The founders
were: Calvin E. Jones, John B. Kennedy, Frank O. McCord, John C.
Lester, Richard R. Reed, and James R. Crowe
The sign was there since it
was revealed by Capt. Kennedy's widow, after Capt. Kennedy died
as the last of the six founders. They, innocently enough,
decided to form a social club for the purpose of mutual
entertainment. The club adopted the style of the college
fraternities in vogue at the time. They would dress up in weird
costumes and play practical jokes on unsuspecting people. To
create an aura of mystery they invented an unusual name and
called their social club: the Ku Klux Klan.
One idea is that word circle
should be used; the idea of a circle encompassed the idea of
unity. All agreed that circle was basic and acceptable. One of
them drew a circle and since it was acceptable for the present
that the six would be the "front" for the movement, he then
drew, within the circle, six vertical lines parallel to each
other. One suggested they call the Club "Circle Six", but this
was laughed down. Then one suggested that while the six vertical
lines or "ones" did make six - they also made "eleven" three
times in a row and he added the eleventh letter in the alphabet
was a "K". So that made 3 "K's" and one of them exclaimed, "KuKlos
is Greek for Circle". So one suggested using the "K's" for
spelling "KuKlos" and to convert Clan to Klan - Thus "Ku Klos
Klan". - the name of our brotherhood until today and forever:
KU KLUX KLAN
Another story is that it is well known that when Tennessee was called upon to furnish three thousand men for the War with Mexico more than thirty thousand volunteered for service. That is the way Tennessee won her title. The Volunteer State. Pulaski and Giles County furnished a goodly share of those volunteers. In old Mexico mythology, the god of light was called Cukulcan. This god was often represented in a conflict with the Vampire god of darkness, over which Cukulcan was always victorious in the drawing of a new day. A poetic idea with an appeal to those young men seeking a name for their new and weird organization. The fact that members of the Klan occasionally referred to themselves as “sons of light,” suggests the idea that some of them may have learned the story of Cukulcan from their fathers or uncles who were soldiers in Mexico. And with slight changes created a word which admirably served their purposes.
The power of the Ku Klux Klan was learned by accident when one night the outside sentinel was standing at his post waiting for the approach of a brother with a candidate, a young negro man from a nearby farm came along, coming into town. He did not see the white robed figure standing by the road-side till directly opposite. When he did see the sentinel, he called out in fright: “Who’s that?” On the spur of the moment, the sentinel in a deep, sepulchral voice responded: “I’m a ghost.” Several people had been killed in the storm that struck that part of town a few months before. And the combination of circumstances was too much for the negroes nerves, and his feet ran away with him.
When the initiation of the evening was over, the sentinel told, simply as a joke, the story of his adventure with the young negro man. The members joined in a hearty laugh. Then the thought occurred to one man, and he suggested to others, the possibility of utilizing the new and mysterious organization, to restrain young negroes, who were beginning to run amuck at social conditions, by taking advantage of the negroes’ superstitious fear of ghosts. It was agreed to give this man’s theory a trial.
On Third Street in the best residence section of the town was a house occupied temporarily by a family of negroes in which were three or four grownup girls. This house was a general rendezvous for the disorderly element of negroes in the community. So it was agreed to try an experiment on this family. And to make it impressive and give the appearance of great numbers, they decided to conduct a horseback parade. Robes were prepared for the horses as well as men. And one evening about nine o’clock there was formed a procession of silent ghost-like men, each mounted on an equally ghost-like horse, all covered with long white robes so that the blacks, bays and sorrels, all looked alike. The procession moved slow and silent. The leader silently reined up at the front gate and politely asked one of the young negroes in the yard for a drink of water.
No threat or admonition. The horseman silently returned to his place at the head of the procession and the procession silently moved on till it turned the corner, then vanished from sight. The men removed their own robes and those of the horses, and the ghost like procession had vanished into thin air. But the effect of that visit remained. Boisterous revelry ceased in that yard quite as suddenly as if there had been a funeral in the family. Visitors came no more at night, and soon the negroes found more congenial quarters in another locality.
The Confederacy just lost the
war and Carpetbaggers and Scallywags came into the South, to
raid it. They raped our women, and helped blacks into high
ranks. There was violence, pillages and rapes.
The KU KLUX KLAN was born and the White Riders of the Night terminated the unfairness for a while.
In 1866, the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan grew through out Tennessee and beyond. At the same time depredations committed by renegade Blacks and Whites, coupled with the absents of constitutional law and vengeance seeking Radical Republicans, made life in the South become all but unbearable. Quite by accident the nocturnal pranksters of the Ku Klux Klan discovered that their costumes and high jinks had a startling effect on the superstitious Negroes. The Negroes thought they were seeing ghosts whenever a group of Klansmen were seen going about at night. The Klan was quick to realize that their newly discovered ghostly image could be used to control bands of unruly Negroes. At first the night riders went out unarmed. Not intending to hurt anyone, they believed that anyone they met would be too frightened to try to harm them. Things were soon to change.
When the Carpetbagger and
Scalawag politicians noticed that renegade Negroes were
beginning to behave themselves and crime went drastically down
in areas where a Den of the Klan had been established, they
reacted swiftly. Carpetbaggers and Scalawags were manipulators.
They thrived in the violent post Civil War period where they
could take advantage of people's fears to increase their own
fortunes and political powers. The Loyal League and Union League
made willing allies. The Klan was, for the most part, made up of
ex-Confederates who were hated by the Loyal League and if crime
and violence went down, no one could justify the expense of
maintaining the Negro Militias. The Loyal League and Union
League began night patrols in the name of protecting the
terrified Negro population. These patrols did not hesitate to
open fire on the Klansmen, who, up to that point, were guilty of
nothing worse then Halloween tricks. The Klan responded in kind.
Soon skirmishes broke out when night patrols of each side would
chance encounter each other.
Spokesmen for the Klan first
asked former general, Robert E. Lee, if he would head the
organization. Lee declined citing his age and poor health. Lee
suggested they ask the younger former general. The first Grand
Wizard was Nathan Bedford Forrest, a high rank
Confederate-general (the wizard in the saddle). They even asked
Robert E. Lee for this office, but he was too old and ill, but
agreed with the election of Forrest for the Grand Wizard. In
every town there was a Klan, but not each Klan was original, so
many murdered and lynched. After two years Forrest declared the
Klan as disbanded, because of this violence. Rumors say that
Forrest had an agreement with President Grant. But maybe it was
his way to make the Invisible Empire even more invisible. The
Klan represented the resistance of the whites, so the
dissolution of the Klan would have been impossible.
That was the first Era of the
Ku Klux Klan and the only era The Klan was just in America.
At Thanksgiving 1915 Col.
William Joseph Simmons climbed together with 16 Klansmen onto
Stone Mountain, GA to reanimate the Klan again with a cross
lighting. The name of our order is since that glorious day:
"Knights of the Ku Klux Klan". That was the beginning of the
second era.
The Klan was growing and
growing. Simmons has been Imperial Wizard from 1915 - 1922. Then
Hiram W. Evans was elected to the Imperial Wizard, while Simmons
became Emperor. The KKK had members in number of up to 6 million
people. The Klan also brought some presidents just as: Calvin
Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson), they had people in the Senate,
Governors, the well known artist Gutzon Borglum (Swedish
descent), author Thomas Dixon (The Clansmen, a modern romance),
the moviemaker David Dwark Griffith (Birth of a nation) were
Klansmen. Mr. Evans organized the Klan all over the world and so
crosses over lit in Germany, Czech Republic, KKKanada, New
Zealand, Shanghai, United Kingdom, Cuba and even Mexico. But the
Klan needed just 1 man to bring it down: Imperial Wizard Robert
E. Stevenson was convicted for raping a woman to death. After
that he published 2 small black boxes, with all the members, and
discovered the identity of many Klansmen who were in high
official ranks in society and business. Between that fact and
the start of WWII, where every able bodied Klansman was drafted,
the Ku Klux Klan suffered severely.
The Klan shrunk into less than 1 million members, and was disbanded again during WW II. After WWII, when good Klansmen returned home from the war, They were busy trying to get their home life back together and many didn't return to the Klan. Meanwhile radical members had further hurt the image of the Klan. Rouge members used the name of the Klan for their own selfish desires. Hiding behind the sacred robes in order to extract revenge on their enemies causing the name of the Klan to be tarnished forever.
In the 60ies there was a real
comeback of the Ku Klux Klan, when the south was forced to open
its schools and public places to blacks. Nobody in the south
wanted that, so a new resistance was born and the Ku Klux Klan
grew again. But there was a war especially down in Mississippi
and Alabama. Bombings, fights and violence. And the Klan
unfortunately lost that bloody battle. There were other
successful Imperial Wizards like Sam Bowers, Robert Shelton, Sam
Roper, James Venable, David Duke, Bill Wilkinson and James
Farrands.
We don't believe in violence
today. The Klan’s of the 60ies almost had no chance to act in
another way. It was war. But today we don't fight our battle
with violence. But of course we believe in SELF DEFENSE!
Today there are many Klan’s, some of them say that their Klan is the ONLY real Klan, others accepts each other. We stand for UNITY - for the WHITE RACE and our CHRISTIAN FAITH.
We now find that Zion has conquered all, and we are the slaves. So now, in the fourth and fifth eras, we find the tables are turned. Now it is we, not the Negroes, who must begin a struggle for freedom; and this time there will be no sweet Abolitionists to hand us freedom on a platter and coo platitudes in our ears. Today we are dispossessed and alone. Today, “Sambo” is a white male living in suburbia with his head up his ass, taking orders from women, immigrants and Jews. Today, the only white men left who have any honor are the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The United White Knights are a Traditional Ku Klux Klan. We are a law-abiding, fraternal organization and just like the Original Ku Klux Klan we are opposed to any sort of violence unless it is in self-defense. We are dedicated in preserving our rights as Christian, heterosexual white citizens of the United States of America.