Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W Chuck Brian over there, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know about vile racist jerks. Boo meis jerk. Yeah, so, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Do you remember when we did our two part episode
Speaker 1: on The Simpsons and one of the first things I
Speaker 1: said was like, I didn't want to record because all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do is sit around and research the
Speaker 1: Simpsons for the rest of my life. I felt basically
Speaker 1: the opposite way about researching the Clan, like I didn't
Speaker 1: want to record because I didn't want to research the
Speaker 1: clan anymore. Yeah, that wasn't a fun one. Well, here's
Speaker 1: my personal history here in regards to the clan is
Speaker 1: and and now I'll this will be peppered throughout a
Speaker 1: little bit because I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds familiar, which is very uh uh. You
Speaker 1: know some of the early days of the second wave
Speaker 1: of the Clan, which you know, we'll get to all
Speaker 1: this garbage in this episode. But um, some Mountain was
Speaker 1: kind of one of the larger national seats and one
Speaker 1: of the leaders of the clan in Stone Mountain had kids,
Speaker 1: or it was either kids or grandkids that went. I
Speaker 1: guess I had to be grandkids that went to my
Speaker 1: elementary school. Then the Venables, and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I heard about the Venables, and I knew about their
Speaker 1: story and that his granddad was the grand Wizard, and like,
Speaker 1: it scared the crap out of me. I was scared.
Speaker 1: And then I got older and I was like, these
Speaker 1: are just dumb cosplaying rednecks. And then I got a
Speaker 1: little older still and I was like, well, that's not
Speaker 1: fair either, and I tried to start in my life
Speaker 1: look at things to the lens of minority people's even
Speaker 1: though you can't you know, as a as a white man,
Speaker 1: but you can do your best to walk a mile
Speaker 1: and someone choose and see what it might be like.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, I can't dismiss it as
Speaker 1: rednecks cosplaying, because they killed people and lynched people, and
Speaker 1: it was a fear of feared group two black people,
Speaker 1: and you know, all kinds of other minorities. As we'll
Speaker 1: see as they as they kind of progressed. But I
Speaker 1: felt it was dismissive to say they're just a bunch
Speaker 1: of dumb rednecks and don't give them that power. Uh So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just interesting to sort of go through
Speaker 1: that evolution as a kid growing up in the South who,
Speaker 1: no doubt in my lineage and ancestry have horrible things
Speaker 1: that happened in the Deep South that I had to
Speaker 1: rectify as like, you know, just because I'm related to
Speaker 1: great great great grandparents who probably did awful things, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that I'm that person or you know, no, not
Speaker 1: at all, not at all. You certainly aren't that person
Speaker 1: at all, I can attest, but you have to come
Speaker 1: to terms with it as someone who is the opposite
Speaker 1: of those people, for sure. And I think it is
Speaker 1: wise of you and very thoughtful of you to be like, no,
Speaker 1: I can't just you know, use I guess white privilege
Speaker 1: to dismiss the clan because it does kind of infringe
Speaker 1: on like the impacts that they've had on people of
Speaker 1: color in the United States. For sure. I think that's
Speaker 1: very insightful. At the same time, yes, the Clan are dumb,
Speaker 1: redneck cous players. They're just ones who will also get
Speaker 1: whipped up into into violence and carry out horrific acts.
Speaker 1: So they're dumb redneck cause players who you really have
Speaker 1: to keep an eye on and then break the backup
Speaker 1: as an organization by putting them in prison whenever they
Speaker 1: do something like that or start to Yeah, and as
Speaker 1: we see through their history, depending on when it was
Speaker 1: and which sort of iteration, because there's there's been at
Speaker 1: least three, uh, some were more violent and dangerous than others,
Speaker 1: and some were sort of like cosplaying rednecks. Um not
Speaker 1: to you know, of course that doesn't excuse it. It's
Speaker 1: just like a fun social club or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But um, it is fairly interesting. But I'm ready to
Speaker 1: be done with this as well, so let's let's do it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing that kind of strikes me about the clan
Speaker 1: the most is they the clan enjoys its largest popularity
Speaker 1: when America is feeling it's most racist. And usually America
Speaker 1: feels it's most racist at times when um, the rights
Speaker 1: of minorities or anybody who's not basically white Protestants are
Speaker 1: being advanced in society. It's not an accident, right, Um,
Speaker 1: but then the clan always always oversteps because America maybe
Speaker 1: racist in America might be I can't even say why,
Speaker 1: America is definitely based on white supremacism um or white
Speaker 1: supremacy and enforcing that the but the the taste for
Speaker 1: violence and the willingness to like kill people of color
Speaker 1: just for being people of color is not a mainstream
Speaker 1: thing fortunately, So the Clan has always been on the
Speaker 1: fringe and always will be on the fringes. It's just
Speaker 1: hopefully eventually society will learn it's less and like, you know,
Speaker 1: advancing the rights of people of color doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: there has to be some spasm of anti minority sentiment
Speaker 1: that inevitably leads to violence carried out by groups like
Speaker 1: the Clan. I really hope we get to that point, um,
Speaker 1: rather than just keep existing trapped in this cycle, you know,
Speaker 1: And I think we will. I think we are approaching
Speaker 1: that eventually. I don't know when it will be, but
Speaker 1: I I feel like with each of these cycles that
Speaker 1: we go through, there's less and less people who react
Speaker 1: horribly the next time or the next time or the
Speaker 1: next time, so that eventually that reaction will just kind
Speaker 1: of fizzle out. That's my hope. Yeah. Uh. And it's
Speaker 1: also interesting, Uh, I watched a documentary that wasn't really
Speaker 1: do it's sort of like a uh, several part news
Speaker 1: show from this British um might have been a BBC
Speaker 1: crew that about the modern clan just from a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago during like the ferguson Upper or Missouri.
Speaker 1: And he went not undercover because he was um, a
Speaker 1: British guy. He was interviewing him. He went he went
Speaker 1: in deep uh with the clan there for seven months
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to see the just the scattered ideology
Speaker 1: and that kind of is a bit of a hallmark
Speaker 1: of the clan period through their history. Is it seems
Speaker 1: like there's never been a very codified thing of this
Speaker 1: is who we are, because there's people in this documentary
Speaker 1: that are like, you know, three of the members were
Speaker 1: arrested for plotting to kill a black man, and the
Speaker 1: people they talked to and they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: they're out man. We're not into that. We don't want
Speaker 1: to commit violence against black people. And we're not even bigoted.
Speaker 1: We're just a superior race who who are white separatists,
Speaker 1: but we don't want to you know, we might burn
Speaker 1: across for our ceremonies, but we're not doing bombings and lynchings.
Speaker 1: And we're not down with that at all. Uh, But
Speaker 1: you also get the feeling that behind closed doors, they're
Speaker 1: probably like, hey, I wish those guys would have been
Speaker 1: able to carry that murder out right, and that that
Speaker 1: seems to have been a transition that kind of went
Speaker 1: in the seventies. Started in the seventies, I believe, where
Speaker 1: there's like a a different public face to the clan
Speaker 1: where they tried different like okay, well that everybody hates
Speaker 1: the clan, what if we what if we explain it
Speaker 1: like this? What if we put it like this in
Speaker 1: society is like, no, that's nice. Try it's not gonna work,
Speaker 1: all right? Should we get into this in the origins? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so so, like you said, there's been three iterations of
Speaker 1: the clan, and this the first iteration of the clan
Speaker 1: started out is they think basically a social club made
Speaker 1: up of UM disgruntled Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties six. And this group of veterans got together
Speaker 1: at a time where um, there was a real trend,
Speaker 1: a craze basically for secret societies in the nineteenth century. UM,
Speaker 1: apparently in the the eighteen nineties up to the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties is called the Golden Age of fraternalism, where something
Speaker 1: like a third of American men were members of a
Speaker 1: secret society or something based on like actual, real ancient
Speaker 1: secret societies like the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians. These are
Speaker 1: just kind of fake ones that gave you a reason
Speaker 1: to like leave the house on Tuesdays and Thursdays and go, like,
Speaker 1: you know, have whiskey down at the Moose Lodge, and
Speaker 1: groups like the Moose and the Elks and the Knights
Speaker 1: of Columbus Um, they all grew out of that. And
Speaker 1: in fact, Woodmen of the World Insurance UM, it's called that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a weird name if you think about it,
Speaker 1: but Woodmen of the World UM was a secret society
Speaker 1: from the nineteenth century and they would sell their members
Speaker 1: insurance policies. And that's where that insurance came from. So
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the context of where the
Speaker 1: ku Klux klan of originally came from in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: this crazer trend for secret societies. Yeah, and by all accounts,
Speaker 1: it was started on Christmas Eve, like you said in
Speaker 1: Pulaski in eighteen sixty five by six men Calvin Jones,
Speaker 1: Richard Reid, Frank McCord, uh, John Kennedy, and John uh
Speaker 1: Kessler I think, and then I believe it or not.
Speaker 1: The final guy's name was Jim crow No James crow No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in Pulaski, Tennessee. And um, they they were sort of
Speaker 1: based on this one of those secret groups called the
Speaker 1: Sons of Malta, but it seems like it was more
Speaker 1: inspired by because they weren't around by the time the
Speaker 1: Civil War ended. But they definitely sort of, um, kind
Speaker 1: of cribbed some stuff from from the Malton's as far
Speaker 1: as uh. And this is the whole thing with the
Speaker 1: secret societies, like outfits and costumes and rights and initiations
Speaker 1: and dumb names of leadership that you make up. It's
Speaker 1: all a big part of it. I have never understood
Speaker 1: the desire, and not just obviously the clan because UH
Speaker 1: clearly not interested in that, but any fraternal group like that,
Speaker 1: I just including fraternities in college. I just I never
Speaker 1: got it. Yeah. Um, that Sons of Malta you mentioned
Speaker 1: seemed to have been directly impactful. Um. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there were members who were who were from the
Speaker 1: Sons of Malta or how they heard of it. But
Speaker 1: the Sons of Malta and then another group called the
Speaker 1: Ku Close Adelphin and both of them seemed to have
Speaker 1: been party cruise or cruise from Marti Gras in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: And then this all Sons of Malta somehow made their
Speaker 1: way up to Boston, and that's where they really kind
Speaker 1: of got hold or got pop ler, I guess, but
Speaker 1: neither one of those were racist groups from what I
Speaker 1: could tell, UM, and from also what I could tell,
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan wasn't necessarily intended to be a
Speaker 1: racist terrorist political organization, at least at first. But UM
Speaker 1: shortly after they formed in eighteen sixty five sixty six UM,
Speaker 1: the federal government passed the Reconstruction Acts UM, and reconstruction
Speaker 1: definitely deserves its own episode. Really want to do one
Speaker 1: or two on reconstruction at some point. But when they
Speaker 1: passed that act, that UM that kind of changed or
Speaker 1: gave focus to this what may have been like just
Speaker 1: kind of a UM A group of racist people, and
Speaker 1: turned them into a racist political terrorist organization. Now they
Speaker 1: had something to do besides meat at the moose lodge
Speaker 1: and that was to a forced white supremacy in the
Speaker 1: Deep South through acts of violence and intimidation and terror techniques. Um.
Speaker 1: And that was the first incarnation of the clan, and
Speaker 1: they spread really quick from Tennessee down to um Georgia
Speaker 1: and other neighboring states, thanks in part to personal visits
Speaker 1: for organizing by a guy named Nathan Bedford Forrest Uh,
Speaker 1: a Confederate general who is not a great guy. Yeah
Speaker 1: he was. Uh, there are a lot of complications with
Speaker 1: that guy. We'll we'll get to him in a sec.
Speaker 1: But um the name KKK or ku klux Klan um
Speaker 1: they think might have and there's no again. It's it's
Speaker 1: been such a sort of willy nilly organization as far
Speaker 1: as having a national, sort of codified presence that there's
Speaker 1: not even like a website that I saw that you
Speaker 1: can go to. It's all regional. Man, those are some
Speaker 1: terrible websites. They're pretty bad. Comics sands everywhere. Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty bad. When this like a black background and
Speaker 1: like pink fonts and stuff that spewing racist bigotry and
Speaker 1: ideology and oh my god, it's pretty bad. I wanted
Speaker 1: to like throw my laptop out in the window at
Speaker 1: one point. UM. But they think it might have derived
Speaker 1: from the Greek word uh key close k y k
Speaker 1: l o s, which was basically denotes um what people
Speaker 1: thought were like the natural cycles of government or types
Speaker 1: of government that a civilization could have, which is pretty
Speaker 1: haughty if you think about it. For the k k
Speaker 1: k I mean of political philosophy that dates back to
Speaker 1: the third century PC. That's it's really something. But ku
Speaker 1: close is what it um k u k l os
Speaker 1: is what it was sort of translated as and and
Speaker 1: modern and well not the modern era, but back then
Speaker 1: and uh clan with a K, Like what I saw
Speaker 1: was it was originally ku klux one word and then
Speaker 1: clan with a c uh. And they think that may
Speaker 1: have come from maybe um Scottish clans. They play Scottish
Speaker 1: music sometimes at their rallies, but that's not affirmed either.
Speaker 1: But eventually I think that C was replaced with a K.
Speaker 1: It became kkk and these lodges started popping up um
Speaker 1: all over right after the Civil War because kind of
Speaker 1: like you said, once um of my adority gets a
Speaker 1: little bit of freedom. Uh, there's a bit of an
Speaker 1: uprising and clan membership. And that's what happened from the
Speaker 1: first iteration is like, there we have these enslaved people
Speaker 1: that are now free. We need to basically intimidate them
Speaker 1: into feeling like they still have no freedoms even though
Speaker 1: the loss as different. Right. So one of the first
Speaker 1: things they did was, Um, you know when when reconstruction
Speaker 1: came along and all of a sudden there were you know,
Speaker 1: black people in the South could hold political office or
Speaker 1: be judges or all this Like this was like flipping
Speaker 1: a switch as far as the South is concerned, um.
Speaker 1: And it's like I said, it laser focused like the
Speaker 1: a times of the Ku Klux Klan, and that they
Speaker 1: now took up an intimidation and terrorism campaign against black
Speaker 1: people in South, against Republicans in the South. The Republicans
Speaker 1: at the time were a much different party than they
Speaker 1: are today, and that they were into the idea of
Speaker 1: big government to support and enforce social justice. Um. And
Speaker 1: then years later around the turn of the last century,
Speaker 1: UM Williams Jenning Bryant was a candidate who was a
Speaker 1: Democrat who basically ran on the Republican platform a big
Speaker 1: government to enforce social justice. And then later on it
Speaker 1: was cemented by FDR is a big kind of transition
Speaker 1: or um um switch basically of ideologies between the parties. UM.
Speaker 1: But at the time, if you were a Republican, you
Speaker 1: were probably if you're in the South, you were probably
Speaker 1: for UM equal rights for black citizens, and you were
Speaker 1: a target of their intimidation campaigns as well, big time,
Speaker 1: because not only were they of battling these politicians, but
Speaker 1: UM voter intimidation was a very real thing, UH and
Speaker 1: voter suppression, and they would UM, they would murder people,
Speaker 1: UM like hundreds, maybe thousands of people in the South,
Speaker 1: especially Louisiana. UM reports ahead of the eighteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: election UM where that they murdered people for intimidation and
Speaker 1: literally to keep them from voting. Yeah, dude. There was
Speaker 1: one town called opal Loosis, UM, Louisiana, a town of
Speaker 1: twenty five thousand, so it was pretty big. UM. It
Speaker 1: was the county seat of the parish. You can't remember
Speaker 1: what parish. But in two weeks, two hundred people were
Speaker 1: murdered around the eighteen sixty eight election. Two hundred. That's
Speaker 1: fourteen people a day in this town of twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand people, UM, all because of terrorism. Carried out by
Speaker 1: the KKK. Yeah, and Ed helped us put this together.
Speaker 1: And Ed is keen to point out and I think
Speaker 1: we should too, is that a lot of what the
Speaker 1: Clan has always tried to do is is lead their
Speaker 1: groups by fear. And you still see that to day,
Speaker 1: not only through the Clan but other groups, like fear
Speaker 1: of you know, that the immigrants gonna take your job,
Speaker 1: or fear of this, fear of that, And back then
Speaker 1: it was fear of um these enslaved people that are
Speaker 1: now free rising up, you know, and and getting revenge,
Speaker 1: and that didn't happen, like even though slavery happened, Like
Speaker 1: once black Americans earned their freedom, they did not all
Speaker 1: of a sudden say, oh yeah, well payback time, we're angry,
Speaker 1: we're gonna come after you. They were happy to be
Speaker 1: freed and just to try and live as regular people
Speaker 1: with rights and society. And that wasn't the message that
Speaker 1: the Clan was putting out. They were like, you need
Speaker 1: to be afraid of them, even though there are no
Speaker 1: accounts of that happening. It was just black people trying
Speaker 1: to be regular, normal people, right. And the other problem
Speaker 1: with that kind of thing is is like when somebody
Speaker 1: does stuff like this, when they carry out a terror campaign, um,
Speaker 1: it makes people wonder like, geez, well, what did the
Speaker 1: other people do to deserve this? Well, the other people
Speaker 1: didn't do anything to deserve this. And that's that's what's
Speaker 1: called the false balance or balance fallacy, where there the
Speaker 1: idea that there's you know, there's problems on both sides,
Speaker 1: or there's good people on both sides. It's it's like no,
Speaker 1: sometimes one side is the problem basically of the problem.
Speaker 1: And I think that was really important of to point
Speaker 1: out and for us to point out too, that there
Speaker 1: was nothing that the the Clan was defending against except
Speaker 1: white supremacy and black black suppression, the suppression of rights
Speaker 1: among black people. That was it. It's as despicable as
Speaker 1: it sounds. There was nothing gallant or good about it.
Speaker 1: There was nothing honorable bull about it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: they were so violent and so criminal and so despicable
Speaker 1: that within three years of their founding, the Grand Wizard
Speaker 1: of the KKK, Nathan Bedford Forrest, who we Um mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: issued his one and only basically executive orders Grand Wizard, saying,
Speaker 1: we have to disband and burn all of our stuff
Speaker 1: because this has gotten out of hand. That's how violent
Speaker 1: they had become and how despicable their acts had been. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Forrest Gump's namesake. Yeah, Um, he was, like I said,
Speaker 1: he was a pretty controversial remains a controversial dude. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that he was one of the generals of the Confederacy.
Speaker 1: And um, he was in charge when the Fort Pillow
Speaker 1: massacre happened, which was, uh, something we can get into
Speaker 1: in detail, maybe in a short stuff maybe, but um, essentially,
Speaker 1: you know, hundreds of largely black soldiers who had given
Speaker 1: up and surrendered were just massacred on this day at
Speaker 1: Fort Pillow. And Um, he was known as a brilliant general,
Speaker 1: the Wizard of the Saddle, which is what he was
Speaker 1: called because he was a cavalry guy. Uh. And that
Speaker 1: later became you know, they kind of gang that for
Speaker 1: the clan as far as the Grand Wizard, they kind
Speaker 1: of stole that from there. Um. But he uh, he
Speaker 1: seemed to be a vile man. But then later in life,
Speaker 1: like you said, um became disillusioned with the clan. Some
Speaker 1: people said it was just because he didn't think they
Speaker 1: were organized enough. Some people said it was because he
Speaker 1: thought they got too violent. But in Memphis late in life,
Speaker 1: he gave this big speech about um, you know, basically
Speaker 1: trying to hold up the black man and give them
Speaker 1: jobs and put them in positions of important positions in
Speaker 1: our government, and to make them doctors and lawyers. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a change of heart.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of controversy since since then about
Speaker 1: like should we honor this guy or you know, or
Speaker 1: talk about like his entire life up until that moment. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's it's like he he deserves to have
Speaker 1: like his like it all spread out on the table.
Speaker 1: But I feel like once you oversee like a massacre
Speaker 1: of of unarmed black soldiers came home, oversee like at
Speaker 1: in a white supremacist terrorist group, that's pretty tough to
Speaker 1: come back from. Even though I mean, it is definitely
Speaker 1: worth noting and I think fair to note that he
Speaker 1: did have at least something of a change of heart,
Speaker 1: at least publicly. I saw that he wrote to uh,
Speaker 1: I think the governor of Tennessee or somewhere and offered
Speaker 1: to help destroy um white vigilantes who were harassing UM
Speaker 1: black citizens because he thought it was uncalled for. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a a unusual person over the span of
Speaker 1: his life, but he still did some pretty horrible stuff
Speaker 1: of course. And this, you know, this pops up anytime
Speaker 1: there's um a debate over whether they should strip the
Speaker 1: name from this or that, you know, because there's plenty,
Speaker 1: plenty of stuff named for him. There's a high school
Speaker 1: in Jacksonville, Florida that was named Nathan F. Nathan B.
Speaker 1: Forest High School until two thousand fourteen. Yeah, two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: there was a high school named after the basically the
Speaker 1: founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Jacksonville, Florida. They
Speaker 1: should just name all the high schools in Florida, Tom
Speaker 1: Petty High School. It's he from Florida. He's from Gainesville.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, big, big time music scene
Speaker 1: down there back then. Okay, what happened to the music scene? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe there're still this one. Who else
Speaker 1: came out of Gainesville at that time? The Don Felder,
Speaker 1: the guitar player for the Eagles, was Tom Petty's guitar teacher. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then um like Leonard skinnerd hung out in Jacksonville,
Speaker 1: and I think the Almond Brothers they were making guys,
Speaker 1: but they hung out down there too. Okay, should we
Speaker 1: take a break? Sure, all right, let's take a break.
Speaker 1: I didn't think Tom Petty and the Almond brothers would
Speaker 1: make a appearance in the Clan episode, but they did.
Speaker 1: And we'll be back right after it to talk about
Speaker 1: the enforcement x all right. The enforcement x uh. This
Speaker 1: is basically when the federal government stepped up starting in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy and said, you know what, we can't count
Speaker 1: on these states, especially in the South, and we should
Speaker 1: point out and ed Ed makes a good point of
Speaker 1: pointing out that like there was racism all over the country,
Speaker 1: always has been. There have been claim groups all over
Speaker 1: the country, but in the South, it was in the government,
Speaker 1: it was in the courts, it was in the school systems,
Speaker 1: like it was nowhere else in the country. So the
Speaker 1: federal government said, we can't count on the Southern states
Speaker 1: to do the right thing and to have real investigations
Speaker 1: and prosecute people and to protect black citizens. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna pass the Enforcement Acts that basically says, uh, we
Speaker 1: can go in there and we can kind of take
Speaker 1: care of business on our own if we have to. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and take care of business. They did. Um, General Grant
Speaker 1: Ulysses Grant, who was then President. Grant had an Attorney
Speaker 1: general named Amos Ackerman Disguss Awesome is awesome. It's one
Speaker 1: of the heroes of this story. He doesn't even have
Speaker 1: a Wikipedia page. He doesn't know. That's pretty lame Wikipedia.
Speaker 1: It's bad. He's a Georgia boy too. Yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: is so. UM. This guy ended up the attorney general
Speaker 1: under Grant, and he basically used everything at his disposal,
Speaker 1: from forming UM like basically the prototype of the FBI
Speaker 1: to UM to getting federal troops and getting martial law
Speaker 1: declared down in South Carolina to oversee the presidential election
Speaker 1: down there. UM like all sorts of different stuff. Everything
Speaker 1: he had he would throw at the clan and ultimately
Speaker 1: kind of broke the back of that first clan. That
Speaker 1: combined with um Bedford Forrest UM. I don't know why
Speaker 1: you have to say both of those names, but you
Speaker 1: just kind of do UM. That combined with his executive
Speaker 1: order disband like the clan, the first clan went away
Speaker 1: very very quickly. Actually, yeah, and it's hard to tell
Speaker 1: how big it was at its first peak. Uh. Some
Speaker 1: people say maybe a half million people, But like you said,
Speaker 1: it faded out pretty quickly. Um, and you know, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about when the clan fades out. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really go anywhere as far as these people go.
Speaker 1: It's not like everyone all of a sudden was awesome
Speaker 1: and not racist. It just means the formal clan just
Speaker 1: lacks membership basically. I don't know. I think I think
Speaker 1: when when suddenly, like the four the federal government and
Speaker 1: like you know, maybe your senator or your representative, or
Speaker 1: you hear the President talking smack about this group that
Speaker 1: you know, you used to think was pretty cool, but
Speaker 1: now all of a sudden you realize that the rest
Speaker 1: of the country thinks you're a backward dummy for looking
Speaker 1: up to these clan members. It can kind of it
Speaker 1: can kind of make people self reflect a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know. So I wonder how many people do change
Speaker 1: their minds or have historically over over the course of this,
Speaker 1: not necessarily like, well, I'm not racist anymore, but I
Speaker 1: think that that's that's a possibility that somebody can reflect
Speaker 1: like that, or at the very least the next time
Speaker 1: they're not going to participate or agitate or join in.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, I saw, did you see
Speaker 1: that mem of the dude in I think Indiana, Illinois,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. He's I believe, in a wheelchair and
Speaker 1: he's had a Black Lives Matter rally. He's holding a
Speaker 1: sign that says, I'm sorry, I'm late. I had a
Speaker 1: lot to learn, and he apparently was. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he was racist, but he was certainly not in
Speaker 1: favor of Black Lives Matter, and I guess started reading
Speaker 1: about it and looking into it and doing his research
Speaker 1: and had a complete change of heart and showed up
Speaker 1: at one of their rallies and support of them, which
Speaker 1: was pretty cool. Have you seen that? I have not
Speaker 1: seen that. So it is. I mean, it can't happen.
Speaker 1: Like people, sentiments about this kind of stuff can change.
Speaker 1: And I feel like when people are like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm in favor of of keeping other human beings down
Speaker 1: for really no reason whatsoever except they don't look like me,
Speaker 1: I feel like that that's like a there's a lot
Speaker 1: of room for improvement that can happen. Um in in
Speaker 1: that in that sense, you know, yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm sure individuals have changed like that. I wish it
Speaker 1: was on mass Um. There were other violent racist groups
Speaker 1: when the clan was not as popular during that period. Um,
Speaker 1: they just didn't have uh, they didn't have that sort
Speaker 1: of unified Um. Look, well so let's talk Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about that. Look if you're if you're ready to
Speaker 1: want to Yeah, I mean you can thank you d W.
Speaker 1: Griffith and Thomas Dixon Jr. For that, Yeah, because prior
Speaker 1: to this, the clan um did not really look like
Speaker 1: what you would think. They they wore masks and hoods
Speaker 1: and um, you know, disguises, and they tried to disguise
Speaker 1: their voice. Apparently sometimes they would pretend that they were
Speaker 1: the ghosts of Confederate soldiers coming to terrorize black families. Um,
Speaker 1: fooling absolutely no one. But they they didn't wear necessarily
Speaker 1: what you would think of as like the clan today.
Speaker 1: And like you said, that strictly came from d. W. Griffith,
Speaker 1: and I guess Dixon Thomas Dixon do a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: but Griffith like really put it up there for everybody
Speaker 1: to see. With the Birth of a Nation. Yeah, Birth
Speaker 1: of a Nation was a movie based on play that
Speaker 1: was based on a book from Thomas Dixon Jr. He
Speaker 1: published The Klansmen with a C. Colon h historical romance
Speaker 1: of the Ku Klux Klan and where they were depicted
Speaker 1: as heroic, heroic sort of noble Christian warriors, and that
Speaker 1: became a play that had was a little bit more popular,
Speaker 1: and then d W. Griffith based the movie on that play. Um,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, this is where you saw
Speaker 1: crosses burning, and this is where you saw those white
Speaker 1: pointed hoods and horses with robes on them. Those poor
Speaker 1: poor horses. They have no idea what they're doing. It
Speaker 1: makes me feel the horses into this show. I wish
Speaker 1: they wouldn't, but you know what we know as sort
Speaker 1: of the look of the clan was fully put forth
Speaker 1: by d W. Griffith on screen. Um. I was kind
Speaker 1: of curious because I know he was a huge, huge
Speaker 1: name in Hollywood and a pioneer in Hollywood and was
Speaker 1: a founding partner of United Artists with Chaplain and Mary
Speaker 1: Pickford and I think Douglas Fairbanks maybe, um, but I
Speaker 1: was curious about both those guys, like were they super
Speaker 1: racist or was this just a movie to them? And uh,
Speaker 1: Dixon was supposedly really racist. Um, although he supposedly denounced
Speaker 1: bigotry in the wake of this sort of new clan
Speaker 1: that was created. I had a harder time finding out
Speaker 1: what d. W. Griffith was all about. He never apologized
Speaker 1: for anything, and he seems to have sort of escaped scrutiny,
Speaker 1: uh in some ways, so in his lifetime I think so,
Speaker 1: but I'm not really sure because it didn't have time
Speaker 1: to really do a deep dive into whether or not,
Speaker 1: like he believed the stuff or he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make a salacious movie that's going to be super
Speaker 1: controversial and get banned and get me a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: But the the you know, whether his heart was in
Speaker 1: it or not, the impact that his movie had was astounding.
Speaker 1: It was like, imagine if when Star Wars came out,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like, um, Jedi schools popped up
Speaker 1: in real life, and like they would form together and
Speaker 1: go out and run for office as like Jedies. Basically, sweet,
Speaker 1: we need a third party, right, yeah, the Jedi party.
Speaker 1: But imagine if those Jedis were like virulent racists who
Speaker 1: were um dedicated to suppressing the rights of minorities. What
Speaker 1: do you think about that? It's much less good. It's
Speaker 1: much less good, and um, that's yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 1: what happened. It's a good point. Yeah, but based on
Speaker 1: this movie. It was a popular movie that kicked off
Speaker 1: what's what's considered the second wave or second incarnation of
Speaker 1: the Ku Klux Klan and gave us all of that,
Speaker 1: the symbolism, the grandiose um look and feel, and just
Speaker 1: kind of like gave it this almost legend that really
Speaker 1: didn't exist because the first claim was never like that.
Speaker 1: They were a bunch of hooded um, murderous thugs who
Speaker 1: would ride around on horseback at night and set people's
Speaker 1: houses on fire. They didn't look anything like that. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you can lay you know, the resurgence and
Speaker 1: interests of the clan almost squarely at the feet of
Speaker 1: d W. Griffith, and then only because it wasn't as
Speaker 1: popular to a lesser extent, Tom Dixon's eat. Not Tom Dixon,
Speaker 1: the great great lighting designer, Tom Dixon, the racist author. Yes,
Speaker 1: Thomas Dixon Jr. I think right, uh. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the Birth of a Nation part of it was filmed
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood I lived in l a and lous
Speaker 1: felis right there where I remember where we shot the
Speaker 1: driving around stuff for the Toyota commercial. Yeah. Can I
Speaker 1: just say one of my favorite gonna say is, well,
Speaker 1: we were talking, Yes, you didn't look to the right,
Speaker 1: and you started to pull through a crosswalk and this
Speaker 1: lady with her husband and like three kids started like,
Speaker 1: I think, smack the hood of the priest that we
Speaker 1: were filming in and like yelled at you, and you
Speaker 1: like yelled back at her and shook your fists. Like
Speaker 1: you you got in there like a match. You did.
Speaker 1: You did in every way except physically shaking your fist.
Speaker 1: But you've got in like a shouting match with some
Speaker 1: pedestrian while we were filming a Toyota commercial. Beautiful. It
Speaker 1: wasn't quite a shouting match. It was very brief. She
Speaker 1: she way overreacted totally. I don't know. I'm not saying
Speaker 1: you were in the wrong, but it was just reminded
Speaker 1: me of everything I hated about living in l A.
Speaker 1: I think in that one moment was like, how bad
Speaker 1: this lady overreacted? Yeah, it was fun though. That was
Speaker 1: a great, great memory. Yeah, but Birth of a Nation
Speaker 1: was filmed like right down the street from there. Part
Speaker 1: of it. Um the my favorite movie theater in l A.
Speaker 1: The Vista was right on this corner, and also the
Speaker 1: movie theater that doubled as Detroit for True Romance for
Speaker 1: the Karate Kung Fu Theater at the beginning. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: like right out there in front of that, it's this
Speaker 1: big like convergence of five streets and apparently like some
Speaker 1: of the huge like marching scenes from Birth of a Nation,
Speaker 1: we're film right there anyway. Um, this second birth of
Speaker 1: the clan, a lot of it can be credited also
Speaker 1: to the actions of William J. Simmons, who was inspired
Speaker 1: from the movie in in nineteen fifteen went to the
Speaker 1: top of Stone Mountain here in Georgia and burned across
Speaker 1: and inspired by a movie. Yeah, well and ass and
Speaker 1: hate in the previous clan, like you know, it was
Speaker 1: all still there. Um. But James Venable, who I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: who I went to school with his grandkids, he was
Speaker 1: a kid on top of the mountain with William Simmons
Speaker 1: at the time, and he was up there and I
Speaker 1: think with his uncle and this was kind of looked
Speaker 1: at it sort of one of the first meetings of
Speaker 1: the newly reborn Ku Klux Klan and the nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: to twenties. Yeah, so in addition to having like a
Speaker 1: much more unified look and um, I guess uh design
Speaker 1: ethos um. The this version of the clan, the second
Speaker 1: version of the clan, seemed more organized. At least they
Speaker 1: were organized enough to actually become a political force, not
Speaker 1: just in support of you know, um, say the Democrats
Speaker 1: at the time, or uh, in support of just whatever
Speaker 1: local judge was known to be a racist and you
Speaker 1: know they they would they would support him and intimidate
Speaker 1: voters against him. They would actually put forth candidates who
Speaker 1: were members of the clan and publicly members of the clan.
Speaker 1: Um probably most famously Robert Bird, a senator from uh
Speaker 1: West Virginia, was a clan member and like never backed
Speaker 1: away from the clan at at any point. There were
Speaker 1: other Southerners like from Georgia who were senators, I mean,
Speaker 1: who were also Southerners from Georgia who were from the clan,
Speaker 1: some representatives, lots and lots of local officials, and like
Speaker 1: the clan would actually they became something of a political
Speaker 1: force as well. Yeah, I mean the local thing is
Speaker 1: really um was a big deal because it could be
Speaker 1: and you know politics, we all get worked up over
Speaker 1: national politics as well. We should but if you really
Speaker 1: want to see a difference in your life day to day,
Speaker 1: local politics is where it's at, and you know, county
Speaker 1: commissions and school boards and boards of directors like that.
Speaker 1: The local level is really where the Clan could get
Speaker 1: in there on a more low key basis and do
Speaker 1: a lot of damage. Um. So that you know, they
Speaker 1: had official uniforms. Now, they had official ranks and titles, um.
Speaker 1: They were still sort of like, hey, we're just a
Speaker 1: a fraternal order, um, and that's kind of all we are.
Speaker 1: But at the same time they expanded there ethos and
Speaker 1: it wasn't just black people anymore. It was they were
Speaker 1: anti anti Semites, they were anti Catholic, they were against communists,
Speaker 1: they were against anything that wasn't white. And all of
Speaker 1: this was sort of under the banner of hey, what
Speaker 1: we really are, uh, because you know they would also
Speaker 1: like trying out pedophiles and stuff like that. What they
Speaker 1: said they really were were patriots and heroes and good Americans,
Speaker 1: which sounds very familiar these days. It really does. This,
Speaker 1: This this version of the clan very much um reflects
Speaker 1: the kind of supremacist bs that you see today in America,
Speaker 1: where it's it's UM very much spread across different groups
Speaker 1: that that are kind of held together by this thread
Speaker 1: that you know, white people are losing ground and they
Speaker 1: need to make it back up through whatever whatever we
Speaker 1: need to do. UM. That that really seems to reflect
Speaker 1: a bit. Also the fact that there are crazy nut
Speaker 1: jobs in Congress today who hold white supremacists values basically
Speaker 1: publicly really bears a striking resemblance to the second resurgence
Speaker 1: of the clan. Yeah, who I mean we should point
Speaker 1: out again at like white Christian, white Protestant Christian, right,
Speaker 1: that's important. Seemed to be the only thing that was
Speaker 1: that was okay, like anything else, like anti Catholic, anti Jew,
Speaker 1: anti everything except white Protestant Christian and so like the
Speaker 1: the This was the largest UH popularity of the widest
Speaker 1: popularity of the clan. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates
Speaker 1: that they may have had around the mid nineteen twenties
Speaker 1: as many as four million members spread across the US.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't just in the South. I mean, there
Speaker 1: were plenty in industrial cities in the North. There are
Speaker 1: plenty on the West coast, plenty in the midwest. UH.
Speaker 1: Indiana UM was known as a stronghold of the clan,
Speaker 1: and I read that as many as half a million.
Speaker 1: UH had half a million members, which would have been
Speaker 1: a third of the population of white men in Indiana
Speaker 1: at the time in the nineteen twenties. So you might ask, like,
Speaker 1: why was everybody in the clan just in the same
Speaker 1: way that UM. The reconstruction gave I guess purpose to
Speaker 1: the clan. UM. Massive waves of immigration that had started
Speaker 1: in the late nineteenth century to the United States was
Speaker 1: making America generally racist, and they were easily whipped up
Speaker 1: by things like you're gonna lose your job to all
Speaker 1: these immigrants. Yeah, Like it was very much based on
Speaker 1: local grievance, grievances like whatever the local fear was, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're right, that was immigrants coming
Speaker 1: into the town and taking your jobs, or black men
Speaker 1: marrying white women, or whatever they felt the local thing
Speaker 1: was that would be most effective at recruiting. Kind of
Speaker 1: was what they kind of honed in on. UM. The
Speaker 1: mystique of it all was very I think intoxicating to
Speaker 1: a lot of these people, UH and still is in
Speaker 1: that documentary. It's amazing to see these people two years
Speaker 1: ago talking about clearly that's an important thing for them,
Speaker 1: like getting dressed up, meeting together in the woods and
Speaker 1: burning across, riding around at night on your night rides
Speaker 1: or midnight rides in your car, putting up flyers under
Speaker 1: the under the cloak of darkness. Um there, it's like cosplay,
Speaker 1: it really is. They're they're playing like they're in some
Speaker 1: important club. Um. It's interesting that the women, the women
Speaker 1: in this documentary, all of them said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this isn't the kind of thing I probably would have
Speaker 1: been into, but it really improved my marriage when I
Speaker 1: got on board and uh and joined, and now my
Speaker 1: husband and I have something to talk about. We have commonalities.
Speaker 1: And you hear this and you're just like crawling out
Speaker 1: of your skin at at seeing this marriage which is
Speaker 1: clearly just you know, a male dominant marriage. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, but if you, if you, if you join
Speaker 1: my clan, or if you like my football team, we'll
Speaker 1: finally have something common. Right, And I love football, so
Speaker 1: I don't want to throw a football into the but
Speaker 1: but but so yeah, so I mean it makes sense
Speaker 1: like if you don't have much of an identity, or
Speaker 1: you are looking for something to give your life purpose,
Speaker 1: like a group or a club, especially one that's you know,
Speaker 1: and some looked up to it by some people. I
Speaker 1: can really give your life a real shot in the arm,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess in good ways. I mean those
Speaker 1: there are so many great clubs where people that feel
Speaker 1: like they brother, big sister. Yeah. But I mean it
Speaker 1: is interesting that so much of it in this documentary
Speaker 1: ly seems to come from that mystique and that wanting
Speaker 1: to belong to a group. And I'm just a uh.
Speaker 1: This one guy, he was like, you know, I'm just
Speaker 1: a landscaper and I was just out partying and now
Speaker 1: now I have focused, now have something to do these brothers.
Speaker 1: So um. One of the one of the things you
Speaker 1: mentioned was the midnight rides and going on at midnight,
Speaker 1: and one of the one of the reasons they do
Speaker 1: that is because the clan has always thrived on anonymity.
Speaker 1: Like they they don't. I mean, that's that's not to
Speaker 1: say that they don't show their face in public. Some
Speaker 1: of them do, but plenty of them don't, and that
Speaker 1: there's strengthen that. Um. And one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: they would ride at night was because it afforded that
Speaker 1: much more anonymity even if they're they weren't particularly anonymous,
Speaker 1: and that you know, their neighbor who they were terrorizing
Speaker 1: probably recognized their voice, but the fact that they their
Speaker 1: face wasn't shown, there was plausible deniability to that. Well.
Speaker 1: Speaking of anonymous though, in this documentary, Anonymous outed this
Speaker 1: one group in Missouri. They got shut down and they
Speaker 1: put their all their information on the web. And it
Speaker 1: showed a little bit of the video with the guy
Speaker 1: and the guy fox mask and the uh, the the
Speaker 1: computerized voice or whatever saying that you know we're coming
Speaker 1: after you, We're going to put your names online. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it was it was fairly interesting doing doing God's work.
Speaker 1: That's actually yeah, for real, And that's actually like a
Speaker 1: traditional anti clan tactic that groups like the Double A
Speaker 1: c P or the Anti Defamation League UM used back
Speaker 1: during this time when the clan was at its peak
Speaker 1: popularity in the nwies. They would bribe people to get
Speaker 1: their hands on a membership list. They would send in
Speaker 1: people to infiltrate to get their hands on a membership list,
Speaker 1: and then they would publish it. And now all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, that anonymity and the strength that's afforded by
Speaker 1: the anonymity is gone, and you just broke up a
Speaker 1: clan chapter in your local area because nobody wants to
Speaker 1: be associated with anymore, and they probably have to make
Speaker 1: some sort of public statement about how they left, you
Speaker 1: know where they It's all just a misunderstanding, they were
Speaker 1: never part of it. Or you're in fear of losing
Speaker 1: your job maybe, but that really helped break up this
Speaker 1: this version of the clan in the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 1: then um, the federal government again. If you look at
Speaker 1: these these successive waves of the Ku Klux Klan, the
Speaker 1: federal government is the one who steps in to break
Speaker 1: the back of the clan. And they did it again
Speaker 1: basically using the same playbook from the enforcement Acts the
Speaker 1: I R S and the nineteen forties. Somehow the clan
Speaker 1: had gotten a tax exempt status and the I R
Speaker 1: S removed it and then sued him for back taxes
Speaker 1: equal to about ten million dollars in today's dollars um.
Speaker 1: And the clan broke up real quick after that. So
Speaker 1: exactly so, the federal government has used a bunch of
Speaker 1: tactics to basically get rid of the clan and again
Speaker 1: and then the clan went away, and that was that
Speaker 1: for a while. Alright, so should we take another break here? Yes?
Speaker 1: All right, what sucks man? Where this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a long episode? Hey, giving the clan a long episode.
Speaker 1: We'll take a break and maybe we'll just come back
Speaker 1: and sing protest songs and then all right, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back. If I had a hammer at hammer in
Speaker 1: the morning, I had hammer in the evening, hell over
Speaker 1: this ad hammer out Dange danger had him or out
Speaker 1: the clan, the clan boo outer space? What you get
Speaker 1: that reference? Is that from Hold On, Hold On Best? No? Uh? Uh?
Speaker 1: Which one was that one? Coen Brothers? Oh no, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of the one, um the Christopher guest movie.
Speaker 1: It was from the Cohen Brothers. The folk music movie
Speaker 1: that is Escaping mar right now, Isaac, Yeah, yeah. Adam
Speaker 1: Driver has a really funny part where they're recording in
Speaker 1: there and he's just doing background speaking like that, and uh,
Speaker 1: timber Lake is singing about remember our space and he
Speaker 1: goes outer space. What's the one where Harry Shear ends
Speaker 1: up joining like a folk group at the end? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: uh that was Mighty Wind, Mighty Wind. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a good one, A good movie alright, And for sad
Speaker 1: we have to wind this up and talk about the
Speaker 1: third wave of the clan, which was the Civil Rights era. UM.
Speaker 1: You would think that the Civil Rights era clan would
Speaker 1: be the biggest iteration, but it actually wasn't. UM. They
Speaker 1: were one of the more dangerous eras because they were
Speaker 1: very famous for carrying out bombings UM all over the South,
Speaker 1: mainly including very sadly the bombing UH in Birmingham. I
Speaker 1: think there were a hundred and thirty eight bombings over
Speaker 1: like a seven year period. But the bombing in Birmingham
Speaker 1: where they bombed the church and Addie May Collins, Cynthia Wesley,
Speaker 1: Carol Robertson and Carol Denise McNair UM, four young black
Speaker 1: girls were killed. UH. And if you don't know this story,
Speaker 1: just go watch the Spike Lee documentary Four Little Girls,
Speaker 1: because it it really does a great job of kind
Speaker 1: of retelling what's an awful thing that was? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that definitely was the most famous UM and most despicable.
Speaker 1: But they bombed a lot of other people, murderle lot
Speaker 1: of other people. There's UM a couple that lived not
Speaker 1: too far from UM where my place in Florida is
Speaker 1: UM named Harry and Harriet Moore, whose house was bombed
Speaker 1: by the clan on Christmas Eve. They chose Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: because they knew that there I think they're older children
Speaker 1: would come home. They wanted to kill as many of
Speaker 1: them as possible. So there there was a real reign
Speaker 1: of terror that the clan was carrying out during the
Speaker 1: Civil rights era, and Birmingham apparently was UM called Bombingham
Speaker 1: for a while because it was just UM so prone
Speaker 1: to being bombed like where the church was bombed, but
Speaker 1: also UM because it was where the clan was the
Speaker 1: strongest and most politically backed up, which to the civil
Speaker 1: rights UM leaders credit, they said, well then we're going
Speaker 1: to Birmingham. That's where we're gonna set up shop, which
Speaker 1: made UM is what brought Birmingham to basically the forefront
Speaker 1: of the Civil rights War. Yeah. You know, there were
Speaker 1: some other high profile events, the accession, they assassination with
Speaker 1: Medgar Evers, obviously the Mississippi burning case. If you saw
Speaker 1: that movie again, it did a really good job of
Speaker 1: the case of those three civil rights workers uh in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four who were killed. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: there were still lynchings going on and and uh there
Speaker 1: were still people in seats of power, attorneys and people
Speaker 1: on juries and it was it was a a very
Speaker 1: uh it's very mixed up time in this country because
Speaker 1: rights were being achieved, uh while all this bloodshed was
Speaker 1: going on. And like you mentioned before, it's like they're
Speaker 1: trying to hold onto this thing that is, um, not
Speaker 1: what America is anymore. No, it's like t s America
Speaker 1: is a multicultural society and it's better off for it.
Speaker 1: Like let's just all get on the trolley, shall we. Yeah?
Speaker 1: So um. The FBI, it's worth mentioning, played a dual role.
Speaker 1: Apparently Jaeger Hoover knew all the way back in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five who carried out the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing,
Speaker 1: but just sat on it because he wasn't like a
Speaker 1: really big fan of civil rights um or the civil
Speaker 1: rights movement. But at the same time, the FBI actually
Speaker 1: did have an integral role in breaking up local clan
Speaker 1: groups by using like co intel pro Um that program
Speaker 1: where they would basically infiltrate and start getting people to
Speaker 1: question the leaders or start accusing each other of disloyalty
Speaker 1: and just turn a group on each other, like what
Speaker 1: they did the Black Panthers they did to the KKK
Speaker 1: to far less frequently, but they did have an impact
Speaker 1: on helping to to break up the KKK in the
Speaker 1: Civil rights era as well. Yeah, and since the Civil
Speaker 1: Rights era kind of to today, UM, the clan has
Speaker 1: really lost a lot of its membership. UM. It has
Speaker 1: been and then again as not to say that any
Speaker 1: of the racism went away, it's been fractured sometimes into
Speaker 1: more dangerous groups. UM. Further all right, white white supremacist
Speaker 1: groups and neo Nazis. UM. There have been people in power.
Speaker 1: David Duke, you know, we have to mention him. He
Speaker 1: was an actual House member, UM from the state of Louisiana. UM.
Speaker 1: He was the Grand National Grand Wizard of the clan.
Speaker 1: And I think they started to kind of push away
Speaker 1: a little bit from the symbology of you know, these
Speaker 1: kind of crazy symbols and the hoods and the cross burnings.
Speaker 1: I mean that stuff still went on on local and
Speaker 1: state level, but I think nationally they kind of tamp
Speaker 1: that down a little bit and was like, I think
Speaker 1: would be better if we could just hold office right
Speaker 1: so lightly so, And that's basically there's a direct thread
Speaker 1: to today, this idea where they're just trying to soft
Speaker 1: sell UM racism and suppression of minority rights. UM, and
Speaker 1: it just repackaged it in other ways. But it's all
Speaker 1: the exact same thing. And it doesn't matter how you
Speaker 1: dress it up. You're trying to UM deny the rights
Speaker 1: of other human beings. So you say whatever you want
Speaker 1: to hold with your ideology, you know, yeah, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: it's UM. There. There's never been a good handle on
Speaker 1: the numbers because it hasn't been a superorganized national thing.
Speaker 1: But UM they think it is down to like less
Speaker 1: than thirty thousand now. And when they do these specials
Speaker 1: and kind of go to these groups, the meetings you
Speaker 1: know in these towns are a number in the single digits.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's not it's not like hundreds of guys getting together. Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course there are women in there now. Keep
Speaker 1: saying guys, but it's it's largely always been men because
Speaker 1: they call them klansmen. But these wives are getting involved
Speaker 1: as well so they can have something in common with
Speaker 1: their husbands. Yeah. The The good thing is is the
Speaker 1: numbers are small enough that UM basically local communities are
Speaker 1: strong enough to come out and chase clan rallies break
Speaker 1: them up UM, as was the case in Madison, Indiana
Speaker 1: on Labor Day in two thousand nineteen. That land said
Speaker 1: that they were going to have a cookout, and apparently
Speaker 1: about ten of them showed up and the entire Madison,
Speaker 1: Indiana community, or not the entire but a significant portion
Speaker 1: of them, showed up and basically chased the clan out
Speaker 1: of the public park um and broke up their rally
Speaker 1: in ten to twenty minutes. From what I read, that's
Speaker 1: that's usually par for the course. And then the clan
Speaker 1: is relegated to basically spewing hate online or like you said,
Speaker 1: leaving flyers on people's cars. So UM. Southern Poverty Law
Speaker 1: Center says that they they have been tracking their decline
Speaker 1: and they think they may have plateaued UM, which is
Speaker 1: not good because you like to just keep seeing them decline,
Speaker 1: but they they bottomed out. In other words, the problem
Speaker 1: is is there's no lack of other racist groups um
Speaker 1: that are that are equally problematic, if not more so. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's one part in this new special where this kid
Speaker 1: they are these two guys dressed in their robes and
Speaker 1: putting up a flag in their front yard or whatever,
Speaker 1: a Confederate flag, and then one other um I guess
Speaker 1: clan flag, and this teenager in St. Louis comes across
Speaker 1: the street or whatever suburb they're in, and it's just like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: white power. I just want to I just want to
Speaker 1: see what you guys are all about. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: really interested in joining up. And and these guys talk
Speaker 1: to him for a minute, and it's just like, it's
Speaker 1: so troubling to see this dumb kid, you know, reaching
Speaker 1: out in all the wrong ways because he's been taught something,
Speaker 1: you know, And when you see that this family, he's
Speaker 1: in these people's homes and there's five six year old
Speaker 1: kids sitting around and and the wife's got a cigarette
Speaker 1: and she's taking a shot of bourbon and she got
Speaker 1: her Mountain dew in her hand and spewing hate, and
Speaker 1: these children are sitting there, and you just want to, like,
Speaker 1: you want to run in there and steal these kids.
Speaker 1: You know, you're not supposed to say that you just did, though,
Speaker 1: but I just did. It's awful. Yeah, it is pretty awful.
Speaker 1: Anytime you're talking about Hey, it's awful, and it should be.
Speaker 1: It should turn your stomach. I hope and it has
Speaker 1: learned stuff almost totally. That's how Yeah, that's how it. Yes,
Speaker 1: for sure, we already did one on hate before it,
Speaker 1: and we maybe we should do a redux on it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I got one more quick thing that's
Speaker 1: kind of always always thought it was kind of fun
Speaker 1: at on a lighter note, at baseball games. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure the history. I should look that up, but a
Speaker 1: strikeout when you're keeping log is known as a K,
Speaker 1: and fans have bring K signs and they hang up
Speaker 1: with a picture. Is known for a lot of strikeouts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one for each strikeout, one for each strikeout, and they
Speaker 1: hang it up in the in the stands in front
Speaker 1: of their seats, and they have always hung that third
Speaker 1: K upside down as per tradition, so it never says KKK,
Speaker 1: which I think is great. Yeah, it is great way
Speaker 1: to go baseball fans, sticking it to the way to
Speaker 1: go baseball fans. Well you got anything else? No, nothing else.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about the KKK, go
Speaker 1: visit the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have some really
Speaker 1: good research on it, including sum were just like this
Speaker 1: is just just pathetic. Um, it's kind of reassuring in
Speaker 1: some ways. If you're bothered by this, maybe that'll help.
Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for a listener mail,
Speaker 1: let me see here. I'm gonna call this Ezra the Podcaster.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, my name is Ezra. I'm fourteen years old.
Speaker 1: I've started a podcast on my own and it is
Speaker 1: inspired by your show. I'm doing a school project on
Speaker 1: my podcast and I would love it if you could
Speaker 1: respond with a couple of year tips for beginners. My
Speaker 1: podcast is called high School is a joke. Uh. I
Speaker 1: listen to you every day and it would mean a
Speaker 1: lot if you responded and even mentioned me in an episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you for always making me laugh to be more
Speaker 1: knowledgeable at the dinner table. You guys are really cool.
Speaker 1: I don't want to let you know that you've inspired
Speaker 1: me to start my own show. Sincerely. That's awesome, Ezra.
Speaker 1: Congratulations got the advice, Well, I'll give you the advice
Speaker 1: I found is the best of all time, and that
Speaker 1: is just talk about stuff that you find interesting. Because
Speaker 1: even if people aren't listening, um, you're still gonna enjoy
Speaker 1: doing it and that will make you keep it up.
Speaker 1: And if you keep it up, then other people start
Speaker 1: to notice and come around and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: you'll have an audience. That's great advice. Stay away from
Speaker 1: the clan. It's even better advice. Chuck everybody, whether you're
Speaker 1: a podcast or no, steer clear of the clan. Don't
Speaker 1: even talk to him. Well, if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Ezra did, you can send
Speaker 1: us an email. Send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.