All discussion of white supremacy in America begins with

the Ku Klux Klan, founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866 by six

Confederate officers. Borrowing the name from a college

fraternity, early Klansmen mendaciously sought to terrorize

blacks by donning white sheets and posing as ghosts of dead

Confederate soldiers. In essence, the Klan was part of the

white resistance movement to radical post-Civil War

reconstruction. Klan terror reached its zenith in the late 1860s

when it was known also as the “Invisible Empire of the South.”

Its first Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford .Forrest, ordered the

“Empire” to disband in 1869 because of the extreme violence,

and in 1871 Congress passed the Ku Klux Act, imposing heavy

penalties on any organization that inflicted violence on

individuals or groups of citizens. Klan activities ceased though

white supremacy in the South resurfaced in the decades

following.

The twentieth century saw the rebirth of the Klan in 1915,

when a preacher named William Simmons organized a new

movement outside of Atlanta, Georgia. Simmons had been

influenced by D. W. Griffith’s film The Birth of a Nation, where

Klansmen of the nineteenth century were romantically

portrayed as heroes who had preserved the moral fiber and

character of America. The new version of the Klan’s crusading

included warning America of the incipient dangers of

communism following the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Roman

Catholics, Jews, and labor unions were added to the list of evils
threatening the well-being of white Christian Americans.

The popularity of the Klan surged between 1915 and 1930,

with a total membership between four and six million. However,

the onslaught of the Great Depression and the continued use

of extreme violence again thinned the ranks in the 1930s. By

1944 the organization had become defunct. Ten years later,

however, Klan activity sprang up again in response to the

fa mo u s Brown v. Board of Education ruling that racial

segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. But a far

more significant resurgence in Klan activity arose as the Civil

Rights Act (1964) produced violent reactions to forced

compliance in the South. The civil rights movement of the

turbulent 1960s resulted in extreme public protest against the

Klan, especially concerning its role in the murder of several

activists and other acts of violence, and by 1970 membership

had been reduced to a mere several thousand.

The Ku Klux Klan has become divided into smaller klaverns

in the last several decades, and it is these splinter groups that

have become aligned with the Identity movement and various

neo-Nazi groups. Currently there are three major Klans that

have influenced still smaller groups of Klansmen. According to

Andy Oak-ley, who spent six years as an undercover reporter

investigating white supremacist organizations, the three main

groups are:

The United Klans of America [which is] . . . threatened with extinction due

to a 1987 court ruling awarding seven million dollars to the mother of a

black teenager who was brutally murdered by the Klan in 1981. The

Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, is strongest in Connecticut

and virtually in every southern state, despite a declaration of bankruptcy by

formal Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson in 1983. The Knights of the Ku

Klux Klan has made inroads in the north as well as in Georgia and

Alabama.2 vols. (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath, 1978), 2:382.

According to Klanwatch Project of the Southern Poverty

Law Center, there are many lesser klaverns located throughout

the country, particularly in the South. Leadership for the

movement as a whole, however, is provided by the three large

groups.

Before examining the beliefs and practices of the Klan, we

will analyze other significant white supremacist and Identity

movements.

One of the significant differences between the Klan and the

neo-Nazis is that most movements within the latter are inspired

by a sociopolitical ideology much the same as Hitler’s

championing of the cultural and intellectual superiority of the

Aryan people. The Klan, on the other hand, justifies its

existence from a quasi-religious and pseudo-Christian belief

system. The outstanding exception to this general rule is the

Aryan Nations (see below), which eclectically combines

elements of Nazism and Christianity.4

Some believe that Cain’s murder of

Abel brought on him a curse or a “mark” that resulted in eternal

slavery, passed down not to Jews but to blacks, hence

justifying why Christians can still serve God and own slaves.

Whatever the various “theologies” advanced, the unifying

principle within the Klan and all Identity movements is that the

white race is the superior race descended from Adam.

A violent offshoot of the Aryan Nations, the Klan, and the

Missouri/Arkansas-based survivalist group, the Covenant, the

Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, was a group called The Order.

Many of its leaders have been arrested for acts of violence,

including robbery and shootings. The Oregonian in 1985

reported that the emerging Order referred to itself as being the

“Fifth Era.” “In the past . . . Klan members had worked only to

keep blacks and other minorities in their place.” The Order

proposes “the final solution” as was applied in Nazi Germany,

the complete removal and/or extermination of all Jews

With regard to slavery, the argument has been raised that

not only does the Bible not condemn slavery, it seems to at

least permit it. Therefore, subsuming the black race to slavery

was merely the continuation of a practice common in Jesus’

time. Members of the Ku Klux Klan advanced this argument to

at least justify the past. While it is true that the Bible does not

condemn slavery, the New Testament seems to do so

implicitly. Paul’s letter to Philemon is an entreaty to Philemon

to receive back his runaway slave Onesimus, not as a servant,

but as a brother (Philem. 16). The gospel rightly understood

destroys slavery as it changes the status of a person in Jesus

Christ from a slave to a brother or sister. “There is neither Jew

nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in

Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

Forrest, Nathan Bedford (IDENTITY MOVEMENTS; 1821–

1877). The first grand wizard of the Ku-Klux Klan.

Grand Wizard (IDENTITY MOVEMENTS). The supreme

leader in the Ku Klux Klan.

Ku Klux Klan (IDENTITY MOVEMENTS). The Ku Klux Klan is

the first white supremacist movement in the United States,

The second speculation was the identification

of the tribes with Anglo-Saxon peoples by the British Israelites.

THE MODERN IDENTITY MOVEMENT. British Israel is implicitly

anti-Semitic and antiblack. However, in the middle of the

twentieth century British Israelism became associated with several

groups that were actively and explicitly anti-Semitic and antiblack

such as the Ku Klux Klan, and, after World War II, the neo-Nazi

movement.
Alma White was an advocate of a variety of controversial

causes, including vegetarianism and women’s rights. She

was also an active supporter of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

Christian Conservative Churches of America

The church has also been included in lists of rightist organizations

affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan. Such organizations as the

Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith have noted that Harrell

served as the leader of the Committee of Ten Million, along with

Robert dePugh of the Minutemen and Robert Shelton, Imperial

Wizard of the United Klans of America. Church leaders assert that,

whatever Harrell’s personal actions and affiliations may be, the

church has no relation to the Klan.

The church also identifies the descendants

of ancient Israel with neither the Jews nor the nations

of Western Europe, but with those ‘‘peoples who have been gathered

into the North American continent

Christian Identity Church

Remarks: For a brief period (1985-1986) the Christian Identity

Church was pastored by Thom Robb, one of the more controversial

figures in the larger Identity movement. Robb, a chaplain for

the Ku Klux Klan, established several Identity periodicals such as

Robb’s Editorial Report and The Torch.

Church of Jesus Christ Christian, Aryan Nations

After Swift’s death, Richard Girnt Butler, a pastor in the church,

moved to Hayden Lake, Idaho, and in 1974 began an independent

branch of the church. During the 1980s, Butler and the church became

the focus of national attention because of his association

with factions of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi movement.

Because of The Order, as well as the connections between the

church and several Klan and Nazi organizations, the group has

come under close observation by the media and groups such as

the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. In 1987 Butler was indicted

by the federal government for sedition. He was later found

innocent.

New Christian Crusade Church

Box 426

Metairie, LA 70004

The New Christian Crusade Church was formed in 1971 by

James K. Warner. In the 1960s Warner had been a member of the

American Nazi Party headed by George Lincoln Rockwell. He

broke with Rockwell and later associated himself with the National

States Rights Party led by J. B. Stoner and with the Knights of the

Ku Klux Klan. The New Christian Crusade Church teaches that all

white people are the descendents of the ancient Israelites and thus

it distinguishes its belief from British Israelism, which identifies the

present day Anglo-Saxon people as the literal racial descendents

of Ancient Israel. The church believes that the present-day Jews

come from the Khazars, a warrior people of Turkish-Mongol origin

who inhabited the Volga River valleys near the Black Sea in the

tenth century. The church is both anti-Semitic and antiblack.

Assembly of Christian Soldiers

Current address not obtained for this edition.

The upsurge of the Ku Klux Klan in the South in the 1960s led

in 1971 to the formation of a Klan-based church, the Assembly of

Christian Soldiers. Its founder and leader, Jessie L. Thrift, was a former

Grand Wizard of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, one

of several Klan schismatic groups. The assembly began a program

of assisting the all-white segregated academies, which were established

in reaction to the desegregation of public schools in the

South. Money from the tax-exempt church funds was used to subsidize

schools so that parents could transfer children from public

schools without extra cost. There is an affiliated organization,

‘‘The Southerners’’, which organizes mass rallies.