The
Ku Klux Klan had two incarnations since being organized to restore a
semblance of order in the South after the War, and to oppose the
Republican party’s Union League. The W.J. Simmons Klan of 1915 was a
nativist organization concerned about the influx of European immigrants,
their effect upon American institutions and carried the US flag at
rallies; the most recent Klan of few numbers has little if any
resemblance to the original, and carries the US, Gadsden and Confederate
flags.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Stealing the Name of the Klan
“[An]
event that may surprise many persons who think of the Ku Klux Klan as a
bigoted organization opposed to Catholics, Jews and Negroes. They
forget that a generation earlier there was another Klan, from which the
Klan of the present century stole the name, and that the objective of
the earlier Klan, while quite without sanction of law, were scarcely
comparable.
Bernard
and [brother] Hartwig were rummaging in their attic at Camden [South
Carolina]. Opening an old trunk they found the regalia of a Knight of
the Ku Klux Klan. It belonged to their father, in whose veins according
to family records, flowed nothing but Jewish blood.
Their
mother, who had followed the boys up the attic steps to see what they
were doing, froze with fear when she saw them unearth the regalia. Dr.
Baruch would certainly pay with his life if his membership in the Klan
should be disclosed. She swore them to secrecy, and, as usual, they
obeyed her commands.
In
telling this story, years later, Baruch remarked that, far as he had
ever heard, no member of the Klan was ever betrayed. Who were members of
that organization of Reconstruction days was one of the best kept
secrets in all history.”
(Bernard Baruch, Park Bench Statesman, Carter Field, Whittlesey House, 1944, pp. 2-3)
