Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2002 08:17:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Cathy Green <dalek_cag at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Confederate flags
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Also, a number of states passed laws, pretty much only
honored in the breach, that were designed to impede
Klan activity.  for instance, to the best of my
knowledge, NY still has a law on the books forbidding
the wearing of masks in public.  It was intended to
prevent Klan rallys.  (of course the side effect is
that a large segment of the population violates the
law every Oct.)  In fact, I believe this was one of
the reasons why the Klan rally in NYc in the 1990s had
such a small turnout.  The courts in NY refused to
overturn the mask law, and there just ween't that many
Klansman that were willing to show up sans pillowcase.

--cathy green
--- "Strong, Lee" <StrongL at MTMC.ARMY.MIL> wrote:
> 	Steve asked if outlawing the KKK would reduce its
> influence?  This
> question was actually answered in the 1860s and
> 1870s.  The history of
> Reconstruction is not well known to most modern
> Americans and highly
> romanticized by others.  After the Civil War, the
> former Confederates
> conducted an organized campaign of terror against
> the newly freed
> African-American population.  The KKK was originally
> a social club that was
> adapted to terrorist purposes.  There were other
> organizations such as the
> Palefaces and Knights of the White Camelia.  The
> Congress of the time was
> appalled and passed the Force Act outlawing domestic
> terrorism.  U.S. Grant,
> one of the most underrated Presidnets in American
> history, sent the US Army
> and smashed the Klan flat.  That organization did
> not reappear until the
> 1920s.
> 	The best one volume history of the Klan is
> Chalmers' _Hooded
> Americanism_.  Someone once asked why I was reading
> it.  My answer, "For the
> same reason that doctors read about cancer."
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Smith [mailto:sgs at aginc.net]
> Sent: Saturday, April 06, 2002 8:38 PM
> To: WSFA members
> Subject: [WSFA] Re: Confederate flags
>
> Samuel Lubell wrote:
>
> > Not to mention learning many of the wrong lessons
> from WWII.  Germans want
> > to prevent the spread of Nazism by cracking down
> on would-be Nazis as
> > opposed to the US where we give unpopular groups
> like Nazis, freedom of
> > speech and the ACLU is willing to defend their
> marches.
>
> It's their country.
>
> I, like, I suspect, most Americans, believe that
> "sunlight is the best
> disinfectant".  That said, there are situations
> where it simply doesn't
> work all that well.  Consider the KKK -- which
> accomplished essentially
> all of its goals up until WWII.  Would outlawing the
> KKK have reduced
> its influence?  I don't know -- but it would have
> slowed down its terror
> campaigns.  If the laws were enforced, of course.
>
> --
> Steve Smith
>  sgs at aginc.net
> Agincourt Computing
> http://www.aginc.net
> "Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has
> to make sense."
>

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