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PEOPLE VS. KLAN                                        KATZ

black youths, more Blacks and whites, assembled for a counter-demonstration, charged the Klansmen to rip off their sheets and break up their rally.
   The Ku Klux Klan began during Reconstruction as a concerted attack on black economic and political power and on its white allies in the former Confederate states.  It rode at night, spreading murder, arson and mayhem during an age of poor communications. Citizen efforts to combat these attacks were not often successful, and legal recourse was a sham.  In 1871, Colonel George W. Kirk of the North Carolina state militia testified before a Senate Committee on Klan power in his state:  "I have spoken of their having the law and courts on their side.  The juries were made up of Ku-Klux and it was impossible. . . to get justice before the courts."1
   During this era of night riders, resistance to the Klan was poorly organized, often because Federal troops who were the promised answer to the disorder never really stemmed the violence.  In 1875, when a black farmer stood before Senator George Boutwell and said his people were prepared to kill the Klan leaders ("We could do it in a night"), the Senator replied, "No, we intend to protect you."  The betrayal of this promise forms a significant turning point in U.S. history.2  An example of local resistance to Klan attacks took place a decade earlier in Marianna, Florida, and was probably duplicated in many other places during the era.  Night-riders terrorized a school for freedmen and women.  Finaly, one night the forty Blacks and their white teacher brought guns and faced the night-riders with determination and they rode off and never bothered them again.3  With the overthrow of the Reconstruction and the return of southern government to "white supremacy" forces, Klan purposes were served by Klansmen in the robes of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government, and it was no longer necessary to don sheets and ride at night.
   During the first World War, Klan activity, sparked by the racist movie spectacle Birth of a Nation, revived and spread to northern and western towns and cities.  This new Klan denounced not only Blacks but Catholics, Jews, foreigners, union organizers and radicals.  The Klan dominated state government in Oregon, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio and California as well as in the Deep South.  In Indiana, D.C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the half-million-strong state KKK, proclaimed, "I am the law in Indiana."  In Oregon, the Governor and the Mayor of Portland attended a dinner for the state's Grand Dragon, the Governor speaking on "Americanism."  By 1924, the Klan claimed a membership of five million.  At the 1924 Democratic National Convention, a resolution denouncing the Klan was voted down. The next year forty
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