Anti-KKK Group Formed in Oklahoma
An anti-Ku Klux Klan group was being formed in Oklahoma, it was announced on this day.
John Hyde, of Healdtown, Oklahoma, an organizer of the group, said the purpose of the group was to “protest against mob rule as exemplified by the teachings of the Ku Klux Klan,” adding that we “ask only that the laws be enforced by those empowered to enforce them.”
The creation of an anti-KKK group was undoubtedly in response to the terrible Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riot on March 21, 1921, which was probably the most devastating assault on an African-American community in the entire decade of the 1920s.
The KKK revived during the 1920s on the basis of the racist and anti-Catholic activities, and it enjoyed considerable strength outside the south, in Ohio and Oregon, for example. In the most notorious sign of its strength, 35,000 Klan members marched down Constitution Avenue in Washington, DC, on August 8, 1925.
Read the great new book about the KKK in the 1920s: Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (2017)
Read about the history of the Klan: David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 3rd Ed. (1987)
See documents on the KKK in the 1920s (photos; 78 rpm records, etc.):
http://www.authentichistory.com/1921-1929/4-resistance/2-KKK/index.htmlWatch film of the Klan march on Washington: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv4xHcK63cQ
Learn more about the history of the Klan: Wyn Ward, The Fiery Cross: The Ku Klux Klan in America (1987)