How did the Ku Klux Klan do in WW2 e.g. Robert Byrd

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Hi,

With all the antisemitism and race politics of the National Socialist movements. I was wondering how WW2 affected the KKK (which was/is antisemitic as well as anti-black and maybe anti-more (I am not an expert). Were they seen as competitors or Allies.

The KKK like the National Socialists had some weird self made roots and grew in West Virginia. For Example Robert Byrd (who might become a Senator and have his name appear on a telescope in our future) became a member, a Kleage (recruiter ) and Exalted Cyclops, leader of a new chapter with a rank named after easily duped brutes from Greek Mythology.

So how did the Klan feel about current 1941 and later events? and were they popular or not.

Best Regards,
Chewie. (who despises the Klan)

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Actually, the Second Klan was in decline by 1941, though they were still active.

The fallout from the Stephenson case in 1925 as well as widespread condemnation of their “gangsterism, floggings and racial and religious intolerance” by the media and the general public at large (my grandfather among them) pretty much ensured that, by the early 1930s, the Klan was discredited by all but the most ardent followers and sympathizers.

A steep decline in membership followed – millions reduced to tens of thousands in less than a decade. With the onset of the Great Depression, the leadership of the Klan was so desperate that, in 1939, the Imperial Wizard Hiram W. Evans sold the organization to James Colescott, a veterinary physician, and Samuel Green, an obstetrician.

As of Sept. 1941, they were most prominent in presence and activity in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. Their last significant activity was in 1940, when they were implicated for beating a young white couple and a barber to death for drinking and the flogging of “20 others” in Atlanta, followed by the disappearance of KKK records during police investigation.

Among the most recent reports relating to the Klan (as of Sept. 22, 1941) was from The Courier-News on Aug. 20, 1941 – a Klan cross-burning in celebration of the “ouster of the German-American Bund,” in New Jersey.

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SPOILERS!

In 1944, the IRS filed a lien for $685,000 in back taxes against the Klan. Colescott dissolved the organization shortly thereafter.

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Cool many thanks for the very detail information :slight_smile:

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