What kind of people are supremacists?  (Part One)                                      

The very first word that comes to mind is CREEPS. However, with snide expressions aside, a White nationalist is defined as “one of a group of militant whites who espouse white supremacy and advocates enforced racial segregation.  A white supremacist is also described as “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.” Now I will tell who these disgusting groups that exist in the United States.

Klu Klux Klan

The name "Ku Klux Klan" was most likely originated from the Greek word "kuklos", meaning circle. Also, "Klan" was considered another version for the word "clan", so the founders of the KKK must have merged these words together to form the name of their organization, "Ku Klux Klan". 

The KKK was founded in 1866 and was extended into almost every southern state by 1870. It became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. Its white members waged an underground campaign of intimidation and violence directed at white and black Republican leaders. Though Congress passed legislation designed to curb Klan terrorism, the organization saw its primary goal–the reestablishment of white supremacy–fulfilled through Democratic victories in state legislatures across the South in the 1870s. After a period of decline, white Protestant nativist groups revived the Klan in the early 20th century, burning crosses and staging rallies, parades and marches denouncing immigrants, Catholics, Jews, blacks and organized labor. The civil rights movement of the 1960s also saw a surge of Ku Klux Klan activity, including bombings of black schools and churches and violence against black and white activists in the South.

 A group including many former Confederate veterans had founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention and established what they called an Invisible Empire of the South. Leading Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan.  He presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses. What? Did they have the minds of little children?

The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction, put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party in Congress. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson’s relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts, and each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted “equal protection” of the US Constitution to former slaves and enacted universal male suffrage.

By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches in nearly every southern state. Even at its height, the Klan did not boast a well-organized structure or clear leadership. Local Klan members–often wearing masks and dressed in the organization’s signature long white robes and hoods–usually carried out their attacks at night, acting on their own but in support of the common goals of defeating Radical Reconstruction and restoring white supremacy in the South. Klan activity flourished particularly in the regions of the South where blacks were a minority or a small majority of the population, and was relatively limited in others. Among the most notorious zones of Klan activity was South Carolina, where in January 1871 500 masked men attacked the Union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners.

Though Democratic leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to poorer southern whites, the organization’s membership crossed class lines, from small farmers and laborers to planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians and ministers. In the regions where most Klan activity took place, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan or declined to take action against it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found it difficult to find witnesses willing to testify against them. Other leading white citizens in the South declined to speak out against the group’s actions, giving them tacit approval. After 1870, Republican state governments in the South turned to Congress for help, resulting in the passage of three Enforcement Acts, the strongest of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated certain crimes committed by individuals as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries and enjoy the equal protection of the law. The act authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused individuals without charge, and to send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. This expansion of federal authority–which Ulysses S. Grant promptly used in 1871 to crush Klan activity in South Carolina and other areas of the South–outraged Democrats and even alarmed many Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the South as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was under Democratic control once again.

In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.

The Great Depression in the 1930s depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil rights movement of the 1960s saw a surge of local Klan activity across the South, including the bombings, beatings and shootings of black and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.

 Nowadays, they aren’t seen wearing white hoods, but they carry confederate flags, swastikas flags, guns, (like decent people also) and clubs to beat people and at night when marching, torches.  In fact are they really active nowadays? The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are 190 active KKK groups with between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members in the U.S.

Many years ago when I was the producer and host of a TV talk show, I invited the head of the Klu Klux Klan in Canada to be my guest on my show. What he didn’t know was that the head of the Human Rights Society (who was a black man) was also going to be a guest on my show at the same time.

When the show began, only I and the black man were sitting in front of the cameras. Five minute later, the head of the Canadian head of the KKK appeared. The first thing he said when he sat on his chair that was next to my other guest was, “I didn’t think I had to sit next to a black man.” My other guest said in reply, “Shut up or I will eat you!” My black guest later made mincemeat of the other man’s views about relationships between the races.

 The United Klans of America

The United Klans of America have a website. In that website, in which they have written the following;

“The Klan is a Fraternal Order that is meant to help White Men and Women live as SEPARATIST and not SUPREMACIST lifestyle.  We walk among you everyday, interacting in our daily activities and most of the time you have no clue, (who we are) unless we want you to.” unquote  

Although the white separatist movement stereotype is that of a Southern phenomenon tied to an uneducated and disenfranchised segment of men, the movement is in reality more complex and multifaceted.   

There is no law against being a separatist since the Constitutions guarantees them freedom of speech providing their speeches don’t advocate hate statements against other races etc.

Unfortunately, the United Klans of America (UKA) have a bad reputation of violence. The increase in activism in the 1960s resulted in the UKA reaching a peak of active members and sympathetic support, with numbers estimated at 26,000 to 33,000 throughout the South in 1965. It was the largest KKK faction in the world, in a highly decentralized organization. The organization was most popular in North Carolina, where by 1966 over half of all UKA members resided. The UKA disseminated its messages through a newsletter known as The Fiery Cross, which was printed in Swartz, Louisiana. But, membership began to slip once the group was linked to criminal activity, and after Shelton served a one-year term in prison for contempt of the United States Congress in 1969. In the early 1970s, UKA membership dropped from tens of thousands to somewhere between 3500 and 4000. Alas, some of its members continued to enact violence. By the 1980s, membership dropped to around 900.
 

In the 1990s the UKA experienced a resurgence of activity of members who returned to teachings of the Imperial Wizard, Col. William Joseph Simmons, who had founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1939. Simmons taught a kind of fraternal organization that is practiced by the UKA in the 21st century. It has several Klaverns active in twenty nine states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. UKA membership is not known precisely. The leadership is believed to be weak and the activity of the UKA is limited to ceremonial practices with no clear political agenda.

During the Civil Rights Movement in the Southern United States, members of the United States Klan and the KKK joined forces in 1960 to resist and suppress change. In July 1961, Robert Shelton, the son of a member of the KKK, settled in Alabama after his discharge from the Air Force. He rose to become the dominant figure, or the Imperial Wizard, of the UKA after his "Alabama Knights" group merged with "Invisible Empire, United Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of America, Inc.", Georgia Knights, and Carolina Units, forming the United Klans of America (UKA).

The increase in activism in the 1960s resulted in the UKA reaching a peak of active members and sympathetic support, with numbers estimated at 26,000 to 33,000 throughout the South in 1965. It was the largest KKK faction in the world, in a highly decentralized organization.^[7] The organization was most popular in North Carolina, where by 1966 over half of all UKA members resided.^[8] The UKA disseminated its messages through a newsletter known as The Fiery Cross, which was printed in Swartz, Louisiana. But, membership began to slip once the group was linked to criminal activity, and after Shelton served a one-year term in prison for contempt of the United States Congress in 1969. In the early 1970s, UKA membership dropped from tens of thousands to somewhere between 3500 and 4000.^[3] Some members continued to enact violence. By the 1980s, membership dropped to around 900.

In the 1990s the UKA experienced a resurgence of activity of members who returned to teachings of the Imperial Wizard, Col. William Joseph Simmons, who had founded and led the second Ku Klux Klan from 1915 to 1939. Simmons taught a kind of fraternal organization that is practiced by the UKA in the 21st century. It has several Klaverns active in twenty nine states, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. UKA membership is not known precisely. The leadership is believed to be weak and the activity of the UKA is limited to ceremonial practices with no clear political agenda.

The 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama had a very
strong congregation and was a center of activism for many black people involved in the Civil Rights Movement in the city, including members of the SCLC who came to help with organizing. Many marchers would often depart from the church in 1963 protesting against the city's segregation of businesses and public places.

On a Sunday in September 1963, a bomb exploded in the church during services, killing four young girls: 11-year-old Denise McNair, 14-year-old Carole Robertson, 14-year-old Cynthia Wesley, and 14-year-old Addie Mae Collins. More than 20 other parishioners were injured.^[  Addie Mae Collin’s sister lost an eye from injuries of the bombing.

Witnesses said they saw a white man put a box underneath the Church steps after getting out of his Chevrolet car. The police arrested Robert Chambliss, a member of the UKA, after he was identified by a witness, and charged him with murder, in addition to "…possessing a box of 122 sticks of dynamite without a permit." The trial took place in October, but Chambliss was not convicted of murder. He did receive a fine of one hundred dollars and six months in jail for possession of the dynamite. He was tried again when Bill Baxley, the state attorney general of Alabama, realized that much of the evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had against Chambliss was not used in his original trial.  The state tried Chambliss, who in 1977 was convicted of the murder of the four girls, and he was sentenced to life in prison when he was 73 years old where he eventually died. Chambliss never confessed to the bombing.

On May 16, 2000, the remaining suspects were indicted. The jury convicted UKA members Robert Chambliss, Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., and Bobby Frank Cherry of planting the 19 sticks of dynamite that were used in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church. In 2001, Thomas E. Blanton, Jr., was sentenced to life in prison following his trial, in which he was charged with murder. In 2002, Bobby Frank Cherry also was tried for murder and he, too, received life in prison.

The acquittal of a black man accused of shooting a white police officer in Alabama in 1981 was the erstwhile reason given by murderers for the lynching of Michael Donald, a 19-year-old black man, on March 21, 1981. After Josephus Andersonan, a black man in Mobile, Alabama, was charged with the murder of a white police officer but acquitted at trial.

UKA member Bennie Hays blamed the jury, claiming the acquittal was due to the presence of African-American members. Hays said he would kill a black man in retaliation. On March 21, his son Henry Hays, and another younger member of the UKA, James Knowles, decided to take action and drove around to find a victim. They found Michael Donald walking along the street and made him get into their car. After kidnapping him, they drove out to a bordering county, where Hays and Knowles hanged him from a tree.

During the investigation, the police concluded that the murder had to do with drugs, but Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, knew her son was not involved with drugs, and decided to take action. She eventually talked to national activist Jesse Jackson of Chicago. Thomas Figures, Mobile's U.S. District Attorney, contacted the FBI to take on the case under federal civil rights law. Knowles quickly confessed to the lynching.^[10] In 1983, James Knowles of the UKA's Klavern in Mobile, was convicted for the 1981 murder of Michael Donald. His conviction resulted in a sentence of life in prison; he was given mercy as he was 17 at the time of the killing. At trial Knowles said that he and Henry Hays killed Donald "in order to show Klan strength in Alabama".

During the civil trial, Knowles said that he was "carrying out the orders" of Bennie Jack Hays, Henry Hays's father, and a long time Shelton lieutenant. The trial ended with a guilty verdict, and Knowles, was charged with “violating Donald’s civil rights”, and received a sentence of life in prison. Hays was charged a few months later with the murder of Donald. He was found guilty, and sentenced to death. Hays was executed in June 1997. It had been more than 80 years in Alabama since a white man had been executed, for a crime against an African American.          
 

In the spring of 1979, 20 UKA members were indicted in Birmingham, Alabama for violent racial episodes in Talladega County, Alabama. Three members pleaded guilty, while 10 others were found guilty. One of the violent racial episodes included, firing into the homes of officers of the NAACP.    

During the summer of 2013, leaflets purporting to be from the UKA were found in Milford, Connecticut. The leaflets advertised a neighborhood watch, telling residents they can "sleep soundly" knowing the UKA is on patrol. These actions were condemned by town and state leadership. On June 29, 2013 leaflets bearing the same message were also left overnight in the driveways of several homes in Burien, Washington, 10 miles south of Seattle. The incident was reported to the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Burien Police. According to a regional Anti-Defamation League official, the incarnation of the UKA responsible for the flyers was unconnected to the older, defunct organization.

I couldn’t find anything on the Internet that the UKA was present in the Charlottesville protests. Have they disappeared altogether?

Part Two of this series will be about the role of neo Nazis.