The History of American Police and the Ku Klux Klan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Behind the Police, a production of I Heart
Radio Welcome Back to Behind the Police, the special miniseries
for Behind the Bastards, which is normally a show that
I Robert Evans do about the worst people in all
of history, But for these weeks and these these episodes,
is a deep dive into the entire history of American police,

(00:26):
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

(00:48):
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.

(01:10):
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

(01:32):
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

(01:52):
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

(02:14):
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

(02:36):
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

(03:00):
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

(03:23):
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

(03:44):
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

(04:04):
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

(04:26):
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

(04:48):
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

(05:09):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:52):
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

(06:14):
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

(06:34):
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

(06:55):
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,

(07:20):
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

(07:40):
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

(08:04):
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

(08:26):
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

(08:47):
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

(09:08):
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

(09:29):
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

(09:51):
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

(10:11):
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

(10:34):
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

(10:56):
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,

(11:21):
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,

(11:44):
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,

(12:04):
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

(12:26):
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

(12:49):
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

(13:10):
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

(13:31):
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

(13:53):
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

(14:14):
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

(14:35):
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

(14:56):
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

(15:19):
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

(15:40):
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

(16:01):
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,

(16:23):
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

(16:44):
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

(17:07):
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

(17:27):
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

(17:49):
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.

(18:09):
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.

(18:30):
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

(18:51):
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

(19:13):
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

(19:33):
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,

(19:55):
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,

(20:16):
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

(20:38):
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,

(21:00):
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

(21:24):
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

(21:44):
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

(22:04):
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

(22:26):
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

(22:47):
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,

(23:11):
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,

(23:33):
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

(23:54):
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

(24:15):
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,

(24:36):
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

(24:56):
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

(25:18):
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,

(25:41):
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,

(26:02):
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.

(26:22):
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

(26:43):
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,

(27:08):
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,

(27:31):
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

(27:53):
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

(28:16):
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

(28:39):
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

(29:00):
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

(29:22):
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

(29:43):
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,

(30:09):
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.

(30:30):
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

(30:52):
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.

(31:13):
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

(31:34):
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

(31:55):
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

(32:16):
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

(32:37):
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

(33:00):
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

(33:21):
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

(33:41):
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

(34:02):
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,

(34:23):
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.

(34:44):
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

(35:06):
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

(35:28):
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

(35:50):
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

(36:12):
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.

(36:32):
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

(36:56):
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

(37:17):
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.

(37:39):
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,

(38:02):
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.

(38:25):
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

(38:46):
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

(39:08):
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.

(39:31):
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

(39:51):
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,

(40:14):
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.

(40:38):
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

(40:58):
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

(41:20):
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

(41:40):
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

(42:02):
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,

(42:24):
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

(42:47):
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.

(43:10):
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

(43:32):
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

(43:54):
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,

(44:14):
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.

(44:34):
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.

(44:55):
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.

(45:15):
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

(45:41):
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

(46:11):
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

(46:33):
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

(46:57):
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

(47:18):
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

(47:39):
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.

(47:59):
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

(48:20):
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

(48:42):
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

(49:04):
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?

(49:26):
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,

(49:47):
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

(50:16):
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,

(50:37):
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

(50:58):
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

(51:19):
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

(51:39):
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

(52:00):
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,

(52:21):
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

(52:42):
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

(53:03):
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

(53:27):
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

(53:49):
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

(54:10):
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

(54:33):
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,

(55:00):
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.

(55:21):
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

(55:46):
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

(56:09):
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,

(56:30):
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.

(56:51):
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

(57:14):
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

(57:35):
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

(57:58):
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

(58:19):
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

(58:42):
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

(59:03):
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

(59:23):
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,

(59:45):
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

(01:00:07):
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

(01:00:28):
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,

(01:00:51):
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

(01:01:15):
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,

(01:01:38):
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.

(01:02:00):
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

(01:02:22):
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.

(01:02:44):
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

(01:03:06):
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

(01:03:27):
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

(01:03:48):
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.

(01:04:09):
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

(01:04:32):
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

(01:04:54):
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

(01:05:16):
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

(01:05:39):
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

(01:06:03):
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,

(01:06:23):
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

(01:06:48):
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

(01:07:10):
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

(01:07:30):
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

(01:07:53):
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

(01:08:14):
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

(01:08:35):
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

(01:08:58):
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

(01:09:21):
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

(01:09:43):
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,

(01:10:03):
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

(01:10:24):
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.

(01:10:47):
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.

(01:11:08):
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

(01:11:31):
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

(01:11:52):
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

(01:12:13):
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

(01:12:33):
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.

(01:12:57):
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

(01:13:18):
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

(01:13:41):
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

(01:14:02):
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

(01:14:25):
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,

(01:14:45):
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

(01:15:07):
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

(01:15:29):
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,

(01:15:51):
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.

(01:16:13):
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.

(01:16:34):
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.

(01:16:57):
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

(01:17:19):
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

(01:17:43):
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

(01:18:04):
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

(01:18:28):
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

(01:18:52):
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

(01:19:14):
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,

(01:19:36):
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,

(01:19:56):
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

(01:20:17):
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

(01:20:38):
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,

(01:21:00):
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

(01:21:22):
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

(01:21:44):
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.

(01:22:07):
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

(01:22:27):
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

(01:22:53):
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,

(01:23:13):
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

(01:23:35):
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

(01:23:55):
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

(01:24:17):
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

(01:24:43):
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.

(01:25:03):
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

(01:25:25):
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

(01:25:46):
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

(01:26:12):
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

(01:26:34):
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

(01:26:57):
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

(01:27:19):
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

(01:27:43):
or earth sensitive. Hell yeah, well that's the episode. Um
go go do some stuff. Yeah. Behind the Police is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(01:28:04):
or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Robert Evans

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