We know that sons often went into the same occupations as their fathers and grandfathers back in the day, but they also could see running a terrorist organization as a legacy occupation. Nathan Bedford Forrest was a guiding force in the original Ku Klux Klan in the 1860s and his grandson and namesake played a similar role in the revived Klan of the 1920s and 1930s.
NBF II ran the business side of Klan Kollege (Lanier University) for a year before it failed financially. Ironically, the Klan Kampus of Lanier later became a synagogue!
Here is the New York Times obituary for Forrest’s grandson.
In the 1920s, many conservatives believed that American colleges were miseducating the young with alien theories imported from abroad. On September 12, 1921 the New York Times published Nathan Bedford Forrest’s vision for a Klan education.
This ad for Klan Kollege appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. As a conservative school it announced that it focused on “Christian principles” and “pure Americanism.”
The Klan purchased land next to Lanier with plans to erect “The Hall of the Invisibles,” dedicated to “the teaching of Klancraft and the ideals and principles of Ku Kluxism.” Klan higher education was to take another step forward with plans for its University of America on the site of the Battle of Peachtree Creek. Forrest’s prospectus described the mission of the new University of America:
We will teach that this is a white man’s country, so designed by those who laid its foundations and that it must be so maintained by those to whom it has come as a precious heritage, in all that is entailed as privilege and as responsibility…We will teach the whole American doctrine in contrast with the doctrines of other countries and races, other kinds and creeds, and in such a way as to convince the student that it is better to be a genuine white Protestant American citizen than to be anything or anybody else anywhere on all the earth.
NBF II was, as you would expect, a prominent figure in the United Confederate Veterans. This item is from the Americus Times-Recorder. August 22, 1921
Nathan Bedford Forrest’s great-grandson broke the cycle, fighting against the Nazis during World War II.
Feature Photo: Nathan Bedford Forrest II.
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