What do kkk people look like

Shouts of "racists go home" drowned out the handful of Klansmen chanting "white power," local reports said. The KKK and other white supremacists gathered in Georgia to set a cross and Nazi swastika on fire while chanting, "white power," in August Klan members have a history of bringing children to rallies and other gatherings.

Here, supporters get police protection at a July Confederate flag rally in Columbia, South Carolina. Munker says his local branch of the KKK, which has recently placed recruitment flyers on car windshields on Long Island, has seen around 1, enquiries from people interested in joining since the election of Donald Trump.

This picture shows a flier found in Southampton, N. Violence broke out at a white-power rally in Anaheim, California on February 27, The Ku Klux Klan was first formed in , through the efforts of a small band of Confederate veterans in Tennessee. Quickly expanding from a localized membership, the KKK has become perhaps the most resonant representation of white supremacy and racial terror in the U. Part of the KKK's enduring draw is that it refers not to a single organization, but rather to a collection of groups bound by use of now-iconic racist symbols -- white hoods, flowing sheets, fiery crosses -- and a predilection for vigilante violence.

The Klan's following has tended to rise and fall in cycles often referred to as "waves. The Klan's second -- and largest -- wave peaked in the s, with KKK membership numbering in the millions. Following the second-wave Klan 's dissolution in the early s, self-identified KKK groups also built sizable followings during the s, in reaction to the rising Civil Rights Movement. Various incarnations have continued to mobilize since -- often through blended affiliations with neo-Nazi, neo-Confederate, and Christian Identity organizations -- but in small numbers and without significant impact on mainstream politics.

Beginning in , Jones took over the North Carolina leadership of the South's preeminent KKK organization, the United Klans of America, and by his "Carolina Klan" boasted more than 10, members across the state, more than the rest of the South combined. Jones' story illuminates our understanding of the KKK's long history generally, and in particular provides a lens to consider the questions that follow. How big a threat is the KKK in the U. In an important sense, this may be the key question about the KKK and whether we should still worry, or care, about the Klan today.

Likely for that reason, literally every discussion I've had about the Klan -- whether in classrooms, community events, radio interviews, or cocktail parties -- comes around to some version of this concern. I typically respond, in short, that a greater number of KKK organizations exist today than at any other point in the group's long history, but that nearly all of these groups are small, marginal, and lacking in meaningful political or social influence.

I might add two caveats to that reassuring portrait, however. The first is that marginal, isolated extremist cells themselves can become breeding grounds for unpredictable violence. At the peak of his s influence, Bob Jones would often tell reporters that, if they were truly concerned about violence perpetrated by Klan members, their greatest fear should be that he would disband the KKK, leaving individual members to commit mayhem free from the structure imposed by the group.

As Jones' followers committed hundreds of terrorist acts authorized by KKK leadership, his claim was of course disingenuous, but it also contained a grain of truth: Jones and his fellow leaders did dissuade members -- many of whom combined rabid racism with unstable aggression -- from engaging in violence not approved by the KKK hierarchy.

In the absence of a broader organization with much to lose from a crack-down by authorities, racist violence can be much more difficult to prevent or police.

The second caveat stems from KKK's history of emerging and receding in pronounced "waves. But in each case, some "reborn" version of the KKK has managed to rebound and survive. So, while today the KKK appears an anachronism and, perhaps, less of a threat than other brands of racist hate, we still should vigilantly oppose racist entrepreneurs who seek to exploit the historical cachet of the KKK to organize new campaigns advancing white supremacist ends.

To me, this is one primary lesson from the KKK's past, and a compelling reason not to forget or dismiss the enduring relevance of that history.

However, when the second Klan collapsed in the s, and a variety of independent Klan groups followed in its wake, consistency faded away and customs diverged. Today, then, there is no universal set of meanings behind Klan robes and their colors and symbols; Klans can very greatly from one to the next. With most Klan groups, the general membership wear white robes. In some cases, Klan officers also wear white robes, but with colored stripes on them to indicate rank. In other Klan groups, Klan officers are allowed to wear robes of other colors: black, green, purple, etc.

What color indicates indicates a particular rank can vary from one group to the next. The way to benefit is, it seems, to cover the Klan in a fairly neutral light. So what groups and communities are contesting the way that the KKK is portrayed in the media?

Catholic, Jewish and black newspapers pushed back. Others, however, compare the Klan to a wildfire. And so other papers argue that there needs to be a far more active press campaign.

So rather than presenting the story of a popular day at the Texas State Fair dedicated to the Klan, for example, a publication like the Pittsburgh Courier would instead focus on planned rallies that descended into violence and riots — to try to combat this idea that was being peddled implicitly in mainstream white newspapers that while the Klan was controversial, it was successful. You see a lot of political cartoons lampooning the Klan, but one of the most prominent theater critics of the time noted that the Klan could prosper in a cloud of custard pies.

Quite often Klan members and Klan sympathizers saw those criticisms as evidence of having the right enemies, that they were on the right track. And so these critiques, ultimately, often end up being counterproductive.

You said that, eventually, the Klan moved beyond even favorable mainstream press coverage and made their own outlets. The national Klan leadership create their own national newspaper syndicate called the Kourier, with a K, which, by the beginning of , claimed a circulation of over one and a half million readers.

The likelihood is that that is an inflated number, as with any numbers the Klan claimed. But even if we say that there was only half a million readers that would still make it one of the most widely read weekly publications in the United States to that point.

It was a really valuable form of propaganda to effectively replace existing sources of news with this publication that used local news but also brought a national news and presented all of it through this Klannish ideological lens. What kind of national stories would run in a Klan paper? The relationship between the US and Mexico.