but one of them was caught and he was executed by the militia, and his body was posed in a matter similar to how clansmen in the area had posed recently executed black men. Parsons continues.

The black militia here was replicating the subculture of collective violence with which Union County ins were familiar. Picketing a road to defend one of their own from attack was conventional Union County behavior, as probably was the shakedown of Steven's. Even shooting after the retreating figures of Stevens and Robinson as they ran their picket would perhaps not have been particularly abnormal and as unhappy a culture as Union Counties.

The killing of Stevens made it a much more serious matter. Of course. Militiaman, however, might have miscalibrated elite's willingness to support Fawcett's marginal men, giving Steven's limital status he was a criminal. Had the militia been composed of white members, it seems likely that the whole affair would have blown over. Indeed, when Steven's peer, Thomas Jefferson Greer had been shot just months earlier, his assailant, who was another white guy, had

enjoyed widespreads public support. But again, John Sanders had been a white man. The fact that a black militia had killed a white guy was not okay to local white elite, and so large armed groups of white men formed up and started confiscating milicia weapons from black homes, disarming them first. Here we go. So so, like I get a bunch of pushback from said, you know, uh anarchists, bugaloo dudes who are like low key buggaloo, but don't want to

admit it. You know what I'm saying, um saying, like I don't understand why black people don't arm themselves like you're doing all this peaceful protests. Maybe you should, like you yelling at us about being malicious coming out here heavenly armed. Maybe y'all should start heavily being heavily armed, as if we ain't never thought of that, like like I would. What makes you think we that thought ain't crossed our mind yet? You know what I'm saying, Like, do you want me to go? You did a thing

on them, offered act already. You know what I'm saying, We did that already. But like this what years is? What year you're talking about right now? Yeah? It's this. I'm a big I'm a supporter of of of of not just black people, members of marginalized groups, particularly as we continue to hurdle towards an uncertain future. Considering armed self defense, yes, like, yeah, that's been done a lot, and historically there's a lot more armed white people. So

it's still like, it's not the solution. It's not the solution, And like, why you think we ain't thought it at? Like do you think we ain't thought of at This has been tried before and and sometimes it does work. We'll we'll actually got me talking about this a few times in this episode. It's not like like again I I'm one of the anarchists being like consider it. You know.

It's yeah, I'm not saying consider it, but these people talking to me as if we never thought about you know what I'm saying from the fucking beginning, From the beginning, what makes you think Like you come home, bro, and yeah, what happens? You know, the black people in Union County are organized and they are armed, and white people start

going door to door and taking guns out events. Yes, and the reality of like and I love the part of that passage that was like this is not abnormal, Like what what what I wish I could run through all of the streets of America and explain is our countin American culture is violent, like we are. All of your statues are war heroes were founded on a protest. This is a violent culture. And our country, our power structures, they respond to violence. So I just don't like, I'm

not telling you this is the right way. I'm just telling you. This is the ocean you swimming in. You know what I'm saying. Right, we are saltwater fishies, That's where we are. We are a violent culture. So you mad at somebody else who's who's experiencing violence, right, like like it's become bit on those experience in violence to remain peaceful. Just it means like, I don't think you want to you asking me to be a fresh water fish in a saltwater ocean, Like, I just don't know

what to tell you. The water is violent. So this is what's going to happen, Yeah yeah, so um yeah. So the white folks start taking all the guns of the black people who are in malicious um and they also arrest dozens of black men, many of them had whom had no ties to the malitious. Now, some of these men attempted to resist, but they ultimately decided that

a gunfight would do them no good. Uh. They basically were like, hold up in a house that was surrounded by white folks, and they had the choice do we defend ourselves or do we give ourselves up? And kind of the decision was, if we defend ourselves, we will either kill or injure some of these white folks and they will be really angry when they finished killing us because there's a lot more of them, and they're gonna

burn down every black house in the neighborhood right there. Yeah, they like white people at this time and in this and at that time and in this time, but mostly at that time. Are thev say like you elevate the moment, like dial the eat up? You know what I'm saying.

So these folks like give themselves up to save the neighborhood. Um. Now, For several days, the white elites in Union County debated over this list of randomly arrested black men that they had and decided, basically, we're credited aside, how many of them should can we punish and how many of them can we spare without provoking a broader race riot among like, because you know, there were like a chunk of folks in power who are like, who understood, like, most of

these arrests are bullshit. But also we have to punish some black people more or less at random, otherwise the poor white folks in the county are going to go on a race riot. So there's like this big debate with the local elites, and Alice Walker, the head of a local black militia, gets arrested on his way to travel to the governor to warn him about what's happening

in Union County. Now Walker hadn't been present at any of the events that had sparked this, but he was hated by the most racist of the local whites because he was the organizer of a black militia, so local law enforcement decided that his death would go really far in calming the white mob. Now Walker had supporters who were ready to rally to his defense armed, but again

he told them not to um. He was innocent, and he was certain that a court case would bear out his innocence, But he never got the chance to actually, you know, do that. On January five, a huge gang of ku Kus klansmen raided the Union County jail and abducted five arrested black men, who also happened to be

prominent local Republicans Parsons Rights quote. It is not possible to name many of the members of the costumed group, but because though not all of the men were on horseback and were costumed, we can imagine that many of the group's members were elites. From the size of the group. Even if we accept only a cautious estimate, it seems

likely that they came from adjoining counties. There's a good deal of evidence that some of Fawcett's friends were present in a leadership role at this event, and one man who was later named by witnesses to the raid as a leader of the clan mob that abducted all these black men, was Fawcett's good buddy, Sheriff Rice Dgers. Um. So again, yeah, the ship, that's how they get into the jail is the sheriff as a klansman and he

lets in. Yeah. Yeah, and you know obviously what you're expecting happens to these black men, and it's tragic, yeah, um, And it's it's possible even that, like, so, there was one of the things that did happen when the KKK showed up in this jail, is they struggled with a

deputy to get the keys. Um. And it's heavily suspected by historians, including Elaine Parsons, that this was all kind of an act um and that it's likely that the deputy who struggled with the clan after giving up the keys, put on a clan costume and engaged in the raid after being robbed. Yeah, yeah, I can totally picture that, Hey, don't take my key, don't take my key. Look, I'm

doing the right thing. Yeah. And it is like again a lot and this this this, I highlight this story because I think specific stories are kind of useful in getting people emotionally involved. But this is one of this happened. We will never know how many times constantly UM Like, the whole idea of a mob showing up at the jail and the officers handing over the keys or straight up just participating in the raid of the jail with

clan robes on was a constant story during this period. UM. Now, as a rule, local law enforcement either again helped actively or turned a blind eye to clan violence out of fear. Watching from Washington, d C. President U. S. Grant was shocked by what seemed to be nothing so much as a resurgent Confederate movement in his you know, in his country.

So when he had come to power, Granted believed that the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment, which guaranteed black men the right to vote, would solve the problem of securing

the rights of newly freed black people. He was taken by surprise by the vicious string of murders that followed black emancipation and chat Noogat Tennessee, a black man named Andrew Flowers defeated the white candidate for Justice of the Peace in an eighteen seventy election, despite the fact that this man had just been elected justice police were nowhere in evidence while klansman whipped and beat him and told him that no inward would hold office in the United States.

Again common story, Yeah and again survived. Yeah again. Hey, why don't you just put black people in office? You think we ain't thought it at Yeah, you gotta deal with the problem of mass violence being done to black people in support of white supremacy, not always by white people, but in support of white supremacy. Because we'll talk next week about how how having black officers and police departments works, because it doesn't always work the way you might suspect,

because white supremacy. Yeah, we talk to the first one. Whiteness is a thing. Yeah, you know what isn't the ku klux jus. No, that's not that's not what I mean. Yeah, you know that's the harsh. Let's not analyze that too much right now. Let's just go through the episode one Fun the Police. It's time for an ad BK fun

the Police roducts. We're back. Oh my gosh. You know what I love is being back from ADS because it means that we can talk more about the horrific history of racism and law enforcement, terror and trauma that sits inside of my DNA and passed on generationally. Yes, should have had an air horn there. So, starting in eighteen seventy, U President Grant began to lobby Congress to give him power to do something about the clan because again, local

law enforcement was actively aiding and abetting the KK. In eighteen seventy and eighteen seventy one, Congress passed the Enforcement Acts. These protected the rights of black men to vote, hold office, and serve on juries and generally enjoy equal protection under the law. The Ku Klux Klan Acts, as they came to be known, allowed President Grant to call up the army to order in order to arrest and break up

the bands of disguised night marauders. And we're to be like critical of law enforcement on this podcast, but we gotta be fair when it's important to be fair, and federal law enforcement did a pretty decent job on breaking up the clan. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is this is where things get really complicated, prop because a lot of the credit for this goes to Amos Ackerman, the Attorney

General of the United States. Ackerman joined the Republican Party after the Civil War and became one of the nation's most strenuous advocates for black suffrage. He was like, black people have the right to vote and hold office, and we will I I will make sure we enforce this

with fucking rifleman if we have to. Um. Historian William S. Mcpheeley said of Ackerman that quote no attorney general before or since has been more vigorous in the prosecution of cases designed to protect the lives and rights of black Americans. And here's where things get complicated, because before he was a Republican before he was the Attorney General. Amos Ackerman volunteered and fought in the Confederate Army. People have layers

of complication. People are complicated. They in them contain many Yeah. Um, and this if for Amos, this seems to have been like he was. It seems to have been more a matter of, like you hear about these folks who are like, really loyal to their state for reasons I have trouble understanding. Like, he doesn't seem to have joined the Confederate Army specifically to fight for slavery, although he fought for slavery because

that's what the Confederate Army fought for. But in his mind, I think it was more like, I'm really loyal to Georgia. I don't know. I can't get in ahead of that guy. But I guess if you can make that up he tried to afterwards. Um, So I want to give it to the possibility that people, uh, probably hundreds of them at the time, you know, like you said, just was like, look, we're down. Here is what we do. We're fighting for

our way of life. I guess that's right. And in the middle of that, finally had this like, you know, this is bullshit, you know what I'm saying, and was like, but if you'd only this person for miles talking like this, it's probably hard to find some good community and you're probably gonna fumble, and then you become this guy to where you're like, hey, there's one thing I can do. I could probably like dismantled his clan. Thing, that's the

thing to do. Yeah, if there's a thing that can make up for volunteering to serve in the Confederate Army, I guess it's dismantling the KKK. I guess. Yeah, Like that's a good that's a good, good artist. Yeah. Yeah. So the worst clan violence was in South Carolina, and Grant declared martial law in that state, citing a condition

of lawlessness. He suspended habeas corpus uh, and numerous clansmen were rounded up by federal authorities, including Sheriff Rice Rogers, who we have been talking about a lot of a lot of Sheriff Scott dropped pulled up in this. So the Senate held extensive hearings where hundreds of black victims of the clan were allowed to tell their stories to the nation under Rackerman's direction, six hundred clansmen were convicted, in sixty five of them sent to a federal penitentiary.

By eighteen seventy two, the clan was no longer a meaningful force in the United States. Frederick Douglas himself said that without President Grant's actions, black Americans would have been trapped again in a condition almost identical to slavery. That is probably true, But it's also true that Grant kind of botched the landing on this one, firing Ackerman to appease his political rivals and commuting the sentences of some clansmen in a bid for reconciliation. So again, I can't

stand here. You know, let's be fair, um. But also, you know, it is fair to say that Ulysses Simon Simpson Grant was probably the best presidential advocate for black rights that existed until at least FDR. That's I was going to say, like, yeah, why not to the New Deal, you know, yeah, and even like even he got an

asterisk next to it, yeah, a couple of yeah. So terrorism was, however, briefly out as a method of suppress of repressing Black Americans and enforcing white suprema see or at least terrorism and kind of an organized fashion, because we're gonna talk about lynching later. Um. This left the law and law enforcement as the last organized refuge for white supremacists. The Black Codes had been made illegal in eighteen sixty eight when the Fourteenth Amendment gave black people

equal protection under the law. UM, But in eighteen seventy seven, the first Jim Crow laws began to be passed, mandating separate public spaces for black and white people. Suddenly, white and black people were now expected by law to use separate schools, libraries, water fountains, and restaurants. The police could no longer arrest black men for voting, although that absolutely still happened, but they could arrest black people for entering

white spaces. The clan was gone, but the police remained, and for decades they took over the hard work of enforcing white supremacy from the terrorists. In nineteen fifteen, William J. Simmons, former minister, performed a real act of resurrection and brought the KKK back to life. Now. Simmons had been a big nerd for things like the Masons and other fraternal societies that were a big part of life back in the day clubs where men would gather and dress up

in costumes, do silly rituals, and generally get drunk. Simmons wanted to make a society of his own, and he decided that reviving the old KKK would be easiest because then he could cash in on the clan's name recognition and branding. Again, I cover all this in that two party that we we already did on the show. But before we move on to the cops stuff, the important thing to know is that the Second Clan was fucking huge.

While the first had been a relatively small group of terrorists, the Second Clan had its terrorists, but it was largely a social club that included millions of Americans. At its height, they had a summer camp like. It was not quite the same thing. Yeah, they so branded equipment and stuff like, and in a lot of ways they were basically a pyramid scheme. Simmons engaged a pr firm to help him repackage this old terrorist group as a cool club for families.

By nineteen twenty, the whole thing had gone viral nationwide, and the clan did engage in pushing racist laws. But for the folks at the top. I think more than even a force for racism. The clan was a grift right now. There were a lot of racists in like everyone in the clan was a racist still, and there were a lot of racists who were like the old clansmen kind of at the top. Making money was more the goal than anything else. Um yeah, uh so uh.

In nineteen one, Simmons gave an interview to the Atlanta Journal that was basically his sales pitch to the nation for the Ku Klux Klan from a right up in the National Museum of American History website quote. While explicitly advocating white supremacy, Simmons played up his group's commitment to law and order, promoted their enforcement of prohibition, and even

boasted of his own police credentials. He claimed members at every level of law enforcement belonged to his organization and that the local sheriff was often one of the first to join when the clan came to a town. Ominously, Simmons declared that the sheriff of Fulton County knows where he can get two members of the clan in a moment's called to suppress anything in the way of lawlessness. There is yeah, and he wasn't blowing hot air when

he said this. In Anaheim, California, Klansman won four out of five seats on the city council, dominating local politics until nineteen four. They voted to allow officers who are clan members to patrol wearing their full KKK uniform instead of their normal police uniform. Non police clansmen were also allowed to patrol and interrogate citizens in the streets. Hey, I guess want you guys to know that anaheims where

Disneyland is. So just just like let this let that sink in Anaheim, and in Anaheim and Disneyland is you want to go to downtown Disney it's Anaheim. Yeah. The City council of Anaheim, who are clansmen are like, yeah, cops can just wear their clan uniforms to do their job. It's just a club. Yeah yeah, And the clan uniform basically is the same as the police uniform. So like

we're good. So I don't understand the problem. You know this This is probably something for episode five, But just like when I think to myself, like how anyone can get their brain around even at that time, after the law of change, after you fought the war. I just think at the core it's because you, like black people are just you're still just functional. You're still just a in the brain of the white supremacist at the time. And I think sometimes the stain of that's still here now,

where it's like you are you're an appliance. Black people are an appliance, right, So when you can make an appliance out of our entire bodies, that slavery, right. So, and then you move that into mass incarceration to where you like, okay and segregation and stuff like that, like who wants to live in the house with their cows? Right because you're just in your washing machine doesn't have rights.

It's just a washing machine, you know. So when you if you think of an entire person because of their color as just a function for yourself, and it's not even just black people, it's like even people that like if your argument against uh, you know, supporting immigrant rights, especially in the GRNTO Latin American, you know, people are like, well, well, who's going to pick our cotton or pick our strawberries?

Who's gonna be you still see these people as an appliance, you know what I'm saying, So when I got my ten thousand new followers, that's saying support black voices. I wanted to be like, Yo, thank you for coming. Here's ten other things. I am dad. You know I got daughters. I'm lactose in tolerant. You know what I'm saying. I think butters disgusting. It's because you're still see me as

and appliance, you know what I'm saying. So if if if I'm just the if I'm just the cow, if I'm just the function, So even if it's a function of you learning from me, I'm still just it's still just utility. If it's a function of y're just supposed to pick our fields. You don't get rights. Y'all live over there. And I don't understand why the damn refrigerator it to me to treat it like an equal. Do you know what I'm saying, Like you're just the refrigeration,

Like shut up? You know what? Man? Here, we need to figure out something to make the damn cows and pigs understand that they just cows and pigs? Do you know what I'm saying? So to me, it's like if if that's where your brain goes Damn, I went on a rant. But that's where your brain goes. That's why it's so like mind boggling to this cityse Clans people. Was just like, I don't understand why these black people keep asking to sit at our tables. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,

and that's yeah. I mean like but like that that is sort of that's this is a really important thing to understand because Jim we usually talk about Jim Crow like white people usually talk about Jim Crow. I'm thinking back to like how it's talked about it like it was this terrible thing that happened that was done to black people, which it is was. It was a crime. But also what Jim Crow was is the foundation of

law enforcement. Law enforcement in this country was still very much in flux and being formalized when Jim Crow started. It was really fucking new, Like the first police department had only started in eighteen thirty eight. Jim Crow starts

in eighteen seventy seven. So US law enforcement and much, if not most, of this country is founded um at this like more or less at the same time as Jim Crow, which means that US law enforcement is founded in large part to keep the appliances in the eyes of the white elite, separated from the white elite like that that yeah, um so yes, important point. Um yes. So the second clan was also real popular in Oregon, maybe more popular in Oregon than it was anywhere else

in the country. And Patient zero for the Oregon Clan was the southern town of Medford, which is not Bedford, which is when you Shakespeare in the Park. Yeah, No, that's Ashland, which is right next to right, and and Ashland is a a very different city it is, but like, yeah, there's great tea house. I love. I actually like like Medford and Ashland are both like right next to each other and both in one of the prettiest parts of Oregon, and this one of the prettiest places in the entire planet.

Like I've been all over the damn world. I haven't found anywhere. I found some places that are like up there with with that part of Oregon, but I haven't done anything that I find pretty like fucking gorgeous place. But also Medford has a real long history of straight up fascism right into the present day. Um, the mayor of the town of Phoenix, I think it was Phoenix, which is like right outside of Medford, basically a suburb

of Medford. The mayor two or three days ago drove his car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters. The mayor, yeah, so the issues go continue. Yeah, I could see my face right now. The mayor wow. So um. Medford is where Luther Powell, the klegal sent by the National Clan to establish the clan in Oregon, set up the state's first KKK outpost. He gained initial recruits by pointing to the massive bootlegging problem in nearby Jackson County and making the case that the clan could help with

law and order. And I'm gonna quote now from a paper by Ben Bruce of Chapman University. Powell sold the Clan to potential followers not as a brotherhood of bigotry, but as a beacon of patriotism, cultural conservatism, and social order. According to Powell, the clan was there to uphold traditional American society against the threat of the Roaring twenties. Specifically, Pal emphasized the clan support for the enforcement of prohibition.

In a matter of weeks, Pal had sworn over a hundred men into the Invisible Empire, most of who were policemen Clan expert and author David Chalmers describes the clan under Pal as being in the law and order business. Luther Powell's recruiting success in Medford cannot be quantified by lists of names on paper on membership dues alone. With his newfound support from local police officers, Paal accused Medford County of insufficient prohibition enforcement policies. He didn spearheaded the

successful recall of the county sheriff. Within a month. The mayor of Medford was dressed in white robes as well. So Medford again, this is and this happens. We're talking about Anaheim and Medford, and like we'll talk about a couple of other cities, but this is happening all over the u S. We're like, whole city governments and the whole police departments are like, yeah, what if we're just

klansmen too? This is fine, yea yeah. So pal success perfectly embodies what made the second clan much more successful than the first. The first KKK was literally an insurgent terrorist army. The new KKK positioned itself as a force for law and order, standing alongside the state in order

to help keep white people safe. Um it was a It was again not a vigilante like terrorist organization, but instead the same kind of designated vigilante force, if you remember that from our first couple of episodes, designated plante force like the police, and that's why it was often like a lot of local clan cells were majority police officers. So Powell moved on quickly from Medford to Portland, as

most people who visit Medford tend to do. Within months, the city had thousands of clansmen and it may have garnered more KKK members more quickly than any other city. Now, again, this rapid success in Portland came in part from the fact that the clan was seenis respectable. Shortly after opening, the Portland Clan chapter partnered openly with the Portland Police Bureau.

Since the Portland Police Bureau only had a hundred and fifty men at this point, it considered itself understaffed, and the Mayor of Portland decided to appoint a vigilante police auxiliary, and he allowed the KKK to pick the members. These men received police powers and firearms, but their names were kept hidden, effectively turning themselves into a secret police force.

I should note here that during the recent protests in Portland, a commander of the Portland Police sport for sent out a directive ordering police officers to cover up their names and replace them with numbers that could only be traced back to names internally. Um, just a fun little thing. Portland Police Bureau, same force that partnered openly with the clan. Cool stuff. Oh my god, Portland's where there's where on We're on burn Side in m ok. You can go to a park of just food trucks and you can

get craft like vegan waffles. That's in Portland. And the cops are claim members and the yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I've heard. I've heard a lot of cops and clan go hand in hand chants in port in the Portland streets recently. And I obviously a lot of people believe that, But I don't know if those people know that. Literally, the Portland Police Bureau had an official arrangement with the KKK and serious, you know, yeah, no, you're literally correct in a very direct way, not just in a these

guys are secretly clan members. But no, no, no, like the PPB had an arrangement. Yeah, cool stuff. So a Storia,

Oregon also had a major clan problem. And this is because it was the most diverse city in the state, which meant at this point didn't mean that it was the most the least lowest number of white people, and meant that it had like basically it had the most the highest number of Catholic people who came from weird parts of Europe like right and again, the second clan in this period, some historians will argue, was actually more racist and violent against Catholics and Jewish people, or at

least as racist and violent as it was to black people. Like this is it is like they've broadened their their spate of hatred um and obviously it found a healthy base of resentful Protestant white people. In a story, a clan leaders brought in anti Catholic speakers to rile up the public, and they rallied themselves around enforcing vice laws that the police had not handled to their satisfaction. Primarily,

they went after prohibition violators and prostitutes. On June seventeenth, nineteen twenty two, the clan sent both local newspapers and the sheriff a letter demanding that he take action against the whistle in the heart of a local bootlegging operation. Two weeks before the letter, two people had died in a drunken accident after leaving the whistle in. The clan led her to the sheriff threatened to take care of the problem if he failed to do so. On June nineteenth,

the KKK sent fifty men into the whistle In. They were met by Sheriff's deputies, who had been called ironically by the bootleggers inside. The sheriff arrested both men, and the whole incident became something of a local scandal. The clan used it to petition for a recall election, which they again succeeded in getting. Their candidate won the recall election, giving them control of a story a sheriff's department, and

soon after they swept local government elections too. Variations of the story repeated themselves all over Oregon, and the clan was eventually successful in electing their own candidate for Governor. Walt or In Pierce his regime passed the Oregon Compulsory School Bill, which required all children from eight to fifteen to attend public school. That sounds innocuous enough on the surface, but the purpose of the bill was to destroy all

Catholic schools because those were not public. And again, the KKK really hates Catholics, and definitely the Oregon Clan is more anti Catholic than it is anti Black, but only because there's not a whole lot of black people in Oregon, right yeah, yeah, yeah, it was like it's like ninety five percent white people at this point. So that's why the KKK is so focused on although they also focus

a lot on Japanese and Chinese immigrants. And like this governor that they elect pushes a bill to basically make it impossible to move to Oregon or work in Oregon as an Asian person, and you know, the both the anti compulsory bill and the anti Asians bills like those get struck down. Um, and this governor, who is backed by the clan winds up kind of turning on the clan, not because he's a good guy, but because, um, he doesn't he thinks that after he gets elected, he doesn't

really feel loyal to the clan anymore. Like so anyway, it's a complicated story, but the clan, I'm just like man like y'all sin as I feel like when I the more I learned about them, I'm just like man, y'all are all over the place like where I just sometimes I can't even draw the I can't even connect the dots of their hatred, like how like how are how are we talking about Jews right now? Like where it's like when did we get to that? You know?

Or I just I can imagine I would love to see a skit where somebody's trying to complain where where uh some new kids in the back of the room at the clan meeting and can't keep up with like wait, we're talking about Catholics? Now what what what they do? Wait? What what's the problem with you know what I'm saying? Like just like I can't even this is a complete tangent, but I'm just like, yeah, I just I can't keep up. Man, I'm like yeah, oh, just hey, man, at least be consistent.

Yeah yeah, yeah, um break oh yeah we should That was smooth. Thank Yeah. Here's have a have a handful of products Buckaroo's. We're back. We have returned, and we're talking still about the Oregon Clan. So the Oregon kk hit K success in local and state politics gave them the legitimacy they needed to feel comfortable carrying out acts of violence. On April eleventh, nineteen, a twenty two year old Latino man named Sam Johnson was grabbed in the middle of the night by a group of robed klansmen.

They dragged him into the forest and they hung him from a tree quote not long enough to kill him, but sufficiently long to give him a glance into eternity, according to a local paper. While he lay on the ground recovering, the mob told him that he had to leave town or they would come back and kill him. This semi lynching was again reported on in the local paper,

but no arrests were made. The county sheriff, or was almost certainly one of the men who abducted Sam, called him a bad actor who just hadn't done anything serious enough to get arrested. He doesn't have a criminal record, but he was. We decided he was a criminal, so it's fine. Yeah. The sheriff accused him of bootlegging without any evidence and washed his hands of the case. On March eighteenth, a Catholic piano salesman named JF. Hale was assaulted in the same way, taking a gunpoint into the

woods and then hung almost to death. This time, the demand was made that Hale drop a lawsuit against another Medford man for an unpaid debt, and that he also leave town. The sheriff said the kidnapping two was of no local interest, which it's also worth noting that there was a recent well last year a trans black woman who was murdered in the city of Portland's um and the death was written a well who died in the City of Portland. The police ruled it a suicide. There's

a lot that shady about it. The family has asked for it to be investigated, and the police said that investigating it, uh further was not of local interest. Um, so that's cool, that's a cool thing. That Again, I got to point out how this never stopped and has never really even slowed down in a lot of ways. This this is this playbook has ever failed these fools? Yes, yeah, uh. On April two, a black railroad worker who had just been released from jail over prohibition violation was kidnapped hung

again in order to flee the town. As he ran away, he heard men shouting back at him can you run inward, while some in the crowd fired at his feet with their revolvers. By this point, local media had begun covering the clan subductions and outraged articles. One in the Medford Mail Tribune revealed that the state clan leadership had actually sent notes to individual members within the county with instructions

on how to carry out these necktie attacks. The clan denied these letters since they had not been sent on official clan letterhead. Again, they had a lot of products, plan had a lot of products and services actually in this period, because it wasn't all letter hit. They sold insurance. Yeah, this is incredible. So klegal? H. E. Griffith, who was the guy who had taken over the Medford Clan, demanded, then your name is can you say his his title again?

Just legal? Just klegal? I know, yeah, I'm just yeah, exercises that women do to keep Oh yes, yes it does sound like that. Yeah now, so h Griffith prop thank you? Hey girl, dad? You know yeah, you know

what I'm saying. Yeah. So, um, The Medford Mail Tribune like writes a letter about how the clan is very obviously behind all this, and the guy in charge of the Medford Clan demands to that the newspaper give him a chance to respond, and the Medford Mail Tribune lets him release his statement through the paper denying any role

in the semi lynchings. Gotta gotta tell both sides of the story, um Ben Bruce writes, quote Klegal h. Griffith gave an official statement denying any prior knowledge of the aforementioned eventual events as well as the clan's alleged involvement. Griffith accused the local papers of severely misrepresenting the facts.

In the same article, Griffith endorsed the clan as a regular, fraternal, patriotic, and benevolent order that stands for pure Americanism, protection of pure womanhood, free speech and press, free public schools, restricted immigration, white supremacy, and law and order, and consistently assists all law officers in the performance of their duties. Um that's cool. Surprisingly, the people of Medford did not believe these denials, or at least enough of them didn't. That public outrage did

force a trial, which occurred nearly a year later. Nineteen clansmen were charged with participating in the necktie parties, as they came to be known. One of the men was the former police chief of Medford, Good Lord. The main witness was JF. Hale, the piano salesman, but the state decided he was not a reputable citizen, largely because his son had been born out of wedlock. It is the twenties. Uh, It's it's cool. All charges against the klansmen were dropped.

Ye oh yeah, so you remember that. You remember last year that at that um that uh anti abortion protests, where that little boy was like eye to eye with that Native American man and like the the whole picture went. Remember that. Yeah, So this that what you're just explaining explains in a lot of ways why everybody looked at

that moment and saw two different things. Because the what what the terror that a lot of us are talking about, Like why this was so frustrating was because the the ambiguity of this kid's face of just being like he is just a kid. He is kind of smirking, right, And you could say, well, we didn't do anything, he didn't erupt the guy. He's just standing there looking at me.

If they're at his own protests, it's fine. But when you hear stories like this, what and I can't say because I'm not in that kid's head and I wasn't there. I'm just saying when I look at it, I see the history. You're explaining the idea that you that these boys can function without any imputant what's the word I'm looking for, imputant punitive, their impunity. What's the word I'm looking for. I don't know. But the point is they're

not gonna get in trouble. That's what I'm trying to say. Right, So you can always lean back and be like, what, I didn't do anything. So and I just remembered how many times in my own life recognizing that smirk, knowing that no matter what this kid did did, no matter how terrible it is, no matter how much evidence I have, he will not be punished, you know what I'm saying. So that's the like. So, whether I know what this kid was thinking or not, it's like, this is what

America saw. There was two America's one of the one side of America saw this kid has. This kid's gonna there's no matter what, he's not gonna get in trouble. Nope. And this is this is why when we finally do reform law enforcement, you know, uh, disband the police and replace it with something better. One of the federal agencies

we need is a is a federal branch. That is just a groups of people who go door to door and just give people one solid punch in the face when they really deserve it, when they like they don't. We shouldn't be sending them to prison. They didn't do a prison thing. Like you were a dick and now you're gonna get hit in the face. Yeah yeah, a good slapping. Yeah yeah, somebody in the damn face. Yeah yeah. Uh. I think it's back from get shipped, which is like a face in need of a fist? Is the is

the direct translation? Yeah, Yeah, Sometimes people just need to get like not hard, not enough to do damage. Like we'll train these people to deliver like legally appropriate slaps and punches, but like you were a dick and somebody needs to fucking smack you, and like it should be a group of of of men and women in suits who come to your door and say, like you have been selected to get smacked in the face because you were a dick and you need to know it. That's

my suggestion, um, not a bad one. Yeah. So Oregon's clan was relatively non violent, and again this totally tells you how bad the second clan was. We're calling like lynch ng's that don't kill anybody, relatively non violent compared to the clan in Oklahoma, for example, had a horrifically violent clan that also eventually wound up in charge of most a lot of the the different state or or

like local cities and departments, police departments and stuff. Um. And it was also comparatively non violent when you sort of put it against the clan in Indiana for example. There in Indiana, the KKK was successful in infiltrating a local civilian law enforcement agency, the Horse Thief Detective Association. Now, this odd group got its start in the eighteen forties and it's members were basically licensed vigil aunties with the right to protect property via violence. And as you can

guess by the name, they started to prosecute horse thieves. Right, law enforcement can't catch all these horse thieves. Will deputize civilians, will give them the right to like arrest and funk up people to stop horse thievery. But they also had kind of broader rights to enforce laws. Um. Now, the birth of the automobile reduced the Horse Thief Detective Association to a somewhat a relevant group. But when the KKK

came to Indiana in the early nineteen twenties. They saw that, like, there was this organization that civilians who are klansmen could join, and it would give them the right to carry out

violence with state backing. So they start flooding the h d t A with membership, and they also start giving existing members in the h d t A free and subsidized membership in the KKK because they see that like, this weird little organization gives them the right to enforce the law in Indiana without like having to get elected sheriff or anything or put you know, even recruit police officers.

So the Indiana Clan starts pouring money into the h d t A and offering their existing members low priced in tree into the clan quote as sworn members of h d t A chapters, Clansmen in the state essentially formed an armed, officially sanctioned force that would allow them to enact their agenda under the guise of legitimate law enforcement. Now.

In his work on the Clan in Indiana, historian Leonard J. Moore details membership records from nineteen twenty five that showed that over twenty of the state's eligible population white Protestant native born males belonged to the KKK, and some counties that number exceeded thirty three. In Marion County, which included the city of Indianapolis, over a quarter of eligible men belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, some twenty five thousand members in total, many of whom held dual membership in

the h d T A chapter. Okay, wait, m hm uh they paid dues? Yeah, yeah, no, it was a for profit in debt. Oh yeah, I remember that, which I forgot. How lame that even makes it even more lame. Yeah, they're they're paid paid to be in here, mom, so lame.

It's pretty cool. So I'm gonna quote again from a historian, Leonard J. Moore quote, uh as horse thief detectives, the Indiana Clan came down on bootleggers, organized labor, immigrants, and African American populations, and one incident related in Elliott Jaspin's book Buried in the Bitter Waters, they helped expel black citizens from the mining town of Blandford in western Indiana.

On January eighteenth, nineteen twenty three, a young girl from Blandford reported that she had been abducted and assaulted by an African American man. Within forty eight hours, several hundred white towns folk met and demanded that all black residents leave, beginning with unmarried men who were to be outside town limits. By that evening. Within a week, all black residents of Blandford,

approximately fifty people had fled. That exodus was overseen by Harry Newland, the sheriff of Vermillion County and himself a klansman, along with members of the Dana h d t A and the Help Township h d t A, two of the four chapters in the area. The Help Township chapter alone included over a dozen members of the clan, including its captain. African American citizens both in Blandford and the surrounding county felt forced to comply into part in mass.

As Jaspin notes, the has recorded well over two hundred black residents in Vermilion County. In nineteen thirty, that number was less than seventy. That's an active of ethnic cleansing. That's what we call ethnic cleansing. Yeah, that's what that's called. Yeah. Yeah, So the Indiana all the KKK was active all throughout and again, think about this, think about this civilian group

with law enforcement powers enforcing white supremacy. When you think about, for example, armed members of far right Molissia's showing up to support the police at protests, Um, yeah, that's so. The KKK was active all throughout the United States during this period, eventually reaching a peak of like four million members.

There exists no accurate nationwide count for how many people were forced out of their homes by the clan, how many were assaulted by them, are killed by them, just as there exists no comprehensive accounting for how often this behavior occurred, either with the consent or the enthusiastic help

of the police. In either case, it maybe a mistake to even attempt to quantify the KKK's part in this specifically, because the violence of both the First and Second Clan occurred within a much broader context of mass violence against black people by white people with the express consent of law enforcement. This violence started up during reconstruction and continued

all the way into nineteen fifty. We tend to call it lynching today, although it took a variety of forms, and we will never know how many black men were killed during this period. But the Equal Justice Initiative estimates sixty five hundred at the minimum. These murders occurred at a steady pace, with intermittent eruptions that were spurred on by a mix of economic recessions, war and white resentment of black success. And all that brings me to the

story of the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. Have you heard of this prop Yes, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna guess I think because of the show Watchmen. Actually a lot more white people know about Tulsa now, which we'll be talking about in part two. I don't think very many. Why I didn't know about fucking Red Summer until like a week or two ago. So four, Part four Jesus, Part four for the week, Part two for the week. Okay, well, okay, yeah, the next episode we will talk about Tulsa. This episode.

This is uh yeah, Red Summer nineteen nineteen. Again. This is the type of stuff that, like, like I said before, if it's not in your experience, you you'd have to go out of your way to know this, um. But if it is, it's like this is why I will always hammer like, you know, having a good strong sense of self, a sense of community, and then having relationships

across communities. You know what I'm saying, So that now you don't sound like an asshole when you don't know what you're talking about because you don't know people from other places. You know what I'm saying. So this is so so yeah. So anyway, all that to say, this ship won't be in your textbooks, and it's not gonna be. It's not gonna Yeah, you're lucky if you get a paragraph on the Red Summer in a in a textbook,

and not all texts. Mind sure didn't have it. It is in some textbooks because some of the articles I read on it, like we're specifically analyzing how it's covered in textbooks, but again generally about a paragraph. Now. The Red Summer is the name given by Double A CP leader James Weldon Johnson for the months in nineteen nineteen

when a wave of racist riots. Race riots is often the term, I think racist riots is more accurate, broke out against black communities in Charleston, South Carolina, Longview, Texas, Bisbee, Arizona, Washington, d C. Chicago, Knoxville, Omaha, and Elaine, Arkansas. At least a hundred and fifty people were killed in the violence, and a hundred or so more lynched, but it's probably more like a thousand dead. You'll you'll hear again, we don't.

We're not gonna We're never gonna get a good accounting. Um. And I hope the listeners here like as he gets into this story again, just like we said, you know, to the militia folks that are like, how come black people don't arm? And when we say, you think we ain't thought it at right now, as you read, as you listen to this story, when people say, well, how come you don't build your own businesses and support your own community and start your own capitalistic spaces, let me say,

you think we ain't thought it at yeah? Yeah, yeah. Um. So obviously you know, clan members were involved with and behind a great deal of the violence of Red Summer, but not not necessarily most of it. Although in Pittsburgh the KKK chapter posted up notices around a black neighborhood which stated the war is over, Negroes, stay in your place.

If you don't, will put you there, um, which is a little ironic because a lot of Red Summer involved white crowds going into black neighbors coming yeah exactly one and all business fucking a. While clansmen were regular drivers of violence during Red Summer, uniformed police officers played at least as larger role, maybe even a larger one. One of the first riots started in Chicago on July after a black child mistakenly swim him into a chunk of

beach that was whites only under Jim Crow. White people on the beach saw this child, Eugene Williams, and started pelting him with rocks. Every time he would attempt to come to shore, they would throw more rocks at him. He eventually drowned. This brought a cloud crowd of furious black citizens out more rocks were thrown. A white officer showed up, observed the situation, and decided to arrest a black guy. This, for obvious reasons, helped push tensions in

Chicago to a boiling point. The resulting riot led to thirty eight, mostly black deaths, and the police responded with a mix of completely neglect, often allowing the white mobs to do violence, and occasional acts of giving a ship, possibly due to the presence of black men on the Chicago p D. The most example notable example of this was probably the Chicago police holding back a white mob from burning down a hospital filled with mostly black patients.

The only CPD officer to die during the riot was a black man. Red Summer actually continued into the fall, and one of its bloodiest hot spots was Phillips County, Arkansas. On September thirty, small group of black people gathered at a rural church to organize a sharecroppers union. Two police, white policemen showed up, and they had been sent there

specifically to stop the union from organizing. So again we do have some interchange with what we talked about in the last episode, where the police exist to stop unions for wealthy people. Anyway, um, so they claimed they were looking for a bootlegger, and what happened next is unclear, but a gunfight broke out and one officer was killed, almost certainly in self defense by the people in that meeting.

The local sheriff sent out a call for armed random white dudes to quote hunt Mr. Inward, and he did not use the in word. I mean, he used the in word, but he didn't, you know, he used the real one, hunt Mr. Inward in his lair. Hundreds of white dudes from all over the area and even from the adjoining state of Mississippi showed up in Phillips County with guns. They opened fire wildly at every black person they saw, with the enthusiastic consent and help of the police.

Frank Moore, a black farmer, survived the massacre. He later recalled the white sent word that they was coming down here to kill every inn where they found. There were three hundred or four hundred or more white men with guns, shooting and killing women and children. Now, of course klansmen were involved, and some of those clansmen were likely police officers, but the violence in Phillips County was backed by state and local officials, lawmen, and business owners, not just a

vigilante social club. The official death toll was eleven black men and five white men killed. The real number of murdered black people is believed to range from anywhere from one hundred to two hundred and thirty seven. At one point, the white mobs were aided by federal troops as well. Local reporters helped the government cover up the massacre by claiming the violence had been white self defense against a black uprising. One Arkansas Gazette article opened with the headline

Negroes plan to kill all whites. Good lord, Yeah, you could just make it up and yo, like going into like some of these specific communities just to color, just to are some of the story. We're becoming a fluid, especially the ones in South Carolina. They were like, okay, listen, you don't want to do business with us. Fine, So we were saying it was opening banks, selling their own homes, starting their own businesses, growing their own crops. It was like, Okay,

it's fine, Fine, we don't have to live together. It's fine, you know what I'm saying. And then all of the sudden, somebody just come knock it down. It's like, what do you and you know, specifically sparked by that community share croppers in the community being like, we need to agitate together to have a better deal in a legal and constitutionally protected way. Oh now you're shooting at us. Now, now you're shooting at us. It was just like you're like, okay, wait, okay,

so we're not three fist human anymore. The law applies to us. It seems like this system of sharecropping don't work. Maybe we should work together and kind of figure out a better way to I mean, I mean we we were citizens. Now we have this right all guess we don't know you're shooting us. Okay, yeah, that this is just like the oh I was in fear of my life bullshit that cops second every day they were uprising. You'll hear that again in the next episode two. Yeah,

they were mining their own business. I was afraid of the woman sleeping in her own house. It's it's uh, you know, I'm not a big chairman mal fan um, but when he said political power comes from the barrel of a gun, he was not incorrect. Like, and that's what you see here, right right, That's what that's what

Red Summer is. Um. Yeah, And I recognize things are getting little bit muddled here in this podcast about the history of the police visa v the difference between the vigilante violence, the KKK violence, the police violence, the police violence that is KKK violence. And that's because very real history is always muddled. And in this period police were often perpetrators and lynchings and white mob violence against black people.

They also more often failed to intervene in this sort of thing, and they did sometimes fight against it, um often because there were black officers on the force, but there were in this period is important to note some very brave white officers who were like, this isn't fucking okay, and I'm not trying to erase those people, but nationwide as a coal police completely failed to defend black citizens in any organized, meaningful way during the Red Summer of

nineteen nineteen. White people initiated more or less a hundred percent of the violence during this summer, and law enforcement consistently failed to protect them. In Washington, d C. While white mobs marched through black neighborhoods, firing wildly, the police response was so lackluster that the mayor was had to call in the military in order to protect the city's

black citizens. The individual racism of white officers, mixed with the simple reality that police had never been intended to protect poor neighborhoods or businesses in an organized fashion, left black people with no option but to protect themselves. And to tell that story in brief, I'm going to quote from an article in teen Vogue by Ursula wolf Roca. Quote.

In Knoxville, Tennessee, armed black men organized themselves to successfully repel hundreds of white rioters that who had already destroyed the county jail with a battering ram and dynamite. In Chicago, African Americans formed self defense units after days of white

terror in their neighborhoods. Many of these defenders were veterans among the three hundred and seventy thousand black men inducted into the army during World War One, who hoped fighting for democracy abroad might finally secure their first class citizenship at home. The mob violence in Chicago convinced Harry Haywood, a veteran of the all black three hundred and seventy Infantry Regiment, he had made a mistake, As he explained, I had been fighting the wrong war. The Germans weren't

the enemy. The enemy was right here at home in Washington. Yeah. There it is. The muddle is the I love that you said muddled, because that's the point. That's the point we're trying to make when it comes to policing in America. It is muddled. I can't I should be able to tell the difference. I should be able to go that is the clan. These are the police I should be And that's our point. I can't tell the difference. That's

the point. Yep. YEP may continue that quote about black self defense during red Summer in Washington, d C. Seventeen year old Carry Johnson opened fire on men breaking into her home while a thousand white rioters laid siege to her neighborhood. In Anniston, Alabama, in December of nineteen eighteen, a black veteran sergeant Edgar Caldwell was ordered out of the white section of a street car. He refused, kicked out of the car, and set up on by the

white motorman and conductor. Caldwell shot his pistol twice, killing one of his attackers, though uncoordinated, when looked at together, these hundreds of moments in and leading up to nineteen nineteen read is an awesome display of collective black agency and self preservation. So again, black arm self defense often is overwhelmed by again, this yeer number of white people, their additional resources they're backing of the state. But it also works out sometimes and it saves a lot of

lives when it does. So we I don't want to be saying like it's not at tactic that succeeds it historically has um. In two thousands sixteen, city councilwoman Angelia Williams took to the stage at an in double a cp luncheon. She told the crowd that modern racists had quote taken off their white hats and white sheeted robes and put on police uniforms. Some of them have put on shirts and ties his policymakers, and some of them

have put on robes as judges. This did not go over well, and she was roundly pilloried by law enforcement officials. A lot of them were like Democrats, and a wide variety of elected local democrats. Um But if Councilwoman Williams had wanted to bring up recent cases of folks who worked forces and also burnt crosses, she would not have had to google hard. In two thousand twelve, a Little Rock, Arkansas officer who had attended at least one KKK meeting,

shot and killed a fifteen year old black child. In two thousand fifteen, video leaked of Anniston, Alabama police officer Joshua Doggrel delivering a speech for the League of the South. Now, the League of the South is a neo Confederate organization, and for all intents and purposes, just addressed up rebranding of the KKK that tries to look a little bit more palatable. These Motherfucker's marched with the Nazis and Charlottesville

into that in seventeen. Doggerel had joined the League in nineteen. He'd been a police officer since two thousands six. He talked openly about the League of the South to his fellow officers. He advised them to join, and he held meetings at a steakhouse very close to the police station. He posted pro Confederate content on his Facebook, including pictures of early KKK leaders. Dog Rols clan affiliations were doubly concerning,

giving Anniston's history. In May of nineteen sixty one, the Freedom Writers had shown up in town to protest against segregation and Jim Crow. They were assaulted by a massive klansmen who slashed their tires, broke their bus windows, and tried to light the bus on fire with them in it. The Anniston Police department was headquartered a block away from this, a little closer than the steakhouse where officer dog roll With decades later hold meetings. Annison officers failed to arrive

at the scene of the crime until hours later. No one was arrested. They may have been late because a number of them probably had to change out of their robes and into their uniforms because they were there. Yeah, because they were trying to burn the bus down. Yes. Now I cannot point you two in specific act of racial violence that Officer dogg Role committed while in uniform, as it is damnably hard to get good information on police misbehavior from the very best police departments, and Anniston

is not one of those. But significant evidence suggests that officer dog role in his membership in what is a confederate organization is not a one off from an article in the Guardian quote. Although it is unusual to be for a police officer to be so open about his involvement in an extremist organization, for decades, anti government, white supremacist groups have been attempting to recruit police officers into

their ranks. It is something a lot of folks are overlooking, says v Ta B. Johnson, an assistant professor of law at Georgetown University. Police forces are becoming more interested in talking about implicit bias, the unconscious racial biases we carry with us as Americans, but people aren't really addressing the

explicit biases that are present on police forces. According to Johnson's research, there have been at least a hundred different scandals and more than forty different states involving police officers who have sent racist emails and text messages are made

racist comments on social media since the nineteen nineties. A recent investor a gation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that hundreds of active duty and retired law enforcement officers from around the country were members of Confederate, anti government and anti Islam groups on Facebook. But there's no official record of officers who are tied to white supremacists

or other extremist groups. Because in the US, there's no federal policy for screening or monitoring the countries eight hundred thousand plus law enforcement officers for extremist views. The eighteen thousand or so police departments across the country are largely left to police themselves. Now, of course, Yeah that's a good call. Yeah, yeah, I have a suggestion. If they police themselves, why don't we police ourselves? I mean, apparently

a system works. Yeah, what's it like? Like, I just you can't people think we you think we're making this stuff up when we say, yo, cops are racist. I'm trying to tell you it's racism over the arey. Like, what like, I just what what possible gain do any of us have accusing falsely an entire organization to be racist, Like what, like what what do you think my end game would be? There's no like I gained nothing from

making this stuff up. Yeah. It's and again like people always focus on like you know, oh, well you know, that's not that many police officers, you know when you you you read them the numbers like that compared to how many there are, and it's like, well, no, that those are the ones that individual activists have for after hours, probably for each individual officer trapped down and verified, because again,

the government's not looking at us. But also, let's say there's a block party that happens next to your house, right hundred people. One of those people shoots you in the arm with a handgun for no reason, and everyone else in the crowd hangs out around them and does nothing. Um, and you complain about it, and they're like, well it was only one of us that shot you. Does does that matter? Not at all? Yeah? They're kind of all pieces of ship, right you kind of all just let

me later. Yeah, kind of a ship party, yeah, like you are your home. Yeah. In two thousands, seventeen, a classified FBI counter terrorism policy guide was obtained by the Intercept. I don't know how they got this, but there are actually quite a few police FBI agents who are real piste about this problem and seemed to be vigorously leaking

information to the press. Um In a section focused on how the bureau lists individuals on a terrorism watch list, the author's note that quote and again the authors being the FBI domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremist, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active

links to law enforcement officers. The FBI goes on to note that they had to alter some of their policies when dealing with local law enforcement to account for the fact that so many of them are members of extremist groups, Like, isn't too many? Yeah, we gotta, like, we've had to change how we interact with cops as the FBI because

we're scared of you. Motherfucker's. Yeah. One of the one of the justifiable criticisms of of the series we're doing is that we're not really going to lean into the FBI much because I've kind of determined to focus on like cops, like like normal police law, like the folks in the street. Even though there is a very long and well worth discussing history of racism within the FBI. Um, we talk about that quite a bit, and our two part are on the bastards who killed the black panthers.

Yeah we didn't. We'll get into it a bit next week. Um, but we're going to focus really on like you know, beat cops essentially, like what leads to them police departments, just because I can't. We can't do this for like ten straight weeks. Um, we both have other stuff we gotta deal with. Um. Yeah. The term ghost skins is often used by white supremacists to refer to folks who basically hide their power level to gain respected jobs in

society and advanced white supremacy. Law enforcement is a particularly prized field for these ghost skins because it gives them virtually unchecked opportunities to do violence to non white people. One example of this would be a gang of officers within the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who in nine embarked on a campaign of vandalism and the beating and torturing of black Californians. Have you heard of the Lynwood Vikings,

prop Yes, I have. Yeah. The Lynwood Vikings were a violent Neo Nazi gang that committed arson and murder and torture on black Californians. And the gang was entirely made up of Los Angeles County Sheriff's officers. It was a neo Nazi gang that was all sheriff's officers. Let that

sink in. Let that sink in. And now think of the young man who was recently found hung to death in Palmdale, California, and who was declared a suicide by Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, and then the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department was in a gunfight with his half brother where they old him a couple of days later, and that it is reported that the Palmdale chunk of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department has what they called the news called cliques within it that were you might call them gangs,

maybe like the Lynwood Vikings. Because this keeps happening weird, because this is not history. It's yeah, yeah, people need to know more about the Lynwood Vikings. Um yeah, yeah, so uh yeah, it's it's cool. We're gonna talk about John Burge in Chicago in the next episode. Um, but for right now. The intercept goes on to give a couple of other examples, and I'm gonna quote from their

article again. In Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrolled racist or Nazi graffiti throughout their department's locker rooms. In Texas, to police officers were fired when it was discovered that they were klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization's membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought

shared his white Christian heterosexual values. Now, in two thousand fifteen, to his very minor credit, FBI Director James Comey acknowledged in a speech that all of us in law enforcement must be honest enough to acknowledge that much of our history is not pretty. This is about as close as you're going to get to having an actual member of law enforce enforcement admit that, in fact, the cops and the clan regularly do go hand in hand. Um, yeah,

so good stuff. Take a deep breath, everybody, good stuff. Yeah whoo whoo. To the rest of us, Yeah yeah, we're gonna talk about lynching on Thursday, Um, and we're going to talk about how the police defeated lynching by something that's arguably as bad. So yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel wonderful right now. I am. I didn't we didn't should have maybe not schedule this recording session for June tenth. I do feel I do feel bad about that. That's

the day. My emotions are all over the place right now. Nah, it's all good, you know what I'm saying, Like, you know, in a lot of ways, like like we were talking off camera or off camera off mike, like, yeah, I don't, I don't know, because it's never actually we've never had to celebrate this holiday with anybody else. So there's no actual traditions for June except where to think about what all this ship. We didn't went through the fact that

we survived it, you know what I'm saying. That's usually which and then we go down to you know, crunchhaw and eat some barbecue. But I'm like, this is actually great. It's like look and and maybe we'll end it on a high note. It's like and yet we still exist, yea, and yet we still are here, you know, and like have been forcing the situation to suck less consistently for a couple of centuries of fighting like trench like the

emotional equivalent of trench warfare. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess a good tradition for white folks like myself and like Sophie is too, is to do this. It's just been June tenth going like Jesus Christ, oh good god. Um, prop you've got any plug doubles to plug before we roll out of here? Yeah, propit pop dot com. Uh got a bunch of new merge. Um. California has now required face masks, So I got some face masks there that flat earther neighbors required by state. Yeah, you got

flat earther neighbors. Can we just pause for that way? I mean, statistically we all do now. Yeah, there's like I had the building make like red signs that say to wear face masks, and the elevator and Karen and Ken I don't know their fucking names. I hate them of course, of course, just walk around like deep deep deep, and then I'm like, hey, how about a face mask? And they kind of just look at me like I've said something in a language they don't understand and run away.

Yeah yeah, so yeah, go get some coffee, Go get some face masks, got some new water flask to merge you guys, dude, thank you. And it's all earth friendly. It's all like zero waste, like that's how it works. You know what I'm saying, recyclable the materials recyclable, you know, is recycled material. You know what I'm saying. I'm out here. I'm out here like being a good part of Portland's or earth sensitive. Hell yeah, well that's the episode. Um go go do some stuff. Yeah. Behind the Police is

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