[cripplecreek]

Considering the fact that Michigan was once a hotbed of abolitionist sentiment in the form of the transitional Freesoil party which led the way to the formation of the GOP with Jackson being one of the named birthplaces of the GOP (Racine Wisconsin being the other)

[Verginius Rufus]

The original KKK was crushed before the end of Reconstruction. Democrats regained control of the governments in the Southern states and figured out subtler ways of achieving their goal of disfranchising the freedmen (for the most part).

The movie Birth of a Nation inspired the revival of the Klan. This time it was not limited to the South but was strong in a number of Northern states. It was not just anti-black but anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant...so it combined features of the earlier Klan with those of the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s. The new Klan grew quickly in the early 1920s but then declined rapidly...although it continued to exist and to win support from people like Robert Byrd.