Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 14:51:15 -0400
From: Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Confederate flags
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

"Strong, Lee" 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.

One of the factors in its reappearance may have been the popularity of D.W.
Griffith's BIRTH OF A NATION, which heavily romantized the KKK (they were the
movie's *good guys*!).

--Ted White