Cross Burned on Stone Mountain, Georgia – KKK Revived
A cross was burned on Stone Mountain, Georgia, on this day, marking the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.
The Klan had been a powerful racist force during the Reconstruction Era in the South following the Civil War. It gradually faded away, but was revived as part of the racist mood of the country in the first decades of the century.
The Klan became a powerful political force in the 1920s in the South and other parts of the country. On November 7, 1922, for example, Oregon voters by referendum passed a Klan-sponsored law requiring all elementary school children to attend public schools. The law was directed at Catholic parochial schools. (The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional on June 1, 1925.)
In 1924 the national convention of the Democratic Party was bitterly divided over whether to adopt a platform plank denouncing the Klan by name (see July 6, 1924), And on August 8, 1925, the Klan staged a huge march of thousands of members in the Klan robes in Washington, D.C., in a brazen display of its political power.
Read: David M. Chalmers, Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan (1981)
Learn about the KKK today: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan
Learn more about the history of the Klan.