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Black Lives Matter - Ch 10
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply "the Klan”
Did Black lives matter during the period of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply “the Klan?”
For anyone to understand my viewpoint about Black Lives Matter, they must turn back to History. It is from there they should realize it is not about Black Lives Matter, it is all lives matter.
The Black Lives Matter has a familiar spirit, and that spirit is the same that was on the Ku Klux Klan, (aka the KKK).
I have not read any literature about Black Lives Matter when the KKK was killing blacks. Black Lives Matter protestors are rioting, stealing food, electronics devices, setting fire to property, and injuring other races of people altogether in the name of a victim who fired a weapon at a police officer with the intent to injure or killed.
When I was a police officer, there was no such slogan, Black Lives Matters, after a police related shooting. I investigated many black on black crimes and never once did the NAACP march in the neighborhood to voice their concerns about Black Lives Matter. In today’s climate against the police, some are joining the chorus Black Lives Matter for their own personal gain. They are trying to ignite the minds of those who are less informed about the past with their fiery speeches in hope of bringing about a race war. Do they think some black would run and hide or some would fight back because to them all lives do matter?
Where were the Black Lives Matter individuals when the KKK was murdering blacks? Did the KKK riot, steal, and set fire to property because White Lives Matter?
The KKK wore white hooded sheets to conceal their identity in the commission of a crime. Some Black Lives Matter individuals wore hoodies, in commission of their crimes, camera phones and television cameras capture their identities. Some were arrested, but most of them were not caught. Yet spiritually the spiritual laws of God would judge them and you could be certain it will not be about Black Lives Matter or it is the white man's fault.
The word of God says what you sow, you shall reap. It will not be race that decides the punishment for the stealing, rioting, setting fires to property, God will be their judge, and he will use individuals to execute his judgement. Because they would have judged themselves. Some in the Black Lives Matter group are calling for a separation of the races and killing all whites. Tell me what is the difference between the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Lives Matter protesters and activists who want violence in the streets.
In the present-day, if the Ku Klux Klan did the same things the Black Lives Matter individuals are doing, would the government and news media look the other way or would they ask for something to be done to stop the violence? Would the police be ordered to stop the violence, killing, stealing, shootings, etc.? I’ll let you answer that from all you had heard or seen within the last few months.
Turn back to history and do your own homework. You should see if you want the truth that there are similarities between the two groups.
Both groups are claiming their lives matter over other races. And they killed in the name of their race.
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply "the Klan," is the name of three distinct past and present movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism. The first organization sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially by violence against African-American leaders. It ended about 1871. The second was a very large nationwide organization in the 1920s that especially opposed Catholics. The current manifestation consists of numerous small unconnected groups that use the KKK name. All three movements have called for purification of American society, and all are considered part of right-wing extremism.
The current manifestation is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. It is estimated to have between 5,000 and 8,000 members as of 2012.
The first Ku Klux Klan flourished in the Southern United States in the late 1860s, then died out by the early 1870s. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities. The second KKK flourished nationwide in the early and mid-1920s, and adopted a standard white costume (sales of which together with initiation fees financed the movement) and code words as the first Klan, while adding cross burnings and mass parades. It stressed opposition to the Catholic Church. The third KKK emerged in the form of small local unconnected groups after 1950. They focused on opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, often using threats of violence. The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan made frequent reference to the America's "Anglo-Saxon" blood, harkening back to 19th-century nativism. Though most members of the KKK saw themselves as holding to American values and Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination officially denounced the Ku Klux Klan.
Overview: Three Klan’s
First KKK
The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six veterans of the Confederate Army. The name is probably derived from the Greek word kuklos (κύκλος) which means circle.
Although there was little organizational structure above the local level, similar groups rose across the South and adopted the same name and methods. Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States. As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Force Acts, which were used to prosecute Klan crimes. Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity.
The first Klan had mixed results in terms of achieving its objectives. It seriously weakened the black political establishment through its use of assassinations and threats of violence; it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash and unleashed new federal laws that Foner says were a success in terms of "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling blacks to exercise their rights as citizens." Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the Democratic leaders of the South. He says:
The Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses; its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to control criminal elements and sadists. More fundamentally, it declined because it failed to achieve its central objective – the overthrow of Republican state governments in the South.
Second KKK
See also: Ku Klux Klan in Canada
In 1915, the second Klan was founded in Atlanta, Georgia. Starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of using full-time paid recruiters. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly of costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state. The second KKK preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and demanded the purification of politics, calling for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition. Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively at white Protestants. Some local groups threatened violence against rum runners and notorious sinners; the violent episodes were generally in the South.
The second Klan was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4–5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It finally faded away in the 1940s. Klan organizers also operated in Canada, especially in Saskatchewan in 1926-28, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's British heritage.
Third KKK
The "Ku Klux Klan" name was used by a numerous independent local groups opposing the Civil Rights Movement and desegregation, especially in the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Several members of KKK groups were convicted of murder in the deaths of civil rights workers and children in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. Today, researchers estimate that there may be 150 Klan chapters with upwards of 5,000 members nationwide.
Today, many sources classify the Klan as a "subversive or terrorist organization". In April 1997, FBI agents arrested four members of the True Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Dallas for conspiracy to commit robbery and to blow up a natural gas processing plant. In 1999, the city council of Charleston, South Carolina passed a resolution declaring the Klan to be a terrorist organization. In 2004, a professor at the University of Louisville began a campaign to have the Klan declared a terrorist organization in order to ban it from campus.
For additional and in-depth information about the Ku Klux Klan, see the Wikipedia article, "Ku Klux Klan."
[Taken from Anthony Milton's book, "From the Eyes of a Cop: Black Lives Matter"]
