Six Confederate veterans created the Ku Klux Klan on December 24, 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee. Or maybe they didn’t. Much about the early months of the KKK is unknown. We do not even know if it had a clear political purpose at the time of its founding or if it was intended merely as a social group. The small number of its adherents in its first months and its vows of secrecy shroud in mystery the first year of the soon to be famous group. Maybe the Klan was really founded on the first Christmas Eve after the war or maybe not until the following Spring. In any event, the Klansmen wanted to associate their group with the birth of the Saviour.
The building where they purportedly met for the first time still stands. It was a law office then and it is a law office now. You can see that there is some kind of a plaque attached to the wall. This was put up during the revival of the Klan in the early 20th Century. A new owner turned the plaque around so that it could not be read, according to historian Andy Hall.
In the photo below you can see the plaque as it appeared when it was still facing viewers.
Here is the modern view with the sign turned around.
The plaque had been placed on the building in 1917 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It was put up at the time that the film Birth of a Nation was inspiring a new generation to re-form the Klan. Many white Pulaskians apparently hoped that the city’s association with the Klan would lead to Confederate-oriented tourism. There were even proposals to change the street the building was on to Ku-Klux Avenue!
The Confederate Veteran, the magazine of the United Confederate Veterans, published an article in 1917 (pp. 335-336) by a leader of the United Daughters of the Confederacy about the dedication of the plaque.
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) was intimately invovled in preserving the memory of the original Ku Klux Klan. Their fathers who had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War often joined the violent Ku Klux after the war. They were as much Daughters of the Klan as they were Daughters of the Confederacy and they published books for children and adults lauding the Klan.
The place of the Protestant minister at Klan events was a firmly established tradition. These ministers added a Christian patina to a group steeped in weirdly pagan rituals. Here, Dr. Kennedy’s sermon may seem deranged unless you know that the Klan wore sheets as covering to convince African Americans that the Klansmen were in fact dead Confederates returned to life.
Okay, it still seems deranged.
More on the Ku Klux Klan
Additional Sources:
Kommemorating the Ku Klux Klan by Michael Lewis and Jacqueline Serbu The Sociological Quarterly Vol. 40, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 139-158.
Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction by Elaine Frantz Parsons University of North Carolina Press (2016).
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Ku Klux Klan Avenue?
I saw “The Chaperone” recently, set in 1922 Kansas and New York. One matron says to another:
“Bob and I have joined the Klan”
“What clan?”
“Why, the Ku Klux Klan, of course”
Disbelieving: “Is that where you wear the hoods and look through the little eyeholes”
Funny.
Was the film any good?
Pulaski, Tennessee. Named for American Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski. Was Casimir Pulaski intersex? That is in this case born as a woman and lived as a man. I believe recent evidence uncovered with skeletal examinations and DNA tests may point to that.
” Casimir Pulaski, Polish Hero of the Revolutionary War, Was Most Likely Intersex, Researchers Say…
…He is called the “father of the American cavalry,” a Polish-born Revolutionary War hero who fought for American independence under George Washington and whose legend inspired the dedication of parades, schools, roads and bridges…
…New evidence suggests that although Pulaski identified and lived as a man, biologically, he did not fit into the binary definitions of male and female, a twist that helps explain why scientists could not previously identify his remains. The revelatory findings are detailed in a new documentary, “The General Was Female?,” which aired on the Smithsonian Channel on April 8. (2019) ”
New York Times website