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Hey, Robert here. It's been like two months since I had LASIK and I'm still seeing 2020. All I had to do was go in for a consultation, then go in for a maybe 10 minute procedure and then my eyes have been great ever since. You know, I healed up wonderfully. It was very simple, couldn't have been a better experience. So if you want to explore LASIK plus I can't recommend it enough. They have over 20 years experience in the industry and they performed more than two million treatments right now if you want to try getting LASIK plus you can get $1000 off of your surgery when you're treated in September, that's $500. Of per eye, just visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free consultation. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried true crime. And if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams. Let's breaker handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. Here's Chuck Wicks from love country. Talk to Chuck where we bring you what's really happening in the country music family. We also if you love country, here's the deal. You love country music, you can be on the podcast. So if you're a fan, country music what you can call in anytime you like. I want to talk about this. Hulk Hogan called in. He's like Chuck Walker. I love your podcast. Jason Aldean, Jimmy Allen, Carly Pierce, Lauren Elena. Listen to new episodes of love Country. Talk to Chuck every Monday and Thursday on the Nashville podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to. Forecast. What's cracking my Peppers? This is is that is that how we should open it? Sophie is that bad? You look ashamed of me and ashamed of where you work and and all of that shouldn't use, shouldn't use that. Nick is literally climbing up on the roof, I think, to jump off. I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the ******** the show. We tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history, one of whom is me. Based on the reaction everyone had to that introduction, with me today in the studio, trying not to make eye contact with me because of their deep shame, are my friends. Cody Johnston? Katy stole. Hey. Hello. That's OK. We still got you. I just cocked my head kind of quizzically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You were the most the most forgiving of that, like, huh? All right, we'll roll with that. I mean, we did. There's no taking it out. You can't edit audio. It's not like video. This is it. So has everybody doing today all right? I've got a bit of a cold, guys. I don't. I'm feeling well. And I made the mistake last night. I've been cooped up all week and so. I was like, I really need to get out and so I went out with some girlfriends and I had 1 1/2 drinks and it was a mistake. Ohh set myself back. Also should have read the label warnings. I'd had Sudafed in my system so I just like amplifies your drinks. It was fun and then it wasn't. Yeah, you just, like, throw your immune system for a loop there. Well, anyway, here I am. If I know one thing that will boost your immune system, it's spending roughly 2 hours learning about the Ku Klux Klan. That's what my doctor said I should do, doctor. It's time to take our medicine. It's time for everyone to take their medicine. That Trump doctor the guy is, like, leaning back. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Looks like someone Hunter S Thompson would have done drugs with and then, like, walked away. Right, like, this is this is too far. Is that photo that looks like somebody photoshopped out a gun he was holding? It's pretty beautiful. What a great doctor. Well, today we're talking about the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. And then in Part 2, we'll be talking about the second Klan, because they're two distinctly different things. So let's start with the the OG KKK. On April 9th, 1865, General Robert E Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Simpson Grant. Their Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia. It is, in my imagination, one of the most satisfying moments in American history. You've got this this rich, fancy slave owning ******* and like his like beautiful, pristine, bright uniform handing over his sword to a working class man grew up poor in a filthy uniform who has just been drunk off his *** for the last 30 some odd years of his life. It's just a great moment to me, and it's nice thousands of white supremacist soldiers would spend the rest of their lives knowing that an army commanded by this man and that included black men who had previously been owned by them. And had whooped them. It's it's a nice, you know, nice to think about wonderful. It's a good moment. It's a good moment. But it brought a lot of resentment and anger among Southerners. Yeah, you could see that happening. Yeah, really ****** *** some people and they stayed ****** ***. His founded on resentment and anger and resentment and anger. Founded on sore loser has just been simmering. Like we've just every now and then we get a president who's good enough to take the top off the pot because, like, I don't want this to boil over. Yeah, but it nobody turns off the heat. Yeah. So, yeah, that's the situation after Appomattox you've got in, you know, swelling back into the old South from these armies that Lee had commanded. You've got 10s of thousands of young men, many of them wounded, all of them armed and experienced in doing violence, roaming the countryside, looking for excitement and really hateful still of. The black box so that race that doesn't go away. Exactly. Terrible spoiler. Yeah, that did. Not just we were just, you know what? I guess racism lost. Your argument was better trying to give that up. So they didn't really think the war was over. Well, they all got the point that you can't fight the American government, but they did not get the point that we should stop fighting for racism. The debate was not over. The debate was not over. They just like, yeah, we can't make more cannons than those guys. They learned that lesson. Yeah. So one of the major sources for this podcast was a book called they called themselves the KKK by Susan Bartoletti. She opens her book by quoting a number of white southerners reactions to the end of the war, including one former slave owner from Virginia whose first reaction to the Confederacy surrender was to ask about her now former slaves. If they don't belong to me, whose are they? Pretty emblematic of the attitudes that you were. Yeah. Not quite getting it. Yeah. Yeah. So here's a quote from that book. Before the war, each slave was worth about $1000, or $13,000. Today, the average slaveholder owned between one and 9 slaves, and some of the wealthiest planters owned hundreds. Many slaveholders expected the federal government to compensate them for their great monetary loss. The wife of an Alabama planter bitterly described her family situation. We had all our earnings swept away, wrote Victoria Clayton. The government of the United States has the credit of giving the black man his freedom while it was at the expense of the southern people. Mm-hmm. OK. OK. This all adds up. This all adds up. I'm not confused. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I'm citing this not because I think both sides are valid here, but it's important to understand the temperature that the South was at at this point in time if we're going to understand the rise of the first Ku Klux Klan. It started in Pulaski, TN. Anyone ever heard of Pulaski, TN? I heard a Tennessee. Yeah, it's it's about it. Tennessee. Yeah. Yeah. There were six former Confederate officers. John Lester, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, James. Pro Frank McCord and John Kennedy. These men were ****** that they lost the war and they were all so bored. War, for all of its faults, offers a great deal of excitement for able bodied young men. It turns out bored and racist is a dangerous combination, John Lace Lester later recalled in his book quote. We could not engage at once in business or professional pursuits. Few had capital to enter mercantile or agricultural enterprises. There was a total lack of amusements and social diversions which prevail wherever society is in a normal condition. So everything's ****** ** because of the war. Still the South has been. Pretty ruined. These guys are just, they got nothing to do, right? So they start hanging out in the Law Offices that belong to Calvin Jones's dad. Because these are all pretty rich. Upper middle class to upper class kids, and they were all frat boys. They had all been in fraternities before the war, and that will be very relevant here. Fraternity is important. No matter the kind. Yeah. Yeah, no matter the brand of fraternity. Brotherhood, just important to have a fraternity. Just important. Doesn't matter what they're about. So at first, they mostly drank and talked politics in one of their dad's offices. This was going on in 1866. Now in that April, President Johnson had vetoed the Civil Rights Act. Congress had passed it anyway. But Johnson was a you wouldn't call him a woke president. Vetoing the Civil Rights Act may make in yet on that. Yeah. Now the Civil Rights Act. That was pushed through by Congress overruled the black Codes that most southern states had enacted to restrict the rights of newly freed blacks. There had been a race riot in Memphis that May, which had been caused by a carriage crash involving a black man and a white man. Basically, there were a lot of racial tensions and the crash had sparked them, led to three days of rioting, 46 black people killed and two white people killed. So this was all going on when these guys are meeting in their dad's law office in 1866. The war has just ended now, depending on the source. I've read that the decision to make a secret society. From these guys was made in either May right after the Memphis rioting, or on Christmas Eve. Either way, it was somewhere in the latter half of 1866. Either way, it's poetic in some way. Yeah, it's it's it really fits one way or the other. But it was sometime in the later half of 1866 when John Lester told his friends boys let us get up a club or society. Well said though. Yeah, well said, well said, everyone talked. Well then get a club or society. Get up a club or society now prior to the. Or the kuklos. Adelphon had been a famous college frat for many southern men. Kappa Alpha, as it was more commonly known, had been founded in 1825 before it was disbanded during the Civil War. There had been numerous KA circles throughout the South. The word kuklos itself means circle in Greek, and something about that imagery was inspirational to these six Confederate veterans drinking in Dad's office now. One of these men suggested they call themselves Kuklos, and another modified that to Ku Klux because he thought it sounded better. The word Klan was added to the. And since it also means circle, Susan Bartoletti notes that Ku Klux Klan can be literally translated to circle. Circle James sounds better than Ku Klux Club or Ku Klux Society society. Flex boys. Ku Klux boys. James Crow, one of the former Confederates noted quote there was a weird potency in the very name Ku Klux Klan. The sound of it is suggestive of bones rattling together. Now I'm all about admitting brilliance wherever I find it, even in the branding of racist ********. And the name Ku Klux Klan is unfortunately an example of really good marketing. The proof in that is the fact that there's still people going by the ******* Ku Klux Klan today. You know the name works. It works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sharp consonant sound. Yeah, it's, you know, it's the Coca-Cola of racism. You know, after they locked down the name, the six young frat Bros did what Frat Bros do. They wrote out a list of dumb rules, secret rituals, handshakes, code words, and hazing guidelines for their new club. They also created fanciful titles for themselves. Frank McCord would be the president, but since president was a boring name, they called him the Grand Cyclops. John Kennedy was the vice president, AKA Grand Magi. James Crow was the master of Ceremonies, AKA Grand Turk and Calvin Jones. And. Jon Lester, we're knighthawks or messages, like some fantasy game. Yeah, ****. So, like, nerdy as hell. Yeah, it's always that nerdy twerpy. Like, yeah, we can wear like the grand magic games, like Hitler and his ******* cowboy books. You know, it's it's or Himmler and his pretending he was a dead Danish Prince and making everyone dressed like Knights, like buying a car. That's all just Larping. It's all Larping, all of it. It's young kids who read too many books and want to, like, be that *** *** swinging a sword around and then get in power and the hero, but like, the enemy is like, everyone. Not racism. They just can't bear the mundanity of normal life guys. I also love how like this. Like, there's always that feeling of like post war, like young men have nothing to do. You know, later on this would happen again. And we do football. We do football like, they're like, we got to do the KKK. I've heard it said, and there's a couple of different charity groups in parts of the Middle East I know in Egypt in particular, that are aimed at, like, stopping young men from radicalizing, like the best way to de radicalize a lot of kids in, like, the Middle East is like soccer clubs and stuff, right? Nothing else. You give them something to do, give them like inner eternity, but like fun activities. Yeah. I mean, they do that different inner city programs to reduce youth crime and blah, blah, after school programs. They're good. They're good. And that's kind of how this starts. So one of the weird things is that it doesn't start off super racist. So I'm going to read another quote from they called KKK James. That's his real name. What? Just gonna quote their organizational work. Done. The Klansmen raided a linen closet. They pulled white sheets over their heads, cutting two holes for eyes and another for their mouth, and they raced outside and leaped astride their horses and swooped through the town streets, whooping and moaning and shrieking like ghosts. How many guarantee you they're drunk? Drunk just like drunk Tennessee boys dressing like ghosts? Yeah, that's so silly. It's really you dumb, the little baby. And like in their tasks like law office, like, let's go, let's go read the let's go pretend to be ghosts, like. Look what I found. So the gang found an abandoned house to gather in, so they didn't need to do their sewing and stitching at Dad's office anymore. And for the next few weeks they just kind of had fun with it. Put on their robes and then ride their horses through the country, ruining or making parties depending on whether or not the party goers enjoyed the sight of a bunch of men pretending to be ghosts. It wasn't racist. They weren't targeting black people. They were just, like, ******* with everybody pretending to be ghosts riding around. And it was like everyone was bored. So like, yeah, this is something larping trolls. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting, though it wasn't. Yeah. Here's where it leads. Some Klansmen were silent during these riots. Others spoke in low, gravelly voices that they thought made them sound like dead people at this stage. Again, there was nothing outwardly super hateful about the KKK. It was just such a weirdos riding around. The club quickly made a name for itself, though, in part because 1866 was an incredibly boring time to be alive in Tennessee, John Lester, one of the founders, wrote later. Quote it's mysteriousness was the sensation of the hour. Every issue of the local paper contains some notice of the strange order now the Pulaski citizen. The local paper was key to the rise of the 1st. OK, it's editor had a younger brother in the clan, and in general it seems like he did everything in his power to make the KKK seem irresistibly cool. Notices like this were published in the paper, ostensibly submitted anonymously by mysterious hooded individuals. Quote, take notice. The Ku Klux Klan will assemble at their usual place of rendezvous, the DIN on Tuesday night, next exactly at the hour of midnight, in costume and bearing the arms of the clan by or of the Great Cyclops. Now it's signed. I know it's really. I'm gonna read so many ridiculous, OK, names that you guys are going to love. So tragic about how this starts. We're dressing up as ghosts. We're pretending to be dead. It's like we're already dead. It's like they're showing their pain. They're like, I mean, they probably saw some ****. Civil War is a rough thing to see, you know? They're just expressing their angst. Angst, yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, it's kind of emo. You. You could see how if, like, there had been trained therapists back then and one had been around, he could have, like, guided this in a positive direction and was like, oh, this could be a healthy thing to do. Like, yeah, like dress up as your friends who died in the war and let's, you know, let's work through this ****. Exactly. Wow. Yeah, you could. It's possible it could have been pushed. You solved the KKK? Now, many local men soon joined the Klan. Most of them were Confederate veterans. Like the founders, these people generally seem to be the creme of Southern society doctors, prominent churchmen, and respected former Confederate officers. I'm going to guess an awful lot of them went by Colonel in their daily life because it was the South in the 1860s and every third man was a Colonel. Now, for some early Klansmen, the thrill must have been the chance to see August members of society debase themselves and preposterous hazing rituals. For example, the KKK had a secret initiation. First, the initiate would be blindfolded and asked ridiculous questions for the sole purpose of embarrassing him. After he'd answered enough, the Grand Cyclops would say, place him before the royal altar and adorn his head with the Regal Crown. Then they would all chant an oath, which the oath was. O, would some power the gift to give us, to see ourselves as others see us. And then after the initiate finished reciting these words, the blindfold was untied, revealing a mirror that showed the man himself wearing a regal crown, which was, in fact, a donkey hat. Now, they called themselves the KKK doesn't go into more detail, but the Southern Poverty Law Center describes that Donkey hat is too large donkey ears. So it's like a joke. It was like, I look at a silly. You are. Yeah, yeah. Bring fun. And then everyone would laugh at the guy looking silly and the thing. And that was the initiation. So it's like, it's like some light hazing, hazing. I don't hate you. That doesn't sound so bad. Doesn't sound so bad. Sounds good. I want to join you. Sounds great. I'm selling the clan right now. Yes. I hope this works out. It's kind of edgy and kind of fun. Kind of fun. You can see the appeal, especially if it's 1866 and there's ******* nothing. Yeah, I mean, really, really is a driver for some awful, awful behavior. Sad, actually. To me, it's like, so pathetic. Yeah, that's where it starts. So in his book Ku Klux Klan, it's origin, growth and disbandment. John Lester claims the Klan spread almost by accident. At first, essentially is an old timey meme quote. During the fall and winter of 1866, the growth of the clan was rapid. It spread over a wide extent of territory, sometimes by a sudden leap. It appeared in localities far distant from any existing dins a stranger from West Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas visiting a neighborhood where the order prevailed would be initiated and on his departure. Carry with him permission to establish a DIN at home. These dens were loosely connected, and any central control by the Grand Cyclops of the Pulaski clan was more formal than literal. It's hard to say those words. It really is. You're going to have to listen to them. That won't even qualify as silly. By the time we get done with all the titles, they're going to be normalized. So at first, at least according to one branch of scholars, the KKK was mostly away for board young white veterans to drink and play pranks on themselves and others. Since all these guys were racist as **** the relatively good hearted pranks against their fellow white people soon gave way to distinctly less fun pranks against black people. Luckily for us, back in the 1930s Franklin Delano Roosevelt had have a bunch of interviewers go out and talk to former slaves that these people were very old at the time, there were still a bunch of them alive, and these people were asked about their experiences with the KKK, which had just had its second resurgence in the 1920s. So I'm going to read you a quote from Henry Gary of Birmingham, AL, relating the tale of an early clan prank. Now, when these interviewers would talk to these former slaves, they were given the explicit order of preserving their diction as much as possible. And and I am not going to read that and exact diction because I think that might come across as like a caricature. I'm going to try to translate it as well as I can. There's also a hell of a lot of new words in these. There's a debate to be had when you're reading like a scholarly document about whether or not you read the N word to preserve like the I'm not going to say it because I think that's. Really good choice, but there's a debate. Who likes saying it? Racists. Ohh, but like, if you're like a lecturer and you're reading the Confederate document, there's an argument to be made. But I I don't. I'm just not going to say so. Here's Henry Gary of Birmingham, AL, relating an early clan attack or prank. My daddy went over to where he was sitting on his horse at the well. Then he, the Klansman said in Word, get a bucket and draw me up some cool water. Daddy got a bucket? Fill it up and hand it to him. Captain, would you believe it? That man just lifted the bucket to his mouth. Never stopped till it was empty. Did he have enough? He just smacked his mouth and called for more. Just like that. He didn't stop till he drank three more buckets full. Then he just wiped his mouth and said Lordy, that sure was good. It was the first drink of water I've had since I was killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Now other interviewed freed people claim that the water trick was accomplished by the Klansman holding a bag under his robes that they poured the water into. Right so they would have like a tube running from their mouth and they pour it in or something like that. Clansman also stole bones from dead people so that they could pretend to rip off their own arm and then hand it to a freed person. The goal was to scare black people so that the newly independent black farmers would move away and black citizens would stay out of predominantly white areas. John Lester claims that the switchover from the prank based clan to being regulators, as he puts it, happened accidentally. When they realized that black people who walked past their din got scared by the lifters out guarding the door. When asked their names, these lifters would reply a spirit from the other world. I was killed at Chickamauga. So these guys are pretending to be dead Confederate veterans and they they realize they oh, this is scary to people and they start taking it further and taking it further. So we're going to talk about where this all leads and how it leads to an **** of unspeakable violence. But first, are you guys in the mood for ads? Yes. Yeah. Anything I want, right? It's like sunshine on my soul. Alright, products. Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. 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With me, everything is just easier. And getting it done was easy too. You know, I went in, I had my consultation, they told me I was a good candidate and then I went back in couple of days later about it being about a boom. You know, my eyes were perfect. So LASIK Plus is a leader in laser vision correction in the United States. They have over 20 years in the industry and more than two million treatments performed. If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free. Consultation now. And we're back talking about the KKK. So I'm gonna read you another bit from John Lester, sort of explaining, you know, the evolution of the clan from, like, harmless pranks on everybody to really just screwing with black people? It's just a prank, bro. Yeah, just a prank, bro. It's not quiet until it's just racism, bro. Kind of like Reddit, yeah, it's just it's just racism, bro. Quote. In a short time, the lifter of the Pulaski DIN reported that travel along the road which he had his post had almost entirely stopped in the country. It was noticed that the nocturnal perambulation of the colored population diminished or entirely ceased wherever the Ku Klux appeared. In many ways, there was a noticeable improvement in the habits of a large class who had hitherto been causing large annoyance. And this way, the Klan gradually realized that the most powerful devices ever constructed for controlling the ignorant and superstitious were in their hands. Even the most highly cultured were not able to wholly resist the weird and peculiar. Dealing which pervaded every community where the Ku Klux appeared. Every week some new incident occurred to illustrate the amazing power of the unknown over the minds of men of all classes. Circumstances made it evident that the measures and methods employed for sport might be effectually used to subserve the public welfare, to suppress lawlessness and protect property. So that's how they became. In his words, a band of regulators really just stumbled into it. Yeah, he says that their goal was to protect property and preserve peace and order. Oh, was it now? Umm, no, we're just. Cops, bro. Which is cops? Just fake ghost cops. So the realization of the power of terror, yeah, yeah, exactly. Isn't it a Ryan Reynolds movie The realization of the power of Terror? No, I actually think the power of terror, that's that's international. OK, it translates it translates into ghost cops. So tales quickly began to spread across the old South and communities of freed black people. That ghosts of dead Confederates, or men pretending to be the ghosts of dead Confederates had started to wander the earth. Lester says the KKK men suddenly realized that this yeah, give him another way to dominate their former slaves, and he and other racists claim that the clans tactics were powerful because freed people were superstitious. Testimonies from former slaves who experienced KKK raids makes it clear, to me at least, that superstition was not the issue of the day. Here is freed woman, Anne Ulrick Evans. The Ku Klux Klan just come all around our house at night time and shoot in the doors and the windows. They never bothered anybody in the daytime. Then sometime they come in the house, tear up everything in the place, claim that we're looking for somebody, and tell us they're hungry because they ain't had nothing to eat since the battle of Shiloh. So superstition is probably not a major effect. They're shooting into your house. It's like, I don't think we're ghosts. No, I'm not scared of them for being spooky. I'm scared they're gonna kill me. There's dozens of them and they're shooting at my house, like. I don't think they're ghosts. And she was like a little kid at the time. Yeah. No, they're shooting at me. And it was it clearly. Like, if you're a black person in this situation, the smart thing to do is like, Oh yeah, you're ghosts, right? You guys are sure ghosts. I'm so pranked right now. I'm really. You got me. Yeah, so the claim grew through 1866. By April of 1867, it had enough influence that when the Tennessee Democratic Party held their first midterm convention to pick candidates for the upcoming elections, the first election since the war, every clan leader in the state was invited. They called themselves the KKK. Historians agree that the timing of these two meetings was significant. It suggests that the southern Democrats wanted to ally with the Ku Klux Klan in order to create a secret empire powerful enough to overthrow Republican rule and battle reconstruction policies. Nor longer was the Klu Klux Klan. Social club. With this secret meeting, they became a paramilitary organization, so we can't fight the Union on the battlefield. That's real clear to us. So we need to fight them as a political entity to still get as much of our way as possible. And if these guys are murdering people in the streets and suppressing black people from voting, that helps our bottom line. So this is what the Democratic Party decides at the time in Tennessee. Yeah, it's a new war. It's a different war. It's a different kind of war. It's smarter, same, same war. Different. Yeah, yeah, kind of. So during this convention, the Klan laid out their official prescript declaring that they, quote, reverently acknowledge the Majesty and supremacy of the divine being and recognize the goodness in Providence of the same. We recognize our relations to the United States government and acknowledge the supremacy of its laws. So that sounds nice and patriotic, but wasn't stated, but was very clear from the context, is that the KKK didn't think all of the US government's laws. Valid. Just like they didn't think that all U.S. citizens deserve to be citizens. Now, during that election season, the RNC put together a document as well a guy name or the sorry DNC put together a document as well. No, sorry, this was the RNC because the Republican, you know, the Republicans were putting together a document on like. So they sent a guy named Shires around the South to observe the different kinds of people and classify Southerners into groups that they could try to figure out a strategy for winning elections in the South still, even though again the Republicans had very little power electorally in the South for. You know most of the post war period. So how things change, so how things change. So this guy shares divided the Southerners he met into four distinct groups. Here's how he described the largest group of Southerners they quote have no definite ideas about the circumstances under which they live and about the course they have to follow. Their intellects are weak, but their prejudices and impulses are strong, and they are apt to be carried along by those who know how to appeal to the latter. So that's his description of the bulk of the South. He noted that these people had all been thoroughly convinced that. Other armed resistance to the state was not the answer, but he warned that they were still willing to do violence if the right justification arose. The KKK in essence, weaponized these men, and that fact was clearly its goal by this point. So once the Klan prescript was completed, the Ku Klux Klan declared itself the Invisible Empire. They divided the nation in the different realms, dominions, and provinces, and prepared for their organization to expand across the nation. The goal was for the clan to be its own secret country of racists inside the United States, with its own government dedicated to the overthrow of every. Aspect of real society that was not focused around white dudes. The Prescript included a list of titles for all their members. Oh boy, oh boy. OK, OK, OK, OK. The officers of this Ku Klux Klan shall consist of a grand Wizard of the Empire in his tin GI, a grand dragon of the realm and his eight hydras, a grand Titan of the Dominion, and his six Furies, a grand giant of the province in his four goblins, a grand Cyclops of the din, and his two Nighthawks, a Grand Magi, a grand monk. A grand exchequer, a Grand Turk, a grand scribe, a Grand Sentinel, and a grand insin. The body politic of this clan shall be designated and known as ghouls. No, no, no. They are. They're ghouls. Wait a minute. Real quick, when it's like the grand Sol. And so with his eight dwarves. Is that 7 different positions? Does he get to so he gets to a point in his dwarves? Yeah, he gets. He gets to pick his his, his goblin dwarf, his grand Magizh, his nighthawks. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah, it sounds like cool. Cool. It's almost indistinguishable from chunks of D&D source books that I read. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it really could be. Now, the KKK printed up a bunch of copies of its new pre script and sent them out to every dim in the country for $10 about $145.00 in modern money. The Klan also picked a leader to go with their new, more formal style and goals, and they picked as their leader. Who else but famous racist Nathan Bedford Forrest? Now, Forrest was a former Confederate cavalry general and in general a very smart guy. Some historians consider him to be the greatest. Apple recommender of the modern era, I've read people who will argue that it took the European powers until 1915 or 16 to figure out some of the things he knew at the start of the Civil War was very good at fighting and it's like one of these not good enough, I mean, but the reason that he was so popular among these people is he's one of these very few guys in the cavalry who actually fought with a sword on horseback against other guys and like, killed them and stuff like, so he's the biggest war hero that the South has alive other than General Lee. Like, they get him in for it when you imagine he's the guy. ******* day. Yeah. Yeah. So he's he's a real life library. He's a warrior. And you can see why all of these kind of wannabe guys would flock to the clan. ******* Nathan Bedford Forrest is in charge. Yeah, well, there you go. Smart casting, smart casting. During the Civil War, he'd been described as a Wizard of the Saddle. And so his office title was Grand Wizard. Yeah. Forrest was famous, particularly within the community of former Confederate veterans. His name attached to the growing notoriety of the KKK Casa to swell with new blood, many of them combat. Garden former cavalrymen who were super used to killing people from horseback. Yeah, it's at this point that I should note that during the civil war, Nathan Bedford Forrest was the commanding officer of what would be known as the Fort Pillow Massacre. After the Garrison surrendered, Forrest ordered his men not to treat the forts. 300 black soldiers as POW's. They were all murdered. So. That's this guy, this guy who winds up in charge of the clan and we don't know a tremendous amount about his actions as head of the KKK because it was a secret and a quasi illegal organization always covered with that damn sheet. He's always, they're always covered with that damn sheet secret. Yeah, what I what I do know is that more than a century later, a painting of him led to one of the funniest headlines I have ever seen in the Washington Post. Cody, why don't you just try to read that quote? I thought it was very nice VA officials showcased portrait of KKK's first grand. What I am attempting is I thought it was very nice old man. He just a man on a horse. I thought it was very nice. Now Forrest claims that despite the surge in membership, the KKK brought in only the best people. Quote This is Nathan Bedford. Forrest nabbed no Bedford Bedford. That's his 2019 nickname. They admitted no man who was not a gentleman and a man who could be relied upon to act discreetly, no men who were in the habit of drinking boisterous men or men liable to commit error or wrong or anything of that sort, but doesn't seem like they followed their own rules. No, no they did not. Susan Bartoletti using primary sources makes a strong and not surprising case that this was nonsense. She quotes WP Burnett, a 27 year old illiterate man and Klansman at the time. Quote pretty and I. Everybody in our neighborhood belonged to the organization. The leaders pushed the poor people into it and made them go on rates. I was induced to join because they came to my house and told me if I didn't, I'd have to pay $5 and take 50 lashes. Well, you're going to get you an army if you whip people you don't join. People can't join us fast enough. Either be racist or will hit you. God, well, I'm already racist, so alright, alright, I want this. 5 bucks. Guess I'll pretend to be a ghost. Just want to channel your racism into this fake ghost newspapers continue to play a crucial role in this stage of the Klan's development. Rather than just advertising meetings and drumming up suspense, many newspapers started to carry what were known as Coffin Notices. These were threats to enemies of the Klan and of course any black people who lived in the area. And here's I gotta read it. Here's here's how one of these was written. The Sergeant and the Scorpion are ready. Some shall weep, some shall pray. Meet at school for the Feast of the Wolf and Dance of the Muffled skeletons. The Death Watch is set. The last hour cometh. The moon is full. These losers. My God. Ohh, it's someone who at least it's funny. As someone who was bullied for bringing DND books to class when I was in middle school, I kind of get it. I get it. Maybe you gotta put that back in the hole sometimes. The Ku Klux Klan was strong enough by 1868 to make a major effort in the election. Republican US Grant faced off against Democrat Horatio Seymour. The Klan broke for Seymour. By that point, racist had hit upon the idea of scaring black people into not voting and then basically doing everything possible via their control of the state and local governments to make black people kind of close to slaves again. This series of innovations eventually brought us Jim Crow, but in 1868 it brought KKK Nighthawks putting together dossiers on local black people who registered to vote or gotten some sort of job they didn't think black people ought to have. The KKK also targeted white people who plan to vote for grant, and while their main focus was clearly political repression of their Republican Party, they also seemed to decide, well, since we're out here committing terrorism, we might as well be vigilante cops too. So they reported on white men who abuse their wives sold liquor on Sunday, and according to Bartoletti even quote boys who didn't mind their mothers. Ryan Randolph and Alabama Grand Cyclops explained the Ku Klux did not consider themselves lawbreakers, but as law enforcers, so the clan would hold regular meetings to vote on whether or not to punish. One for selling liquor or being a black guy vaguely near a white woman. Some people they'd warn, some people they'd whip, some people they just straight up murdered. White people were more likely to start their interaction with the KKK via a warning. Maggie Stenhouse was born enslaved in South Carolina. Here's how she recalled one of the clan's visit to her home. A warning to her father who was a preacher the client did not like. Black preachers really were not fans of that. The Klu Klux came, pulled off his robe and door face, hung it up on a nail in the room and said where's that Jim Jesus. He pulled him out of the room. The crowd ran off. Mama took three little children but forgot me and ran off 2. They beat Papa till they thought he was dead and throw him in the fence corner. He was beat nearly to death, just cut all to pieces. He crawled on my bed and woke me up and back on the steps. I thought he was dead. Bled to death on the steps, Mama come back to leave and found he was alive. She doctored him up and he lived 30 years after that. We left that morning, we switched states, left their arm, and they would regularly go to the farms of black people who had like had like right when they were about to harvest and run them off of their farms and take their ****. Yeah, to the clan. A visit like that was a success. They wanted the black family out and they got what they wanted. The book they called themselves the KKK gives more detail on these rates. Quote traveling by horseback, a clan. And might cover 25 to 30 miles in one night. What is called a raid is a night strip, explained James Justice, a state legislator from North Carolina who was pistol whipped by several Klansmen. They may commit 20 violations of law and one night justice estimated several 100 acts of clan violence or outrageous in his county alone over a 12 month period and even greater numbers in the neighboring counties on a raid. The Klansmen always outnumbered their victims, sometimes 40 or more to one. During the attack. Some Klansmen acted theatrically speaking, and fake foreign accents are gibberish. They claimed to have come from the moon risen. From a Confederate grave or travelled from the depths of Hell to seek revenge, really expanding their stories here. I do love that the moon comes into it. Assistant, though you gotta like, I mean where you can kind of a Confederate ghost. Are you from the moon? Why don't we just do the moon tonight, guys? Alright, alright, alright, we're moving now. I won't be a goblet. We're a moon cops. They're moon cops. Another great TV show. Oh, I would totally watch the moon caps. Who do we catch? John Goodman. Oh yeah, John Goodman. And what's his name go crazy teeth. He was in the second Predator movie. Crazy teeth. Crazy teeth. He's also crazy. His son is in Starship Troopers and also is a ******* weird looking guy. Can we have Henry Winkler just for fun? Yeah, we could. He could be the Commission. Your man. He was like the FBI agent. Yes, yes, that's him showed Cody the picture he's working well for. Ohh, Gary Busey. Gary Busey. Gary Busey. Why John Goodman and Gary Busey are Monacan see that that makes that's way too wow. Shamed a little bit. I mean, I didn't know any of those clues, but I'm also excited to see Moon Cobbs. Moon cops. Yeah, it's in production. It's in production right now. It's already been greenlit. Henry. Henry Winkler. Henry Winkler. He doesn't have to. The Fonz plays the Commissioner. He adds something beautiful to everything he touches. So, you know, it would be nice, like, since you're going to have these guys who are both loose cannons, if the chief was actually really calm and chill. Jobs, yeah, kind, sort of, yeah. Supportive and yeah. Bakes them bat like muffin baskets after raid goes bad. Yeah. Moon, Moon, moon. He's the base from which they spring. From the moon. He's the anchor that gives them license to soar. Also, they're from hell and they're ghosts, and they're they're all ghosts of the moon. This is important. There's a lot of casting agents out there. Or, you know, Netflix. It's free. Yeah. Come on, you got, you're making so many shows come big mood cups just raised our rates. So, so put it to good use. OK, back to the thing. Two Klux Klan spread like wildfire during 1868 and eventually into every former Confederate state, as well as Kentucky. For some reason, South Carolina, the first state to secede, had the highest Klan membership per capita. Nathan Bedford Forrest told a Cincinnati reporter that year that the KKK had a nationwide enrollment of 550,000 men. This former rebel. General claiming to have raised an army of half a million men caused some understandable uproar. What with? Yeah. Five days later, four started saying that the estimate was fake news misrepresented by the reporter. He didn't say fake news. No, but he said Misrepresentative boy. He said it was bad reporting. I just got to bring some modern terms in its people get it? I got you. But it is the same thing because he said it was thousand people. He lied. Now, historians do regard that number as fanciful, but it's clear that the KKK was large during that time, and several 100,000 members is very probable. Yeah, in this period now, not all of the clan, as we already stated, were virulent racists. Many of them were just poor guys who were like, everyone else in town has joined and we're going to get ******* shot at. They're just going to come by our house and **** us up, so we might as well join the clan. They probably were a little racist. I mean, everyone, everyone, like, they're not calling them woke, but they wouldn't have been ******* with people otherwise. They're just like, yeah, Junior looked the other way and not cared too much. It was the South in 1868 that counts as woke. Like, not not. Actively shooting at people who aren't right this pressive. I don't think they have to die. I'm a progressive. I don't load a bullet in my gun when I fire it near the House of a look the other way. Yeah. You're welcome. You're welcome. Junius Tendall, 19, went on 3 raids with the clan, he reported later. Quote I was pressed into the order for they said we had to keep the ******* down. They said we had to keep them from overrunning white people. One of his raids was to scare off a group of black people who planned to hold a dance. Clearly a threat to white supremacy, yeah, yeah. Here is another quote from that book. They called themselves the KKK today. Psychologist explained that people who join groups such as the Ku Klux Klan or insecure, and feel the need to do something that makes them feel powerful or superior. Perhaps WEB Dubois, historian and civil rights leader, understood Klansmen best. These human beings at heart are desperately afraid of something, of what? Of many things, but usually of losing their jobs, being declassed degraded or actually disgraced, of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children, of the actual pangs of hunger. Of dirt, of crime. Yeah, still fits. Psychology. Yeah. I love always love stopping by here and hearing passages about today. Yeah, just as applicable today as they were human nature here. We hurt others because we are afraid and are in pain. I am scared. So I'm going to shoot a gun at someone who doesn't look like me. Well, yeah, they're not. They don't like you. They don't. They don't look like me. So who am I if I don't have someone to hate? Maybe it's their fault. You ever think of that? Yeah. It's their fault for not looking like me. There you go. You know? But that's not a good way to segue into an ad. It's a terrible. It's a terrible way to segue into an ad. Segues are nice. They killed that guy. Paul blart? No, the guy who owned the company? Yeah. Oh, this is off the rails as an ad. 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If you want to start your LASIK plus journey, you can get $1000 off when treated in September. That's 500 per eye. So visitmylasikoffer.com to schedule your free. Consultation now. We're back now. In February of 1868, when super racist President Andrew Johnson had impeachment proceedings brought against him, the Klan threatened Thaddeus Stevens, a Republican congressman. Quote This is a free country, and by heaven we will not submit to your damnable laws any longer. If we have not the power to remove the laws, then we will remove those who make them. It's a letter they sent him. So there was a lot of bloodletting all throughout the South during this. In the run up to the election, South Carolina and Tennessee were particularly dangerous places and black people were regularly. Beaten or murdered for registering to vote or helping other people register to vote, or even sort of looking like they might plan on voting someday, huh? A black editorial writer in Charleston summed up the defiant attitude of many freed people. If we are to be massacred because we refuse to vote the Democratic ticket, if we are to be murdered in cold blood, then let it come. We can die. But once and in spite of the clans terrorism, newly freed black men turned out to vote in huge numbers. In Georgia, 100 of them armed themselves with rifles and handguns in March, 12 miles to vote, there were countless similar stories. Groups of women marching in mass dozens of miles without the knowledge of their husbands to donate money to US grants campaign and receive a button. The activism and voting of newly freed black people paid off a November 3rd, 1868 Ulysses Simpson Grant was elected president in a landslide, 214 electoral votes to 80. And grant. I got to say he gets a lot of **** in history because there's a lot of corruption in his administration, which was not super weird for the time. Everybody was corrupt as **** for any time, for any time. US Grant was a guy, never owned a slave. His wife did, but he was not a slave owner, was not an abolitionist prior to the war in general because he was just a ******** alcoholic and didn't really have strong opinions on anything. Right. But didn't like slavery, beat the Confederacy. And as a president stuck his neck out a number of times to pass laws and push things that would like aid in. Like, he was like, these people are free, they deserve to vote and was like was pretty good about pushing that, like and sacrificed a lot of political capital to do the right thing in that instance. Not a perfect guy, but if you're looking at like. Presidents that weren't ****** for black people up until like. ******* like LBJ almost. He said. He might be the best. I mean FDR too, like, but like he he gets, he should get some credit. US grant. Also, dozens of cigars a day. Chain smoke cigars, drink all. I heard a really cool rumor that the reason he was so successful as a general because like McClellan Lee thought was a way better general than US grant. But McClellan didn't ******* do anything because he was too scared to get his army massacred. And so some historians are like, well, the grant. Mainly get wasted after, like, planning and stuff. So maybe it was just the fact that he would like, OK, this is the plan. I'm going to go get ********* and like, wouldn't second guess himself, right? Right. We did it. I've got it. I've done much. I'm not gonna stay up all night and then panic in the morning. I'm just going to get wasted. Wake up, hung the **** over and let this battle happen the way it does cigars. And then we'll do more cigars. Borrowed time anyway, with all this. Yeah. I like. I like US. Grant. He's an interesting guy. So the Klansman responded to his election with an **** of violence. The Republican legislature in Tennessee passed a law allowing the governor to send the militia in to enforce, you know, the fact that you can't murder people. Nathan Bedford Forrest threatened to raise 40,000 men if the Republicans sent in the militia. He said, I have no powder to burn killing *******. I intend to kill radicals. There is not a radical leader in this town, but is a marked man and if trouble should break out. None of them would be left alive. One of these radicals, apparently, was William Luke. He was a white man who had the gall to come down from Canada and educate freed black people. Because as soon as, you know, these people were freed, there were suddenly millions of people who had never gotten an education, wanted to learn how to read and stuff. And so a bunch of very brave teachers swarmed into the South, and Luke was one of the radical of them. Yeah, I'll teach you to read. I'm not. I'm just going to worry about killing radicals. I'm going to use it. For me to kill. Radical. Radical, right? Yeah. Teaching people numbers. You're reading. You're the calm one. Alright, so the KKK warned William Luke to leave and he did not listen. Even worse, he dared to fight back. So, quote, around Midnight, three clan dens met at a Baptist Church where they voted to take the law into their own. Hands on horseback. They headed into town and overtook the guards. Realizing his fate, William Luke allegedly told the Klansmen. I know I've done wrong, but I don't deserve this. At gunpoint, the Klansman abducted the five prisoners just outside cross Plains. They lynched. 4 black men from a tall oak tree. The guys who'd been protecting him, saving Luke for last before hanging him. They allowed him to write a letter to his wife, who still lived in Canada with their six children. It's a heartbreaking letter. It's a heartbreaking story. Yeah, but that's the KKK. The American Missionary General reprinted the warning that one of their teachers received from the Mississippi KKK didn't, to give you an idea of the sort of warning these people sent out. And it's going to be. Larbie. First quarter 8th Bloody Moon air. The next quarter be gone, unholy teacher of the blacks. Be gone ere it is too late. Punishment awaits you in such horrors as no man ever underwent and lived. The cusped moon is full of wrath, and as its horns fill, the deadly mixture will fall on your unhallowed head. Beware, when the black cat cat sleeps. We are the dead and yet live who are watching you fool, adulterer and cursed hypocrite. The far piercing eye of the Grand Cyclops is upon you. Fly the wrath to come, Ku Klux Klan. It's pretty embarrassing. When you talk like that way, that way around your kid like you, they they they save it all up for these kinds, of course it all up for these kinds of things. They were just, if someone, if ******* Gary Gygax had invented DND in 1861, we might have been saved a lot of trouble. Yeah, they just wanted to, like, talk like that with their buddies, really, some impulses that might have been redirected away from murdering people. Bring that over here. Yeah, there's there's a productive way to do that. Have you thought about writing short fiction like the sheet off? Here's some dye craft was just as racist as you, and people still read his stuff. If you heard about his cat was named Don't have you not? No. It was the N word. Really? Yeah, I knew that. I forgot about that. Yeah. It's really bad. It's really bad. Sucks. The KKK continued to raid after the disastrous 1870 election, during which the Democrats lost again. All this violence was eventually too much for the President, Ulysses Simpson. Grant was not a perfect man. He himself would have been the first person to tell you that. But he seemed to genuinely believe in legal equality for black people, or at least more legal equality for black people than the vast majority of white folks were willing to put their neck out for him. And he was no fan of some *** **** Confederate raising an army in his country and terrorizing people. If you know US, Grant. You know, I'm saying that the Confederacy, like, he's got like a. They're like a rebel army. Yeah. And in April of 1871, he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1871 into law. At the time, it was known as the Ku Klux Klan act. This act made it a federal offense to interfere with someone's right to vote, hold political office, serve on a jury, etcetera. It was basically the y'all have to start treating black people like people act. This act banned groups of people from conspiring to wear disguises to intimidate or hurt people. Any group accused of these crimes be tried in federal court. The act. Also authorized the federal government to send in troops and suspend habeas corpus. It's the kind of ruling that can be terrifying, even when applied to racists, because of its implications. But there was no slippery slope into tyranny this time. Mass arrests of Klansmen followed, and it's a good thing to mass arrest if you're going to mass arrest somebody would be would be Klansmen. That'd be maybe a grand wizard, maybe. Maybe a grand flops of goblins here and there. Maybe grand couple of Gini. Going towards they're low low hanging Griffins in there. I want to hear Charlie from always sunny in Philadelphia. Read the KKK rank list. Not feel out of place at all? Yeah, many Klansmen fled the country in South Carolina 2000. Prominent citizens and Klansmen left for Canada. Huh? Nathan Bedford Forest and the grand tradition of all good right wing gang leaders rolled on his fellow Klansmen in exchange for immunity. Get back to modern day. Ohh yeah, nothing changes. That's the good stuff. Ohh that's that ****. He was questioned by Congress, quote from they called themselves the KKK. Despite the immunity. Forest evaded the questions, often claiming he didn't know. Although men who knew Forest, while credited him with equip mind and a good memory forced repeatedly told the prosecutor, I do not remember and I do not recall. He refused to admit his role in the clan but he justified the orders vigilante violence, arguing that Klansmen defended the South against northern Republican aggression and from outrageous. Committed by black people, I think this organization was got up to protect the weak, said Forest. With no political intention at all, Forrest claimed to have ordered the clan to disband back in 1868. He successfully held up under congressional testimony and later in a bar was heard telling a friend. I've been lying like a gentleman, OK? Like, only a gentleman can lie. Only a gentleman can lie. I love it. It's so good. Literally. Just like I didn't start it. I don't have anything to do with it, but I think it's a good club. I think it's a good club. Pretty good club. It's the best club in the world, man. Umm, yeah. Gavin McGinnis, maven from that playbook. I love history. It's great. It happens and they're like. Keeps on happening. 3319 Klansmen were ultimately brought in as a result of the government's war in the KKK. A little over 1100 were actually jailed. Here's the Guardian quote. Maria Carter of Harrelson County, South Carolina testified that Klansmen broke into her home, pointed a gun at her husband, and frightened him to the point that he could not speak. They forced Carter's husband to go with him to a neighbor's house where they assaulted a woman so ferociously that Carter remembered that the house looked, quote, as if somebody had been killing hogs there. The men shot and then severely whipped the woman's husband. Carter's. Open was beaten mercilessly, his clothes were blood soaked, and the next morning they clung to his body. After Grant won reelection, he went on to pardon many of the arrested clansmen. Under the justification that this was the only way to heal the divide between white people and the South, it may have done that. What is certain is that by 1872, the KKK was no longer a major force in public life. Fortunately for racists, it turned out that vigilante violence was never the answer they were looking for. Gradually disenfranchising black people through the law was the answer. In 1877, the first Jim Crow laws were passed, bringing an end to the brief period of time where Southern blacks had a notable amount of political power. The plan would stay buried for decades. Jim Lester, writing on the 1880s, ended his book on the KKK with this line. There never was before since a period of our history when such an order could have lived. May there never again. He was wrong about that. On our next episode, we're going to talk about the Phoenix. Like resurrection of the KKK during the 1920s. It's going to be a gigantic bummer, but not the bummer you're expecting. OK, I'm intrigued. Yeah, this one goes some weird places, but before it goes some weird places, y'all should plug the plug cables that you have to plug huggables yeah, watch our show and show. Yeah, our podcast is called even more news show. The video shows. Called some more news? It's on YouTube. It's on YouTube. You can check out patreon.com/somemore News, some money twitter.com/somemore news. Give him some tweets. Twitter thank you for taking that ball and running with it. Yeah. Doctor. Mr Cody is where you can find me on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at I write. OK you can find my book on Amazon. A brief history of vice, and you can find me in your heart anytime you enjoy the satisfying crunch of the Doritos corn based snack. My God, just thinking about Doritos. How do you say that? I really want to. You guys want to grab some Doritos before we. Well, let me let me plug the stuff that's not Doritos and then we'll we'll have a little Dorito break before we talk more about the. OK, you can find usonlinebehindthebastards.com. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter dot ******** pod. You can buy T-shirts, reverse clan robes and other branded content like cups at teepublic.com. So bye bye and also bye bye the episodes over. Hey there, it's Ebony Monet, your cohost for the San Diego Zoo's Amazing wildlife podcast. In this special episode, we're speaking with Doctor Jane Goodall about the fascinating journey that led to her social discoveries on chimpanzees. For four months, the chimps ran away from me. I mean, they take one look at this peculiar white ape and disappear into the vegetation. Using wildlife on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts, sisters of the Underground is a podcast about fearless Dominican women who stood up against the brutal dictator Kapal Tojo. He needs to be stopped. We've been silent and complacent for far too long. I am Daniel Ramirez, and as a Dominicana myself, I am proud to be narrating this true story that is often left out of the history books through your husband, blood on his hands. Listen to sisters of the underground wherever you get your podcasts. So by now we imagine that you've seen the theories on Tik T.O.K. You maybe even heard the rumors from your friends and loved ones. But are any of the stories about government conspiracies and cover ups actually true? The answer is surprisingly or unsurprisingly, yes. For more than a decade, we hear at stuff they don't want you to know have been seeking answers to these questions. Sometimes there are answers that people would rather us not explore. Now we're sharing this research. With you for the first time ever in a book format, you can pre-order stuff they don't want you to know now. It's the new book from us, the creators of the podcast and video series. 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