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The US had a president in the KKK? The fuck.
- Thread starter It’s Time To Go
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The Emmet Till bill was blocked just this year! Rand Paul blocked it from unanimous consent, and though it cleared the House easily, four Republicans voted against it.
There were a lot of WW1 vets who returned home with no prospects and completely abandoned. So not all that surprising.
Warren Harding wasn't ever in the KKK. It could have been a rumor the KKK spread to gain members.
Hugo Black, Supreme Court justice was as well and he was on the brown v board majority (it was unanimous but still), sent the mississippi burning case back to trial after it was dismissed, wrote Wesberry v. Sanders (and joined Reynolds v. Sims)
The early years of the Roosevelt Administration are fascinating. Harold Ickes and Eleanor Roosevelt were frequently combative with the Southern wing of the Democratic party, who ended up being the fulcrum on which the Republicans blocked progressive legislation in the late 30s.
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I have emailed the lecturer to point out according to research I did, Harding wasnt in the klan, and it is easily verifiable information when you look it up.
Wilson was too young to be in the first klan, and too old to be in the second klan. Same with Harding.
The Klan was really only powerful for 10 years after the Civil War and for 10 years after World War I. That's not to say that their views weren't shared by those in power, or that the group wasn't locally powerful outside of those years, but those would, generally, be the only years a politician would join the klan.
Wilson and Harding wouldn't turn away Klan support, but they also wouldn't have joined the organization, either.
The Klan was really only powerful for 10 years after the Civil War and for 10 years after World War I. That's not to say that their views weren't shared by those in power, or that the group wasn't locally powerful outside of those years, but those would, generally, be the only years a politician would join the klan.
Wilson and Harding wouldn't turn away Klan support, but they also wouldn't have joined the organization, either.
i mean, FDR was responsible for the Japanese internment camps. Not sure why people hold him to this holy grail of progressivism when his race record was not good by any means.
Harding was never a member of the KKK.
The KKK spread the message that Harding was a member to booster membership, but most historians do not think he was a member and there's no evidence that he was, despite the KKK spreading that message. While the KKK was arguably the third most powerful political organization in 1924, it would have been unusual for a northern republican to be in the KKK.
But more to the point, dozens or hundreds of american politicians, even federal congressmen, belonged to the KKK and it was not a fringe organization in the 1920s. It was mainstream.
The KKK spread the message that Harding was a member to booster membership, but most historians do not think he was a member and there's no evidence that he was, despite the KKK spreading that message. While the KKK was arguably the third most powerful political organization in 1924, it would have been unusual for a northern republican to be in the KKK.
But more to the point, dozens or hundreds of american politicians, even federal congressmen, belonged to the KKK and it was not a fringe organization in the 1920s. It was mainstream.
I mean, if you're trying to usurp power from the Solid South, it's a strategy. A dark, cynical, evil strategy, but a strategy. Only a jackass would try that strategy to break the Solid South.
Ohio had a massive KKK population too. We had more up here in the midwest than any Southern state. That shit was pretty mainstream at one time.An estimated 30% of all white men were in the Indiana Klan in that time period.
Indiana Klan - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Ohio Has Lengthy History with KKK
First KKK event planned in Dayton in nearly 25 years
spectrumnews1.com
I was gonna make a joke about Trump being in it, but we all know he'd refuse to wear the hood and hide his face.
Donald Trump is a convicted segregationist: https://www.npr.org/2016/09/29/4959...ed-by-decades-old-housing-discrimination-case
Wait till you learn that America's eugenics infrastructure was so well-developed and nationally accepted that the Nazis used it, along with Jim Crow laws, as a blueprint for their own genocidal infrastructure.
I'm not disagreeing with that. I'm just saying that he would refuse to wear the hood and hide his face. He's too much of an egomaniac for that. He'll just continue being a racist piece of shit without the hood.
There's a reason Biden's voice hit a certain tone during his convention speech about how perhaps finally we might be the generation to expunge the stain of racism that is upon our national soul.
It runs very deep, to say nothing of the other atrocities we've had a hand in, and still do.
It runs very deep, to say nothing of the other atrocities we've had a hand in, and still do.
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Looking at the module content, we don't go that far into it.
Pretty sure there were many they just didn't admit it. Then the ones in congress, supreme court, other courts, DOJ,etc.
Even the President that signed the Civil Rights Act was a racist. Things are less shocking and more clear once you realize that racism is a feature in the US design and not a bug.
Even the President that signed the Civil Rights Act was a racist. Things are less shocking and more clear once you realize that racism is a feature in the US design and not a bug.
Well Wilson sucked and was super racist but at least we didn't have a global pandemic under him like we did with Trump... oh.
It is the onion of American social problems. There's layers to it. Way, way too many layers, and removing most of them and planting what's left usually allows it to sprout.
The KKK was in british secondary school textbooks when american history of that era was part of the curriculum in the mid nineties. I remember because it said the KKK mysteriously collapsed (from its time of super high popularity) and I wondered at the time what caused it, and then about 10 years ago I read a book called the History of the FBI which said that LBJ ordered J Edgar Hoover to get rid of them.
If FDR hadn't been President during the 30s and early 40s, there is a good chance the US would have been on the side of the Nazis.
Not fighting on their side, as the nationalists in the US were isolationists, but ideologically on their side.
Not fighting on their side, as the nationalists in the US were isolationists, but ideologically on their side.
Harry Truman was a member. It's one of the reason why he became VP. Then he did an Executive Order to end discrimination in the military.
But yeah Woodrow Wilson is a massive racist who for some reason viewed as a progressive.
But yeah Woodrow Wilson is a massive racist who for some reason viewed as a progressive.
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Same as LBJ, who did many great things during his time in office but also put us in Vietnam.
The government being what it is, I don't think it's possible for any president to come out of the White House squeaky clean. There are some however who try to avoid or at least temper our worst sins, and others who wholly embrace them and make things worse.
That's really odd. Was a big part of the 60s bit when I was doing it. Seems like a massive omission
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Possibly I'm forgetting it, but I'm sure it never came up.
"It's like writing history with lightning. My only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
Yeah this seems to be disputed in the literature.
But honestly I thought this was about Trump.
I just had a look around and I still have the book! I was wrong on where it focuses though, there were 3 pages on the kkk for the 20s section, and then it's mentioned a fair bit for 60s. Was written specifically for the GCSE syllabus back then.
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I'll ask someone else I took the class with, see if I just forgot it. Would be a strange omission.
I wouldn't say that. Nixon was a complicated man. There is no doubt he was a causal racist and an anti-semite, but he was also a life long desegregationist who helped pass the Civil Rights Act as Vice President and was friends with Martin Luther King Jr. (until their relationship soured - though he did privately visit King's widow after his assassination), and did things like try to pass Universal Healthcare on 3 different occasions. This old article from The Atlantic (which I've selected a few choice quotes from) goes into his impact on race:
Furthermore, although he started the War on Drugs, it wasn't like the war we have to day (the shift happened under Reagan). It was more focused on rehabilitation than it is now. Likewise, Ehrlichman's famous quote about linking African Americans to heroin may not be entirely true, either. Ehrlichman had an axe to grind with Nixon after his former boss failed to pardon him for his involvement in Watergate, and he never got over it. The truth is (as the articles I posted go into) Nixon was a true believer in the drug war, in the sense that he wanted to eliminate all drug use, and likely didn't see it as a racial issue so much as a moral one. He went as far as to criticize George H.W. Bush's handling of it in 1991, for only going after crack dens, while ignoring elite drug users (like directors, rock stars, and writers), who Nixon viewed as a bigger threat to public health than any street drug dealer. At the same time, he also called for more government assistance to help people get off of drugs:
Again, Nixon was most assuredly a racist (at best, he was simply unwilling to push back against the racist views of those around him), but I think saying he may as well have been a member of the KKK is overselling it a bit.
"Solid south" as political lexicon is about 40 years after Harding's time, and the idea of Republicans usurping that would not be a political plan until the 1960s and Nixon. Harding, for his faults and he was certainly a racist, was not a KKK member as a matter of simple fact. Harding was a terrible president, much worse than Hoover, but he wasn't a member of the KKK. And moreover he didn't win the south.
In the 1920 election Cox carries every Southern state (minus Tennessee) and Harding carried the rest of the country. He didn't try to win Southern Democratic votes.
I was making a crack about the Southern Strategy :p
Also, the Solid South was very much in political lexicon before the 20th century.
Here is a political cartoon from 1906:
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Well of course I was aware. But I hadn't studied it before, even at a surface level.
