DBWI The KKK is a racist organization

Started up as essentally a dress up party the KKK has become probally the one of the best known social clubs in the world, like the toastmasters, or the elks, but this organisation almost got corrupted into some thing evil early in its history when some former condfederate troops decided they wanted to take over and use the organization as a cover to brutalize the newly freed slaves.

Thankfully sanity won out and the plotters were turned over to the union army before they could hurt any one, and the organization became what it is today, but what if that moment of clarity and sanity didn't happen? What if the Klan became a white supremicist organisation?
 
They'd probably try taking over the US at one point, probably during the Red Scare. We know OTL that racist groups played a big role in the failed coup of 1919. I think the major factor in turning the Klan from a terrorist group to the guys in ghost costumes on horseback riding for charity we know them as was when Nathan Bedford Forrest joined in 1867 and used his influence to be elected Grand Wizard. By then, he was well on the way to his post-Civil War transformation to rejecting racism and hatred (thanks to a near-death experience and his own reading of the Bible), and he was sickened by the growing racist terrorist elements in the Klan. A lot of early Klansmen quit, but many more joined and by then the group was well on the way to becoming one of the South's major social clubs, which would later spread to the rest of the nation by the 1920s when "Civil War mania" started really becoming a thing with the last Civil War veterans dying and all.

It would be a shame if the Klan were a hate group, since the Klansmen are always a great sight at Civil War re-enactments, and you can always count on your local klavern to be a major donator to charity.
 
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Thomas1195

Banned
Well, they would be cracked down by President Ulysses Grant, who would not hesitate to send in federal troops. Keep in mind that the Radical Republicans had a majority in the Congress at that time, and they would vote for sending troops.
 
A lot of early Klansmen quit, but many more joined and by then the group was well on the way to becoming one of the South's major social clubs, which would later spread to the rest of the nation by the 1920s when "Civil War mania" started really becoming a thing with the last Civil War veterans dying and all.
The main KkK is not racist. But the klansman who left, formed a new group that was.
 
The main KkK is not racist. But the klansman who left, formed a new group that was.

Of course the KKK isn't racist, unless you count the fact they were a segregated organisation like most Southern groups were back then. They had auxiliary groups for African Americans, which were called different things in different states (or "realm" as the Klan calls states), like the Klan's Colored Men (OOC: this was a real group) or the Colored Man's Klan. Some of these groups played important roles in the Civil Rights era, even though the main Klan realms remained apolitical and white Klansmen were no better or worse than other white Southerners. Even though Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest III officially integrated the Klan in 1962 (which caused some klaverns to split over this), most black Klansmen remain part of the auxiliary groups which are now on full status with the rest of the Klan. Remember the current Grand Wizard is from the Colored Klan and indeed was figure of some note in the Civil Rights movement.

Electing him was probably a good idea for the future of the Klan, given the rapidly aging membership and especially a decline in numbers of African Americans. Although some of the youth outreach is pretty ridiculous, like getting some rappers to dress up in Klan robes and record a single about the Klan and their community projects. What's next, boy bands promoting the Shriners?
 
The kkk is racist ever heard of lynching

OOC: DBWI refers to a double-blind what if. That is, we speak from the perspective of a different timeline where, in this case, the Klan didn't get taken over by white supremacists in the same way as OTL.
 
The kkk is racist ever heard of lynching

OOC:

This is a DBWI:

I am utterly sick of this. Why is it so difficult to comprehend? A DBWI is -

A thread written from the perspective of someone in an ATL posing the question of what if history had gone as it in fact did go in OTL. Example: DBWI: What if the South had lost the Civil War?

Edit: ninja'd
 
IC:You are confusing for Iron Hood society, an Extremist hate group based on Racists who left KKK.

Even that group cropped up some years after the war ended, didn't it? During Reconstruction, you had the Knights of the White Camelia and eventually the White League causing most of the trouble in the 1860's and 70's.
 
The kkk is racist ever heard of lynching
I am afraid that you are ignoring just how common lynching was around the United States through its history. Mexicans, abolitionists, Freedmen, socialists, Republicans, Carpetbaggers, Poles, Portuguese... This happened with or without the KKK, which I think we should remember is based many from old Scotch-Irish traditions (or so the founders said) and so perhaps it was natural for the non-Ulster based Scotch, Irish, English, Germans, and others from the North thinking they were as bad as the Freemasons or Daughters of the Confederacy. Actually, let us look at Tammany Hall. They based themselves on a made up saint, dress up as Indians, use a silver tomahawk, and control New York's political landscape. And of course they supported the Irish, who voted for them and got some jobs and gifts, or they were best to s pulp, if their votes weren't simply shredded. Doesn't make them a racist organization. What about how Manhattan was basically completely depopulated of Blacks when the Irish immigrants rioted when New York abolished slavery? Why should their lynchings be ignored? Or how about the Draft Riots?

As others have said, this is mostly a social club. A think in many cases they used terms about chain mail or interlocking rings, as many people claimed membership in overlapping clan groups. It was basically a confederation, so people who were in the same division as each over in the Confederate Army, or those who fought in certain campaigns. I think a lot of parallels should be made to both the Sons of Liberty and the Committees of Correspondence. Yes, various Rings murdered or tormented large amounts of Freedmen, Abolitionists, Unionists, Germans, Northerners, Spaniardos, and Republicans in general. That was pretty much standard procedure back then for committee leaders. The only issue is whether or not they were in costume when they did it and if it should be counted as a primary motivation of the group. Anyways, everyone has their own dirty laundry. Just look at the Copperheads. To think that their founders work against the Union, only to end up with their great-grandchildren wearing pins with Honest Abe's face mounted on it as they parade through the Land of Lincoln.
 
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