Klan Quotes

“It affords me great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen of the radio audience, to introduce Rev. Henry Givens, Imperial Grand Wizard of the Knights of Nordica, who will address you on the very timely topic of 'The Menace of Negro Blood'."

Rev. Givens, fortified with a slug of corn, advanced nervously to the microphone, fingering his prepared address. He cleared his throat and talked for upwards of an hour during which time he successfully avoided saying anything that was true, the result being that thousands of telegrams and long distance telephone calls of congratulation came in to the studio. In his long address he discussed the foundations of the Republic, anthropology, psychology, miscegenation, coöperation with Christ, getting right with God, curbing Bolshevism, the bane of birth control, the menace of the Modernists, science versus religion, and many other subjects of which he was totally ignorant. The greater part of his time was taken up in a denunciation of Black-No-More, Incorporated, and calling upon the Republican administration of President Harold Goosie to deport the vicious Negroes at the head of it or imprison them in the federal penitentiary. When he had concluded "In the name of our Saviour and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, Amen," he retired hastily to the washroom to finish his half-pint of corn.”
― George S. Schuyler, Black No More

“While Jim kept pitching God, Race and Nation, Velma showed me snapshots of her grandchildren. She talked about her crafts shop, the macramé she'd made for Christmas, and an upcoming cross-burning she hoped to attend. Before going, Velma had to pass an exam that would qualify her for full citizenship in the Realm. "It's like a driver's test where they try and foul you up," she said. "I need to know the whole book of knowledge. Like if someone asks, 'Why do we hate Jews?' I didn't know before, but I found out. It was Jews that put Christ on the cross."

If she passed the exam--and avoided Klan infractions, such as committing a felony or sleeping with a black man--Velma would don a satin hood and robe for the cross-burning, which marked her full "naturalization" into the Klan.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

“[Shelby] Foote also displayed an intricate sympathy for the early KKK, which ex-Confederates formed immediately after the [Civil] War to combat what they regarded as the cruel excesses of Reconstruction. "The Klan takes some careful talking about, it's easy to misinterpret what I'm fixing to say," Foote cautioned. "But in some ways the Klan was very akin to the Free French Resistance to Nazi occupation. To expect people who fought as valiantly as these people did to roll over and play dead because there was an occupying army is kind of crazy."

Foote also admired Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan's first Imperial Wizard, a slave trader before the War, and a rebel commander who allegedly permitted the slaughter of surrendering black troops at a battle called Fort Pillow. Foote regarded Forrest as one of the "two authentic geniuses" of the War (Lincoln being the other). A daring cavalry commander, Forrest was the only soldier on either side to rise from private to lieutenant general in the course of the War, and his lightning tactics later inspired Rommel's use of blitzkrieg in World War II.

In Foote's view, Forrest was also "a fine man. My black friends abhor him. They want to take his statue down, dig up his and his wife's bones, and throw them to the wind. But it is not known generally that he dissolved the Klan when it turned ugly."

Disbanded around 1870 (owing not only to Forrest, but also to a government crackdown), the Klan revived in 1915 following the success of the movie Birth of a Nation and quickly became a potent force nationwide. "The Klan that people remember today is the Klan of the 1920s," Foote said. "Anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-black. Forrest's Klan was anti-black but not opposed to all black people. It was trying to keep illiterate blacks from occupying positions like sheriff and judge.”
― Tony Horwitz, Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War