In the 1920s, Nathan Bedford Forrest’s grandson, who had the same name, attracted quite a bit of attention when he announced that he was setting up a Klan Kollege in Georgia. The grandson had headed the Sons of Confederate Veterans and after that he became the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Georgia. According to ads for the school, it was founded by “laying unusual stress upon Chritstian principles, as the foundation of our civilization, and the ideals of pure Americanism.” According to Forrest, “most of our large universities are turning out socialists, cynics and atheists.” Forrest added that while it was operated under the auspices of the Ku Klux Klan, it was open to all “real Americans” who desire that their children “receive instruction in the true history of their country…”
The effort by the children and the grandchildren of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan to teach their children the lessons of the successful rout of Black rights by the Klan was so strong that they published books, lobbied for textbooks for their public schools, and organized tribute days to the old Klan. Strangely, most of this education was underground when the Reconstruction Era Klan was active. Elaine Parsons, one of the most prominent historians of the Klan, says that in the years immediately after the Civil War there were few references to the KKK in school textbooks. And this was not just a “Southern thing.” Interestingly, Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s 1875 textbook did not mention the KKK at all. Higginson was a Radical anti-slavery man and a former Union officer who had commanded Black troops during the Civil War.
The first mention of the Klan appeared in an 1883 history book authored by Arthur Gilman, an amateur historian from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Between 1894 and 1913 two thirds of the school textbooks mentioned the Klan. Lawton B. Evans’s textbook The Essential Facts of American History published in 1909 gave an account of the Klan’s origins that was repeated in other books: “To protect themselves against these idle and lawless negroes, who were often led away by evil white men, a secret order known as the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ was formed. . . . When they appeared. . . the frightened blacks scurried to their cabins.”
Johns Hopkins PhDs Albert Woodburn and Thomas Francis Moran wrote in their textbook “American History and Government” (1906) on the origin of the KKK: “The idle darkies were waiting around, each one looking for his ‘forty acres and a mule’ and wondering ’when de land was goin’ gur to be devided.’ Former faithful slaves were becoming good-for-nothing loafers. The blacks were given the right to vote while capable white people, the natural leaders of the South, were left out. This was more than human nature could bear.”
The release of the Ku Klux Klan romantic film Birth of a Nation in 1915 spurred on writing in children’s textbooks about the Klan. As Elaine Parsons says, the Klan became the cowboys of the South. Clandestinely, at night, mounted on chargers in scary costumes, stories of the Klan held Southern boys’ attention in a way that few other historical phenomenon could.
During the period of Birth of a Nation and afterward until 1941, out of 86 textbooks, 78 covered the Klan. At the same time that Forrest was establishing the Klan Kollege, the Southern Publishing Company’s 1920 A History of the United States for the Grammar Grades explained KKK intimidation thusly: “To accomplish [this], it was necessary that the negro should lose his interest in politics. . . . Often a thorough fright would result in submission, but in the case of serious offenses the Ku-Klux sometimes took the law into their hands and punished the negroes severely.”
Mary Simms Oliphant was the granddaughter of William Simms and she was brought up on a plantation. Many South Carolinians called her “South Carolina’s First Lady of Letters.” Her standard history, which was revised in 1932 and went through nine editions, was adopted by the state board of education and used to teach 8th Grade South Carolina history. She and her daughter, Mary Simms Oliphant Furman, later wrote a history book on South Carolina for third graders. Although she died in 1988, her memory was kept up in the newspapers of the 21st century, as you can see in this article in The Greenville News from 2017.
Oliphant’s history textbooks were used until the 1980s in South Carolina, which means that many residents of the state over the age of fifty were educated using her textbooks. It is useful to look at how this book was used in the early 20th century and to understand how it influences people who are alive today.
Mary Simms Oliphant told how the Klan helped establish a “legitimate” government.” Mind you that most people in South Carolina were Black and had been slaves before Emancipation, but the “legitimate government” did not include them in the government. Instead, the textbook lionizes the rise of the Ku Klux Klan as the leading element in the “overthrow of Radical government.”
In looking at this period after 1868, the textbook claimed that the Klan used its disguises as a way of “terrifying” the “impressionable and superstitious” Black citizens. In spite of this claim of non-violent Klan action, it does point to the Klan using imprisonment and assassination to kill off Black opponents and intimidate the Black community.
Now, again, this was a book used to educate 12-year-old children.
Section 434 of the book starts off recounting the founding of the Klan: “Shortly after the close of the war with its consequent emancipation of the negro, in almost all of the conquered States there sprang up secret organizations of the white men, who banded together, fearing the evil effect unrestricted freedom would have upon the ignorant, irresponsible slaves…The Ku-Klux Klan organized secretly…The Ku-Klux were always mounted on horses and wore caps and masks to conceal their identity, and long white coats which covered them and fell down over their horses. The sight of these ghostly riders galloping by in the night was a very terrifying one to the impressionable, superstitious negro. A visit from the Ku-Klux was sufficient in most cases to turn him away from his evil doing.”
Oliphant concludes by telling of the triumph of the Klan and its successor organization, the Red Shirts, in securing the governorship for former Confederate General Wade Hampton. She writes “After eight years of negro…supremacy…South Carolina had overthrown the usurpers and taken possession of the government.”
At that time, Blacks made up a majority of South Carolina’s population.
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