An estimated 3,446 blacks and 1,297 whites died at the end of KKK ropes from 1882 to 1964.
During the height of lynch law terror, in the period from 1890 to 1910, the Ku Klux Klan did not exist. The first Klan was suppressed by Federal authorities in the early 1870s, and the second Klan was not started until 1915.
"Starting with Harry Truman, Democrats began – that is, they made their first serious efforts – to fight against the barriers of race; yet … Truman's efforts were largely unsuccessful because of his own Democratic Party."
Franklin Roosevelt established the Fair Employment Practice Committee by executive order and prohibited discrimination by any Federal agency, including the military. Many of the discriminatory practices in the Federal government had been established by Woodrow Wilson in the 1910s, but were not undone in 12 years of Republican presidents (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover), in spite of GOP majorities in both houses of Congress during their administrations. While the black vote had been overwhelmingly Republican, it shifted to the Democrat column, in part due to the efforts of big city machine politicians who set up patronage programs for African Americans in a manner similar to what they had done for European immigrants. The New Deal also offered blacks welfare programs that appealed to their pocketbooks. By 1940, black Republicanism was moribund.
Barton's documentation said the first opponents of slavery "and the chief advocates for racial equal rights were the churches (the Quakers, Presbyterians, Methodists, etc.).
True enough. However, many churchmen, such as Episcopal bishop Leonidas Polk and Presbyterian theologian R. L. Dabney, later a leader of conservative Presbyterians in the South, were strong supporters of the Confederacy. In later times, such conservative evangelicals as W. A. Criswell and Jerry Falwell defended segregation in their younger days (though both later repented for their support of segregation). Overall, the record of churches and churchmen, Protestant and Catholic, on the issues of slavery and segregation was mixed.
The article suggested a contrast with the GOP, which, when former Klansman David Duke ran for Louisiana governor in 1991 as a Republican, was "scorned" by national GOP officials.
By 1991, support for a known white supremacist was as deadly to a political career as being associated with a dead girl or a live boy, as Earl Long once put it. The record of the Republican Party with regard to the second Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s was far from admirable. Republican state administrations in states like Maine, Indiana, and Oregon were controlled by Klansmen.
Distorting history for the sake of promoting the conservative cause is no better than the PC rewriting of history performed by liberals in academia or the entertainment business.
Since you disagree with the “facts” in this article and seem to have knowledge that contradicts, perhaps you should contact Wallbuilders and share with them what you know. I agree if the facts are wrong it does no good either to the conservative or the Christian cause to present them as true. Wallbuilders can be contacted here:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/default.asp
Good post. General Polk took one for the team at Kennesaw Mtn. Down a little path, there is a memorial where he was killed
“Distorting history for the sake of promoting the conservative cause is no better than the PC rewriting of history performed by liberals in academia or the entertainment business.”
In your estimation, what percentage of support for the KKK came from Democrats and what percentage came from Republicans? Given what I know, I suspect the Democratic support dwarfed the Republican support. I haven’t studied the matter in any detail, however, and I could be wrong.