The KKK: Who Were Those Masked Men?

It is not clear when the Klan took a dark turn, but it seems to have happened fairly early in the game. Somebody noticed that when you get dressed up in a sheet with a pillow case over your head that you are in a right good disguise. In disguise, especially at night, you can do stuff that you'd never get away with ordinarily. In light of the times, this revelation was a profound one.

The times were shortly after the War Between the States. The War had gotten on everybody's nerves, and now the victorious Yankees continued to keep everybody's nerves in shreds. Everything was up in the air, including law and order. The old institutions were now defunct and the Yankees were just getting things set up. People were running scared all over the place. What's more, they were as mad as a bunch of hornets who've had their nest ripped off the eaves and stepped on.

Mix up a full measure of anger, with a full measure of fear, and stir in a dose of disguisable deeds, and you've got the KKK. Who could resist?

I have heard it said the Klan was originally "good". That would depend on your definition of good, and it would depend on which of the many disjointed klaverns (groups) of the Klan you are talking about. The Klan never did have much centralized leadership, so anybody could form a group, throw on the bedclothes and say they were the KKK. Quite probably there were some groups who did form as a grassroots defense of kith and kin against wandering bands of unchecked criminals. Although in such times, it is anybody's guess what was considered a crime and who were the criminals.

Overall, the thing just got out of hand and created more victims than it delivered. Even the first Grand Wizard, who was no less than a Confederate General, saw where it was headed and called for it to disband. But many scattered klaverns never totally disbanded. Little groups stayed in operation all over Dixieland until it was formally recreated around 1920.

The main problem with the Ku Klux Klan was that after it quit being a silly fraternity, it was designed to operate outside of law and order. A klavern made up its own rules, designated its own criminals, and tried and punished them outside of the law.

Immediately after the War, in places where law and order was weak or nonexistent, a klavern may have provided a sort of temporary law and order. However, The Klan outlived itself when law was restored to the land. It should've died a natural death within a generation of the Civil War. But it didn't.

Something has kept it alive beyond its time and any original purpose. The purpose of the Ku Klux Klan of later generations has nothing to do with the circumstances of a war-torn people. We have rebuilt. Dixieland is alive and well. We are no longer a separate nation from the north, but then we were not a separate country for most of our existence. We retain our identity as a gracious people with a special way of speaking and living that the War could not take from us.

--Bo Dixie