The KKK: Loathsome Cosplay Rednecks

The history of the KKK is rooted in hatred and racism, and it still is today. Learn all about these loathsome rednecks today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W Chuck Brian over there, and this is
stuff you should know about vile racist jerks. Boo meis jerk. Yeah, so, Chuck.

(00:31):
Do you remember when we did our two part episode
on The Simpsons and one of the first things I
said was like, I didn't want to record because all
I wanted to do is sit around and research the
Simpsons for the rest of my life. I felt basically
the opposite way about researching the Clan, like I didn't
want to record because I didn't want to research the

(00:52):
clan anymore. Yeah, that wasn't a fun one. Well, here's
my personal history here in regards to the clan is
and and now I'll this will be peppered throughout a
little bit because I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Oh that sounds familiar, which is very uh uh. You

(01:14):
know some of the early days of the second wave
of the Clan, which you know, we'll get to all
this garbage in this episode. But um, some Mountain was
kind of one of the larger national seats and one
of the leaders of the clan in Stone Mountain had kids,
or it was either kids or grandkids that went. I
guess I had to be grandkids that went to my

(01:36):
elementary school. Then the Venables, and I was like, you know,
I heard about the Venables, and I knew about their
story and that his granddad was the grand Wizard, and like,
it scared the crap out of me. I was scared.
And then I got older and I was like, these
are just dumb cosplaying rednecks. And then I got a

(02:00):
little older still and I was like, well, that's not
fair either, and I tried to start in my life
look at things to the lens of minority people's even
though you can't you know, as a as a white man,
but you can do your best to walk a mile
and someone choose and see what it might be like.
And then I was like, I can't dismiss it as
rednecks cosplaying, because they killed people and lynched people, and

(02:25):
it was a fear of feared group two black people,
and you know, all kinds of other minorities. As we'll
see as they as they kind of progressed. But I
felt it was dismissive to say they're just a bunch
of dumb rednecks and don't give them that power. Uh So,
you know, it's just interesting to sort of go through
that evolution as a kid growing up in the South who,

(02:48):
no doubt in my lineage and ancestry have horrible things
that happened in the Deep South that I had to
rectify as like, you know, just because I'm related to
great great great grandparents who probably did awful things, doesn't
mean that I'm that person or you know, no, not
at all, not at all. You certainly aren't that person

(03:09):
at all, I can attest, but you have to come
to terms with it as someone who is the opposite
of those people, for sure. And I think it is
wise of you and very thoughtful of you to be like, no,
I can't just you know, use I guess white privilege
to dismiss the clan because it does kind of infringe
on like the impacts that they've had on people of
color in the United States. For sure. I think that's

(03:31):
very insightful. At the same time, yes, the Clan are dumb,
redneck cous players. They're just ones who will also get
whipped up into into violence and carry out horrific acts.
So they're dumb redneck cause players who you really have
to keep an eye on and then break the backup
as an organization by putting them in prison whenever they

(03:51):
do something like that or start to Yeah, and as
we see through their history, depending on when it was
and which sort of iteration, because there's there's been at
least three, uh, some were more violent and dangerous than others,
and some were sort of like cosplaying rednecks. Um not
to you know, of course that doesn't excuse it. It's
just like a fun social club or anything like that.

(04:13):
But um, it is fairly interesting. But I'm ready to
be done with this as well, so let's let's do it. Yeah. Well,
the thing that kind of strikes me about the clan
the most is they the clan enjoys its largest popularity
when America is feeling it's most racist. And usually America
feels it's most racist at times when um, the rights

(04:36):
of minorities or anybody who's not basically white Protestants are
being advanced in society. It's not an accident, right, Um,
but then the clan always always oversteps because America maybe
racist in America might be I can't even say why,
America is definitely based on white supremacism um or white

(04:57):
supremacy and enforcing that the but the the taste for
violence and the willingness to like kill people of color
just for being people of color is not a mainstream
thing fortunately, So the Clan has always been on the
fringe and always will be on the fringes. It's just
hopefully eventually society will learn it's less and like, you know,

(05:20):
advancing the rights of people of color doesn't mean that
there has to be some spasm of anti minority sentiment
that inevitably leads to violence carried out by groups like
the Clan. I really hope we get to that point, um,
rather than just keep existing trapped in this cycle, you know,
And I think we will. I think we are approaching

(05:40):
that eventually. I don't know when it will be, but
I I feel like with each of these cycles that
we go through, there's less and less people who react
horribly the next time or the next time or the
next time, so that eventually that reaction will just kind
of fizzle out. That's my hope. Yeah. Uh. And it's
also interesting, Uh, I watched a documentary that wasn't really

(06:03):
do it's sort of like a uh, several part news
show from this British um might have been a BBC
crew that about the modern clan just from a couple
of years ago during like the ferguson Upper or Missouri.
And he went not undercover because he was um, a
British guy. He was interviewing him. He went he went
in deep uh with the clan there for seven months

(06:26):
and it's interesting to see the just the scattered ideology
and that kind of is a bit of a hallmark
of the clan period through their history. Is it seems
like there's never been a very codified thing of this
is who we are, because there's people in this documentary
that are like, you know, three of the members were
arrested for plotting to kill a black man, and the

(06:50):
people they talked to and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
they're out man. We're not into that. We don't want
to commit violence against black people. And we're not even bigoted.
We're just a superior race who who are white separatists,
but we don't want to you know, we might burn
across for our ceremonies, but we're not doing bombings and lynchings.
And we're not down with that at all. Uh, But

(07:11):
you also get the feeling that behind closed doors, they're
probably like, hey, I wish those guys would have been
able to carry that murder out right, and that that
seems to have been a transition that kind of went
in the seventies. Started in the seventies, I believe, where
there's like a a different public face to the clan
where they tried different like okay, well that everybody hates

(07:33):
the clan, what if we what if we explain it
like this? What if we put it like this in
society is like, no, that's nice. Try it's not gonna work,
all right? Should we get into this in the origins? Yeah,
so so, like you said, there's been three iterations of
the clan, and this the first iteration of the clan
started out is they think basically a social club made

(07:57):
up of UM disgruntled Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in
eighteen sixties six. And this group of veterans got together
at a time where um, there was a real trend,
a craze basically for secret societies in the nineteenth century. UM,
apparently in the the eighteen nineties up to the nineteen

(08:19):
thirties is called the Golden Age of fraternalism, where something
like a third of American men were members of a
secret society or something based on like actual, real ancient
secret societies like the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians. These are
just kind of fake ones that gave you a reason
to like leave the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays and go, like,
you know, have whiskey down at the Moose Lodge, and

(08:43):
groups like the Moose and the Elks and the Knights
of Columbus Um, they all grew out of that. And
in fact, Woodmen of the World Insurance UM, it's called that.
It's kind of a weird name if you think about it,
but Woodmen of the World UM was a secret society
from the nineteenth century and they would sell their members
insurance policies. And that's where that insurance came from. So

(09:04):
this is kind of like the context of where the
ku Klux klan of originally came from in the nineteenth century,
this crazer trend for secret societies. Yeah, and by all accounts,
it was started on Christmas Eve, like you said in
Pulaski in eighteen sixty five by six men Calvin Jones,
Richard Reid, Frank McCord, uh, John Kennedy, and John uh

(09:30):
Kessler I think, and then I believe it or not.
The final guy's name was Jim crow No James crow No, Yeah,
in Pulaski, Tennessee. And um, they they were sort of
based on this one of those secret groups called the
Sons of Malta, but it seems like it was more

(09:50):
inspired by because they weren't around by the time the
Civil War ended. But they definitely sort of, um, kind
of cribbed some stuff from from the Malton's as far
as uh. And this is the whole thing with the
secret societies, like outfits and costumes and rights and initiations
and dumb names of leadership that you make up. It's

(10:13):
all a big part of it. I have never understood
the desire, and not just obviously the clan because UH
clearly not interested in that, but any fraternal group like that,
I just including fraternities in college. I just I never
got it. Yeah. Um, that Sons of Malta you mentioned

(10:34):
seemed to have been directly impactful. Um. I don't know
if there were members who were who were from the
Sons of Malta or how they heard of it. But
the Sons of Malta and then another group called the
Ku Close Adelphin and both of them seemed to have
been party cruise or cruise from Marti Gras in New Orleans.
And then this all Sons of Malta somehow made their
way up to Boston, and that's where they really kind

(10:56):
of got hold or got pop ler, I guess, but
neither one of those were racist groups from what I
could tell, UM, and from also what I could tell,
the Ku Klux Klan wasn't necessarily intended to be a
racist terrorist political organization, at least at first. But UM

(11:17):
shortly after they formed in eighteen sixty five sixty six UM,
the federal government passed the Reconstruction Acts UM, and reconstruction
definitely deserves its own episode. Really want to do one
or two on reconstruction at some point. But when they
passed that act, that UM that kind of changed or

(11:42):
gave focus to this what may have been like just
kind of a UM A group of racist people, and
turned them into a racist political terrorist organization. Now they
had something to do besides meat at the moose lodge
and that was to a forced white supremacy in the
Deep South through acts of violence and intimidation and terror techniques. Um.

(12:07):
And that was the first incarnation of the clan, and
they spread really quick from Tennessee down to um Georgia
and other neighboring states, thanks in part to personal visits
for organizing by a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest Uh,
a Confederate general who is not a great guy. Yeah
he was. Uh, there are a lot of complications with

(12:27):
that guy. We'll we'll get to him in a sec.
But um the name KKK or ku klux Klan um
they think might have and there's no again. It's it's
been such a sort of willy nilly organization as far
as having a national, sort of codified presence that there's
not even like a website that I saw that you
can go to. It's all regional. Man, those are some

(12:50):
terrible websites. They're pretty bad. Comics sands everywhere. Yeah, they're
they're pretty bad. When this like a black background and
like pink fonts and stuff that spewing racist bigotry and
ideology and oh my god, it's pretty bad. I wanted
to like throw my laptop out in the window at
one point. UM. But they think it might have derived

(13:10):
from the Greek word uh key close k y k
l o s, which was basically denotes um what people
thought were like the natural cycles of government or types
of government that a civilization could have, which is pretty
haughty if you think about it. For the k k
k I mean of political philosophy that dates back to

(13:32):
the third century PC. That's it's really something. But ku
close is what it um k u k l os
is what it was sort of translated as and and
modern and well not the modern era, but back then
and uh clan with a K, Like what I saw
was it was originally ku klux one word and then

(13:54):
clan with a c uh. And they think that may
have come from maybe um Scottish clans. They play Scottish
music sometimes at their rallies, but that's not affirmed either.
But eventually I think that C was replaced with a K.
It became kkk and these lodges started popping up um

(14:15):
all over right after the Civil War because kind of
like you said, once um of my adority gets a
little bit of freedom. Uh, there's a bit of an
uprising and clan membership. And that's what happened from the
first iteration is like, there we have these enslaved people
that are now free. We need to basically intimidate them
into feeling like they still have no freedoms even though

(14:35):
the loss as different. Right. So one of the first
things they did was, Um, you know when when reconstruction
came along and all of a sudden there were you know,
black people in the South could hold political office or
be judges or all this Like this was like flipping
a switch as far as the South is concerned, um.
And it's like I said, it laser focused like the

(14:59):
a times of the Ku Klux Klan, and that they
now took up an intimidation and terrorism campaign against black
people in South, against Republicans in the South. The Republicans
at the time were a much different party than they
are today, and that they were into the idea of
big government to support and enforce social justice. Um. And

(15:20):
then years later around the turn of the last century,
UM Williams Jenning Bryant was a candidate who was a
Democrat who basically ran on the Republican platform a big
government to enforce social justice. And then later on it
was cemented by FDR is a big kind of transition
or um um switch basically of ideologies between the parties. UM.

(15:43):
But at the time, if you were a Republican, you
were probably if you're in the South, you were probably
for UM equal rights for black citizens, and you were
a target of their intimidation campaigns as well, big time,
because not only were they of battling these politicians, but
UM voter intimidation was a very real thing, UH and

(16:05):
voter suppression, and they would UM, they would murder people,
UM like hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the South,
especially Louisiana. UM reports ahead of the eighteen sixty eight
election UM where that they murdered people for intimidation and
literally to keep them from voting. Yeah, dude. There was
one town called opal Loosis, UM, Louisiana, a town of

(16:27):
twenty five thousand, so it was pretty big. UM. It
was the county seat of the parish. You can't remember
what parish. But in two weeks, two hundred people were
murdered around the eighteen sixty eight election. Two hundred. That's
fourteen people a day in this town of twenty five
thousand people, UM, all because of terrorism. Carried out by
the KKK. Yeah, and Ed helped us put this together.

(16:49):
And Ed is keen to point out and I think
we should too, is that a lot of what the
Clan has always tried to do is is lead their
groups by fear. And you still see that to day,
not only through the Clan but other groups, like fear
of you know, that the immigrants gonna take your job,
or fear of this, fear of that, And back then
it was fear of um these enslaved people that are

(17:10):
now free rising up, you know, and and getting revenge,
and that didn't happen, like even though slavery happened, Like
once black Americans earned their freedom, they did not all
of a sudden say, oh yeah, well payback time, we're angry,
we're gonna come after you. They were happy to be
freed and just to try and live as regular people

(17:34):
with rights and society. And that wasn't the message that
the Clan was putting out. They were like, you need
to be afraid of them, even though there are no
accounts of that happening. It was just black people trying
to be regular, normal people, right. And the other problem
with that kind of thing is is like when somebody
does stuff like this, when they carry out a terror campaign, um,

(17:56):
it makes people wonder like, geez, well, what did the
other people do to deserve this? Well, the other people
didn't do anything to deserve this. And that's that's what's
called the false balance or balance fallacy, where there the
idea that there's you know, there's problems on both sides,
or there's good people on both sides. It's it's like no,
sometimes one side is the problem basically of the problem.

(18:20):
And I think that was really important of to point
out and for us to point out too, that there
was nothing that the the Clan was defending against except
white supremacy and black black suppression, the suppression of rights
among black people. That was it. It's as despicable as
it sounds. There was nothing gallant or good about it.

(18:44):
There was nothing honorable bull about it. And in fact,
they were so violent and so criminal and so despicable
that within three years of their founding, the Grand Wizard
of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who we Um mentioned earlier,
issued his one and only basically executive orders Grand Wizard, saying,

(19:05):
we have to disband and burn all of our stuff
because this has gotten out of hand. That's how violent
they had become and how despicable their acts had been. Yeah,
Forrest Gump's namesake. Yeah, Um, he was, like I said,
he was a pretty controversial remains a controversial dude. Uh.
And that he was one of the generals of the Confederacy.

(19:27):
And um, he was in charge when the Fort Pillow
massacre happened, which was, uh, something we can get into
in detail, maybe in a short stuff maybe, but um, essentially,
you know, hundreds of largely black soldiers who had given
up and surrendered were just massacred on this day at
Fort Pillow. And Um, he was known as a brilliant general,

(19:48):
the Wizard of the Saddle, which is what he was
called because he was a cavalry guy. Uh. And that
later became you know, they kind of gang that for
the clan as far as the Grand Wizard, they kind
of stole that from there. Um. But he uh, he
seemed to be a vile man. But then later in life,
like you said, um became disillusioned with the clan. Some

(20:09):
people said it was just because he didn't think they
were organized enough. Some people said it was because he
thought they got too violent. But in Memphis late in life,
he gave this big speech about um, you know, basically
trying to hold up the black man and give them
jobs and put them in positions of important positions in
our government, and to make them doctors and lawyers. So

(20:31):
I don't know if it was a change of heart.
There's been a lot of controversy since since then about
like should we honor this guy or you know, or
talk about like his entire life up until that moment. No,
I think it's it's like he he deserves to have
like his like it all spread out on the table.

(20:53):
But I feel like once you oversee like a massacre
of of unarmed black soldiers came home, oversee like at
in a white supremacist terrorist group, that's pretty tough to
come back from. Even though I mean, it is definitely
worth noting and I think fair to note that he
did have at least something of a change of heart,
at least publicly. I saw that he wrote to uh,

(21:14):
I think the governor of Tennessee or somewhere and offered
to help destroy um white vigilantes who were harassing UM
black citizens because he thought it was uncalled for. So yeah,
he was a a unusual person over the span of
his life, but he still did some pretty horrible stuff

(21:35):
of course. And this, you know, this pops up anytime
there's um a debate over whether they should strip the
name from this or that, you know, because there's plenty,
plenty of stuff named for him. There's a high school
in Jacksonville, Florida that was named Nathan F. Nathan B.
Forest High School until two thousand fourteen. Yeah, two thousand fourteen,

(21:58):
there was a high school named after the basically the
founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Jacksonville, Florida. They
should just name all the high schools in Florida, Tom
Petty High School. It's he from Florida. He's from Gainesville.
I didn't know that. Yeah, big, big time music scene
down there back then. Okay, what happened to the music scene? Yeah,

(22:18):
I don't know. Maybe there're still this one. Who else
came out of Gainesville at that time? The Don Felder,
the guitar player for the Eagles, was Tom Petty's guitar teacher. Uh.
And then um like Leonard skinnerd hung out in Jacksonville,
and I think the Almond Brothers they were making guys,
but they hung out down there too. Okay, should we

(22:39):
take a break? Sure, all right, let's take a break.
I didn't think Tom Petty and the Almond brothers would
make a appearance in the Clan episode, but they did.
And we'll be back right after it to talk about
the enforcement x all right. The enforcement x uh. This

(23:22):
is basically when the federal government stepped up starting in
eighteen seventy and said, you know what, we can't count
on these states, especially in the South, and we should
point out and ed Ed makes a good point of
pointing out that like there was racism all over the country,
always has been. There have been claim groups all over
the country, but in the South, it was in the government,

(23:45):
it was in the courts, it was in the school systems,
like it was nowhere else in the country. So the
federal government said, we can't count on the Southern states
to do the right thing and to have real investigations
and prosecute people and to protect black citizens. So we're
gonna pass the Enforcement Acts that basically says, uh, we

(24:07):
can go in there and we can kind of take
care of business on our own if we have to. Yeah,
and take care of business. They did. Um, General Grant
Ulysses Grant, who was then President. Grant had an Attorney
general named Amos Ackerman Disguss Awesome is awesome. It's one
of the heroes of this story. He doesn't even have
a Wikipedia page. He doesn't know. That's pretty lame Wikipedia.

(24:32):
It's bad. He's a Georgia boy too. Yeah, yeah, he
is so. UM. This guy ended up the attorney general
under Grant, and he basically used everything at his disposal,
from forming UM like basically the prototype of the FBI
to UM to getting federal troops and getting martial law

(24:52):
declared down in South Carolina to oversee the presidential election
down there. UM like all sorts of different stuff. Everything
he had he would throw at the clan and ultimately
kind of broke the back of that first clan. That
combined with um Bedford Forrest UM. I don't know why
you have to say both of those names, but you

(25:13):
just kind of do UM. That combined with his executive
order disband like the clan, the first clan went away
very very quickly. Actually, yeah, and it's hard to tell
how big it was at its first peak. Uh. Some
people say maybe a half million people, But like you said,
it faded out pretty quickly. Um, and you know, we'll

(25:37):
talk about when the clan fades out. You know, it
doesn't really go anywhere as far as these people go.
It's not like everyone all of a sudden was awesome
and not racist. It just means the formal clan just
lacks membership basically. I don't know. I think I think
when when suddenly, like the four the federal government and

(25:58):
like you know, maybe your senator or your representative, or
you hear the President talking smack about this group that
you know, you used to think was pretty cool, but
now all of a sudden you realize that the rest
of the country thinks you're a backward dummy for looking
up to these clan members. It can kind of it
can kind of make people self reflect a little bit,

(26:19):
you know. So I wonder how many people do change
their minds or have historically over over the course of this,
not necessarily like, well, I'm not racist anymore, but I
think that that's that's a possibility that somebody can reflect
like that, or at the very least the next time
they're not going to participate or agitate or join in.
You know, I don't know, I saw, did you see

(26:41):
that mem of the dude in I think Indiana, Illinois,
I can't remember. He's I believe, in a wheelchair and
he's had a Black Lives Matter rally. He's holding a
sign that says, I'm sorry, I'm late. I had a
lot to learn, and he apparently was. I don't know
if he was racist, but he was certainly not in
favor of Black Lives Matter, and I guess started reading

(27:04):
about it and looking into it and doing his research
and had a complete change of heart and showed up
at one of their rallies and support of them, which
was pretty cool. Have you seen that? I have not
seen that. So it is. I mean, it can't happen.
Like people, sentiments about this kind of stuff can change.
And I feel like when people are like, oh, oh,
I'm in favor of of keeping other human beings down
for really no reason whatsoever except they don't look like me,

(27:27):
I feel like that that's like a there's a lot
of room for improvement that can happen. Um in in
that in that sense, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm
I'm sure individuals have changed like that. I wish it
was on mass Um. There were other violent racist groups
when the clan was not as popular during that period. Um,

(27:49):
they just didn't have uh, they didn't have that sort
of unified Um. Look, well so let's talk Yeah, let's
talk about that. Look if you're if you're ready to
want to Yeah, I mean you can thank you d W.
Griffith and Thomas Dixon Jr. For that, Yeah, because prior
to this, the clan um did not really look like

(28:13):
what you would think. They they wore masks and hoods
and um, you know, disguises, and they tried to disguise
their voice. Apparently sometimes they would pretend that they were
the ghosts of Confederate soldiers coming to terrorize black families. Um,
fooling absolutely no one. But they they didn't wear necessarily
what you would think of as like the clan today.

(28:35):
And like you said, that strictly came from d. W. Griffith,
and I guess Dixon Thomas Dixon do a lesser extent,
but Griffith like really put it up there for everybody
to see. With the Birth of a Nation. Yeah, Birth
of a Nation was a movie based on play that
was based on a book from Thomas Dixon Jr. He
published The Klansmen with a C. Colon h historical romance

(28:58):
of the Ku Klux Klan and where they were depicted
as heroic, heroic sort of noble Christian warriors, and that
became a play that had was a little bit more popular,
and then d W. Griffith based the movie on that play. Um,
and it was you know, this is where you saw
crosses burning, and this is where you saw those white

(29:19):
pointed hoods and horses with robes on them. Those poor
poor horses. They have no idea what they're doing. It
makes me feel the horses into this show. I wish
they wouldn't, but you know what we know as sort
of the look of the clan was fully put forth
by d W. Griffith on screen. Um. I was kind

(29:40):
of curious because I know he was a huge, huge
name in Hollywood and a pioneer in Hollywood and was
a founding partner of United Artists with Chaplain and Mary
Pickford and I think Douglas Fairbanks maybe, um, but I
was curious about both those guys, like were they super
racist or was this just a movie to them? And uh,

(30:00):
Dixon was supposedly really racist. Um, although he supposedly denounced
bigotry in the wake of this sort of new clan
that was created. I had a harder time finding out
what d. W. Griffith was all about. He never apologized
for anything, and he seems to have sort of escaped scrutiny,
uh in some ways, so in his lifetime I think so,

(30:22):
but I'm not really sure because it didn't have time
to really do a deep dive into whether or not,
like he believed the stuff or he was like, I'm
gonna make a salacious movie that's going to be super
controversial and get banned and get me a lot of attention.
But the the you know, whether his heart was in
it or not, the impact that his movie had was astounding.
It was like, imagine if when Star Wars came out,

(30:45):
all of a sudden, like, um, Jedi schools popped up
in real life, and like they would form together and
go out and run for office as like Jedies. Basically, sweet,
we need a third party, right, yeah, the Jedi party.
But imagine if those Jedis were like virulent racists who
were um dedicated to suppressing the rights of minorities. What

(31:08):
do you think about that? It's much less good. It's
much less good, and um, that's yeah, that's kind of
what happened. It's a good point. Yeah, but based on
this movie. It was a popular movie that kicked off
what's what's considered the second wave or second incarnation of
the Ku Klux Klan and gave us all of that,
the symbolism, the grandiose um look and feel, and just

(31:29):
kind of like gave it this almost legend that really
didn't exist because the first claim was never like that.
They were a bunch of hooded um, murderous thugs who
would ride around on horseback at night and set people's
houses on fire. They didn't look anything like that. Um.
So yeah, you can lay you know, the resurgence and

(31:50):
interests of the clan almost squarely at the feet of
d W. Griffith, and then only because it wasn't as
popular to a lesser extent, Tom Dixon's eat. Not Tom Dixon,
the great great lighting designer, Tom Dixon, the racist author. Yes,
Thomas Dixon Jr. I think right, uh. And in fact,
the Birth of a Nation part of it was filmed

(32:12):
in the neighborhood I lived in l a and lous
felis right there where I remember where we shot the
driving around stuff for the Toyota commercial. Yeah. Can I
just say one of my favorite gonna say is, well,
we were talking, Yes, you didn't look to the right,
and you started to pull through a crosswalk and this
lady with her husband and like three kids started like,

(32:32):
I think, smack the hood of the priest that we
were filming in and like yelled at you, and you
like yelled back at her and shook your fists. Like
you you got in there like a match. You did.
You did in every way except physically shaking your fist.
But you've got in like a shouting match with some
pedestrian while we were filming a Toyota commercial. Beautiful. It
wasn't quite a shouting match. It was very brief. She

(32:54):
she way overreacted totally. I don't know. I'm not saying
you were in the wrong, but it was just reminded
me of everything I hated about living in l A.
I think in that one moment was like, how bad
this lady overreacted? Yeah, it was fun though. That was
a great, great memory. Yeah, but Birth of a Nation
was filmed like right down the street from there. Part
of it. Um the my favorite movie theater in l A.

(33:17):
The Vista was right on this corner, and also the
movie theater that doubled as Detroit for True Romance for
the Karate Kung Fu Theater at the beginning. Um, but yeah,
like right out there in front of that, it's this
big like convergence of five streets and apparently like some
of the huge like marching scenes from Birth of a Nation,

(33:37):
we're film right there anyway. Um, this second birth of
the clan, a lot of it can be credited also
to the actions of William J. Simmons, who was inspired
from the movie in in nineteen fifteen went to the
top of Stone Mountain here in Georgia and burned across
and inspired by a movie. Yeah, well and ass and

(34:00):
hate in the previous clan, like you know, it was
all still there. Um. But James Venable, who I mentioned earlier,
who I went to school with his grandkids, he was
a kid on top of the mountain with William Simmons
at the time, and he was up there and I
think with his uncle and this was kind of looked
at it sort of one of the first meetings of

(34:20):
the newly reborn Ku Klux Klan and the nineteen fifteen
to twenties. Yeah, so in addition to having like a
much more unified look and um, I guess uh design
ethos um. The this version of the clan, the second
version of the clan, seemed more organized. At least they

(34:43):
were organized enough to actually become a political force, not
just in support of you know, um, say the Democrats
at the time, or uh, in support of just whatever
local judge was known to be a racist and you
know they they would they would support him and intimidate
voters against him. They would actually put forth candidates who

(35:05):
were members of the clan and publicly members of the clan.
Um probably most famously Robert Bird, a senator from uh
West Virginia, was a clan member and like never backed
away from the clan at at any point. There were
other Southerners like from Georgia who were senators, I mean,

(35:26):
who were also Southerners from Georgia who were from the clan,
some representatives, lots and lots of local officials, and like
the clan would actually they became something of a political
force as well. Yeah, I mean the local thing is
really um was a big deal because it could be
and you know politics, we all get worked up over

(35:46):
national politics as well. We should but if you really
want to see a difference in your life day to day,
local politics is where it's at, and you know, county
commissions and school boards and boards of directors like that.
The local level is really where the Clan could get
in there on a more low key basis and do
a lot of damage. Um. So that you know, they

(36:09):
had official uniforms. Now, they had official ranks and titles, um.
They were still sort of like, hey, we're just a
a fraternal order, um, and that's kind of all we are.
But at the same time they expanded there ethos and
it wasn't just black people anymore. It was they were
anti anti Semites, they were anti Catholic, they were against communists,

(36:33):
they were against anything that wasn't white. And all of
this was sort of under the banner of hey, what
we really are, uh, because you know they would also
like trying out pedophiles and stuff like that. What they
said they really were were patriots and heroes and good Americans,
which sounds very familiar these days. It really does. This,

(36:55):
This this version of the clan very much um reflects
the kind of supremacist bs that you see today in America,
where it's it's UM very much spread across different groups
that that are kind of held together by this thread
that you know, white people are losing ground and they

(37:15):
need to make it back up through whatever whatever we
need to do. UM. That that really seems to reflect
a bit. Also the fact that there are crazy nut
jobs in Congress today who hold white supremacists values basically
publicly really bears a striking resemblance to the second resurgence
of the clan. Yeah, who I mean we should point

(37:37):
out again at like white Christian, white Protestant Christian, right,
that's important. Seemed to be the only thing that was
that was okay, like anything else, like anti Catholic, anti Jew,
anti everything except white Protestant Christian and so like the
the This was the largest UH popularity of the widest

(37:58):
popularity of the clan. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates
that they may have had around the mid nineteen twenties
as many as four million members spread across the US.
And it wasn't just in the South. I mean, there
were plenty in industrial cities in the North. There are
plenty on the West coast, plenty in the midwest. UH.

(38:18):
Indiana UM was known as a stronghold of the clan,
and I read that as many as half a million.
UH had half a million members, which would have been
a third of the population of white men in Indiana
at the time in the nineteen twenties. So you might ask, like,
why was everybody in the clan just in the same
way that UM. The reconstruction gave I guess purpose to

(38:44):
the clan. UM. Massive waves of immigration that had started
in the late nineteenth century to the United States was
making America generally racist, and they were easily whipped up
by things like you're gonna lose your job to all
these immigrants. Yeah, Like it was very much based on
local grievance, grievances like whatever the local fear was, and

(39:04):
a lot of times you're right, that was immigrants coming
into the town and taking your jobs, or black men
marrying white women, or whatever they felt the local thing
was that would be most effective at recruiting. Kind of
was what they kind of honed in on. UM. The
mystique of it all was very I think intoxicating to
a lot of these people, UH and still is in

(39:26):
that documentary. It's amazing to see these people two years
ago talking about clearly that's an important thing for them,
like getting dressed up, meeting together in the woods and
burning across, riding around at night on your night rides
or midnight rides in your car, putting up flyers under

(39:47):
the under the cloak of darkness. Um there, it's like cosplay,
it really is. They're they're playing like they're in some
important club. Um. It's interesting that the women, the women
in this documentary, all of them said, well, you know,
this isn't the kind of thing I probably would have
been into, but it really improved my marriage when I

(40:07):
got on board and uh and joined, and now my
husband and I have something to talk about. We have commonalities.
And you hear this and you're just like crawling out
of your skin at at seeing this marriage which is
clearly just you know, a male dominant marriage. And uh,
you know, but if you, if you, if you join

(40:28):
my clan, or if you like my football team, we'll
finally have something common. Right, And I love football, so
I don't want to throw a football into the but
but but so yeah, so I mean it makes sense
like if you don't have much of an identity, or
you are looking for something to give your life purpose,
like a group or a club, especially one that's you know,

(40:48):
and some looked up to it by some people. I
can really give your life a real shot in the arm,
you know, I guess in good ways. I mean those
there are so many great clubs where people that feel
like they brother, big sister. Yeah. But I mean it
is interesting that so much of it in this documentary
ly seems to come from that mystique and that wanting

(41:09):
to belong to a group. And I'm just a uh.
This one guy, he was like, you know, I'm just
a landscaper and I was just out partying and now
now I have focused, now have something to do these brothers.
So um. One of the one of the things you
mentioned was the midnight rides and going on at midnight,
and one of the one of the reasons they do

(41:29):
that is because the clan has always thrived on anonymity.
Like they they don't. I mean, that's that's not to
say that they don't show their face in public. Some
of them do, but plenty of them don't, and that
there's strengthen that. Um. And one of the reasons that
they would ride at night was because it afforded that

(41:50):
much more anonymity even if they're they weren't particularly anonymous,
and that you know, their neighbor who they were terrorizing
probably recognized their voice, but the fact that they their
face wasn't shown, there was plausible deniability to that. Well.
Speaking of anonymous though, in this documentary, Anonymous outed this

(42:11):
one group in Missouri. They got shut down and they
put their all their information on the web. And it
showed a little bit of the video with the guy
and the guy fox mask and the uh, the the
computerized voice or whatever saying that you know we're coming
after you, We're going to put your names online. Uh,
And it was it was fairly interesting doing doing God's work.

(42:31):
That's actually yeah, for real, And that's actually like a
traditional anti clan tactic that groups like the Double A
c P or the Anti Defamation League UM used back
during this time when the clan was at its peak
popularity in the nwies. They would bribe people to get
their hands on a membership list. They would send in
people to infiltrate to get their hands on a membership list,

(42:54):
and then they would publish it. And now all of
a sudden, that anonymity and the strength that's afforded by
the anonymity is gone, and you just broke up a
clan chapter in your local area because nobody wants to
be associated with anymore, and they probably have to make
some sort of public statement about how they left, you
know where they It's all just a misunderstanding, they were
never part of it. Or you're in fear of losing

(43:15):
your job maybe, but that really helped break up this
this version of the clan in the nineteen twenties and
then um, the federal government again. If you look at
these these successive waves of the Ku Klux Klan, the
federal government is the one who steps in to break
the back of the clan. And they did it again
basically using the same playbook from the enforcement Acts the

(43:37):
I R S and the nineteen forties. Somehow the clan
had gotten a tax exempt status and the I R
S removed it and then sued him for back taxes
equal to about ten million dollars in today's dollars um.
And the clan broke up real quick after that. So
exactly so, the federal government has used a bunch of

(43:58):
tactics to basically get rid of the clan and again
and then the clan went away, and that was that
for a while. Alright, so should we take another break here? Yes?
All right, what sucks man? Where this is gonna be
a long episode? Hey, giving the clan a long episode.
We'll take a break and maybe we'll just come back
and sing protest songs and then all right, we'll be

(44:18):
right back. If I had a hammer at hammer in

(44:50):
the morning, I had hammer in the evening, hell over
this ad hammer out Dange danger had him or out
the clan, the clan boo outer space? What you get
that reference? Is that from Hold On, Hold On Best? No? Uh? Uh?

(45:15):
Which one was that one? Coen Brothers? Oh no, I
was thinking of the one, um the Christopher guest movie.
It was from the Cohen Brothers. The folk music movie
that is Escaping mar right now, Isaac, Yeah, yeah. Adam
Driver has a really funny part where they're recording in

(45:37):
there and he's just doing background speaking like that, and uh,
timber Lake is singing about remember our space and he
goes outer space. What's the one where Harry Shear ends
up joining like a folk group at the end? Oh yeah,
uh that was Mighty Wind, Mighty Wind. Yeah, that was
a good one, A good movie alright, And for sad

(46:00):
we have to wind this up and talk about the
third wave of the clan, which was the Civil Rights era. UM.
You would think that the Civil Rights era clan would
be the biggest iteration, but it actually wasn't. UM. They
were one of the more dangerous eras because they were
very famous for carrying out bombings UM all over the South,

(46:22):
mainly including very sadly the bombing UH in Birmingham. I
think there were a hundred and thirty eight bombings over
like a seven year period. But the bombing in Birmingham
where they bombed the church and Addie May Collins, Cynthia Wesley,
Carol Robertson and Carol Denise McNair UM, four young black
girls were killed. UH. And if you don't know this story,

(46:44):
just go watch the Spike Lee documentary Four Little Girls,
because it it really does a great job of kind
of retelling what's an awful thing that was? Yeah, and
that definitely was the most famous UM and most despicable.
But they bombed a lot of other people, murderle lot
of other people. There's UM a couple that lived not
too far from UM where my place in Florida is

(47:06):
UM named Harry and Harriet Moore, whose house was bombed
by the clan on Christmas Eve. They chose Christmas Eve
because they knew that there I think they're older children
would come home. They wanted to kill as many of
them as possible. So there there was a real reign
of terror that the clan was carrying out during the
Civil rights era, and Birmingham apparently was UM called Bombingham

(47:29):
for a while because it was just UM so prone
to being bombed like where the church was bombed, but
also UM because it was where the clan was the
strongest and most politically backed up, which to the civil
rights UM leaders credit, they said, well then we're going
to Birmingham. That's where we're gonna set up shop, which
made UM is what brought Birmingham to basically the forefront

(47:53):
of the Civil rights War. Yeah. You know, there were
some other high profile events, the accession, they assassination with
Medgar Evers, obviously the Mississippi burning case. If you saw
that movie again, it did a really good job of
the case of those three civil rights workers uh in
nineteen sixty four who were killed. Uh. And you know
there were still lynchings going on and and uh there

(48:17):
were still people in seats of power, attorneys and people
on juries and it was it was a a very
uh it's very mixed up time in this country because
rights were being achieved, uh while all this bloodshed was
going on. And like you mentioned before, it's like they're
trying to hold onto this thing that is, um, not

(48:39):
what America is anymore. No, it's like t s America
is a multicultural society and it's better off for it.
Like let's just all get on the trolley, shall we. Yeah?
So um. The FBI, it's worth mentioning, played a dual role.
Apparently Jaeger Hoover knew all the way back in nineteen
sixty five who carried out the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing,

(49:02):
but just sat on it because he wasn't like a
really big fan of civil rights um or the civil
rights movement. But at the same time, the FBI actually
did have an integral role in breaking up local clan
groups by using like co intel pro Um that program
where they would basically infiltrate and start getting people to
question the leaders or start accusing each other of disloyalty

(49:24):
and just turn a group on each other, like what
they did the Black Panthers they did to the KKK
to far less frequently, but they did have an impact
on helping to to break up the KKK in the
Civil rights era as well. Yeah, and since the Civil
Rights era kind of to today, UM, the clan has
really lost a lot of its membership. UM. It has

(49:47):
been and then again as not to say that any
of the racism went away, it's been fractured sometimes into
more dangerous groups. UM. Further all right, white white supremacist
groups and neo Nazis. UM. There have been people in power.
David Duke, you know, we have to mention him. He
was an actual House member, UM from the state of Louisiana. UM.

(50:10):
He was the Grand National Grand Wizard of the clan.
And I think they started to kind of push away
a little bit from the symbology of you know, these
kind of crazy symbols and the hoods and the cross burnings.
I mean that stuff still went on on local and
state level, but I think nationally they kind of tamp

(50:34):
that down a little bit and was like, I think
would be better if we could just hold office right
so lightly so, And that's basically there's a direct thread
to today, this idea where they're just trying to soft
sell UM racism and suppression of minority rights. UM, and
it just repackaged it in other ways. But it's all

(50:56):
the exact same thing. And it doesn't matter how you
dress it up. You're trying to UM deny the rights
of other human beings. So you say whatever you want
to hold with your ideology, you know, yeah, yeah, totally,
it's UM. There. There's never been a good handle on
the numbers because it hasn't been a superorganized national thing.
But UM they think it is down to like less

(51:18):
than thirty thousand now. And when they do these specials
and kind of go to these groups, the meetings you
know in these towns are a number in the single digits.
Sometimes it's not it's not like hundreds of guys getting together. Uh.
And of course there are women in there now. Keep
saying guys, but it's it's largely always been men because
they call them klansmen. But these wives are getting involved

(51:42):
as well so they can have something in common with
their husbands. Yeah. The The good thing is is the
numbers are small enough that UM basically local communities are
strong enough to come out and chase clan rallies break
them up UM, as was the case in Madison, Indiana
on Labor Day in two thousand nineteen. That land said
that they were going to have a cookout, and apparently

(52:02):
about ten of them showed up and the entire Madison,
Indiana community, or not the entire but a significant portion
of them, showed up and basically chased the clan out
of the public park um and broke up their rally
in ten to twenty minutes. From what I read, that's
that's usually par for the course. And then the clan
is relegated to basically spewing hate online or like you said,

(52:24):
leaving flyers on people's cars. So UM. Southern Poverty Law
Center says that they they have been tracking their decline
and they think they may have plateaued UM, which is
not good because you like to just keep seeing them decline,
but they they bottomed out. In other words, the problem
is is there's no lack of other racist groups um

(52:44):
that are that are equally problematic, if not more so. Yeah,
there's one part in this new special where this kid
they are these two guys dressed in their robes and
putting up a flag in their front yard or whatever,
a Confederate flag, and then one other um I guess
clan flag, and this teenager in St. Louis comes across

(53:04):
the street or whatever suburb they're in, and it's just like, hey, man,
white power. I just want to I just want to
see what you guys are all about. You know, I'm
really interested in joining up. And and these guys talk
to him for a minute, and it's just like, it's
so troubling to see this dumb kid, you know, reaching
out in all the wrong ways because he's been taught something,

(53:26):
you know, And when you see that this family, he's
in these people's homes and there's five six year old
kids sitting around and and the wife's got a cigarette
and she's taking a shot of bourbon and she got
her Mountain dew in her hand and spewing hate, and
these children are sitting there, and you just want to, like,
you want to run in there and steal these kids.
You know, you're not supposed to say that you just did, though,

(53:49):
but I just did. It's awful. Yeah, it is pretty awful.
Anytime you're talking about Hey, it's awful, and it should be.
It should turn your stomach. I hope and it has
learned stuff almost totally. That's how Yeah, that's how it. Yes,
for sure, we already did one on hate before it,
and we maybe we should do a redux on it.
I don't know. I got one more quick thing that's

(54:10):
kind of always always thought it was kind of fun
at on a lighter note, at baseball games. I'm not
sure the history. I should look that up, but a
strikeout when you're keeping log is known as a K,
and fans have bring K signs and they hang up
with a picture. Is known for a lot of strikeouts. Yeah,
one for each strikeout, one for each strikeout, and they
hang it up in the in the stands in front
of their seats, and they have always hung that third

(54:34):
K upside down as per tradition, so it never says KKK,
which I think is great. Yeah, it is great way
to go baseball fans, sticking it to the way to
go baseball fans. Well you got anything else? No, nothing else.
If you want to know more about the KKK, go
visit the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have some really
good research on it, including sum were just like this

(54:55):
is just just pathetic. Um, it's kind of reassuring in
some ways. If you're bothered by this, maybe that'll help.
And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
let me see here. I'm gonna call this Ezra the Podcaster.
Hey guys, my name is Ezra. I'm fourteen years old.
I've started a podcast on my own and it is

(55:16):
inspired by your show. I'm doing a school project on
my podcast and I would love it if you could
respond with a couple of year tips for beginners. My
podcast is called high School is a joke. Uh. I
listen to you every day and it would mean a
lot if you responded and even mentioned me in an episode.
Thank you for always making me laugh to be more
knowledgeable at the dinner table. You guys are really cool.

(55:37):
I don't want to let you know that you've inspired
me to start my own show. Sincerely. That's awesome, Ezra.
Congratulations got the advice, Well, I'll give you the advice
I found is the best of all time, and that
is just talk about stuff that you find interesting. Because
even if people aren't listening, um, you're still gonna enjoy

(55:57):
doing it and that will make you keep it up.
And if you keep it up, then other people start
to notice and come around and next thing you know,
you'll have an audience. That's great advice. Stay away from
the clan. It's even better advice. Chuck everybody, whether you're
a podcast or no, steer clear of the clan. Don't
even talk to him. Well, if you want to get
in touch with us, like Ezra did, you can send

(56:18):
us an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.