History of Women in the Ku Klux Klan

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE KU KLUX KLAN

In today's modern Ku Klux Klans,women play a very active role and are full members in the various Klan organizations. This was not always the case. Here is a little history of women who used their sewing skills to help others on the godly venture of protecting their white kith and kin; see Bible Study #2 for examples of Biblical seamstresses, along with other ordained occupations.

"THE ROLE OF WOMEN DURING THE FIRST ERA OF THE KKK"

(--from the book Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan 1866-1871

by Stanley F. Horn, 1939, Crown Rights Book Company.)

CROWN RIGHTS BOOK COMPANY:

http://www.crownrights.com/books/invisible_empire.htm

"Since it was to the weird appearance of their disguises that the Ku Klux owed so much of the terror they created among the negroes, it is worth while to pay more than passing attention to this phase of their operations. In its official investigation the Government apparently started out with the idea of trying to
establish the fact of a single, central authority somewhere in the Invisible Empire which supplied the members with their robes, and the question was asked of all the early witnesses whether the disguises they may have seen seemed to have been made by tailors or other skilled hands, and if the Ku Klux were all dressed alike. It soon became apparent, however, that there was actually little uniformity about the uniforms, paradoxical as that may sound; and they were obviously home-made and not supplied by any central quartermaster like the uniforms worn by an army.

One of the most romantic features of the whole Ku Klux movement was the method pursued by the Klansmen in supplying themselves with the disguises in which they appeared. No man was willing to incriminate his wife, his mother, his sister or his sweetheart; but it was these women-folks who sat up till the late hours of the night to ply their needles and threads to furnish the disguises needed. Here again the indirect method was used; for, whatever they might suspect, the ladies must be able to say that they did not know anything about the Ku Klux. A Southern woman seated by her lamp at night was not startled if a package was tossed into an open window which, upon examination, was found to contain a piece of cloth with directions as to how to make it into a robe of the desired size and style, and also directions as to where to leave it when it was finished. Or a group of robed Ku Klux would ride up to a house in broad daylight, with a supply of material, and openly negotiate with the women of the house for the making of the desired robes, meanwhile cracking jokes with the wide-eyed but unafraid children. The women, of course, never knew the identity of any men involved in such dealings, and they were particular not to try to find out anything definite about it. A young country girl in Tennessee found a package on the gallery containing calico, buttons and thread, with the note: 'Dear Missy: Please make this into two robes and two masks for Two Ku Klux.' The young woman had no idea of the authors of the note; but she made the two suits of a size to fit her two elder brothers, and left them on a stump by the front fence as directed--and there was never any complaint as to the fit. A man who worked in a small-town general store at the time said: 'I never saw as many big, two-fisted men as suddenly began to sidle up to the dry-goods counter in the store and buy quantities of black or white or red calico. Generally they would buy just about enough to make a full-sized robe for a man--but of course it was none of my business what a man did with a piece of dry goods after he had bought it, and I couldn't swear that any of my customers were Ku Klux.'

There was printed in a Nashville paper a copy of a letter received by two young ladies of the city, requesting them to make two robes, this letter reading:

'Invisible Empire
Headquarters K. K. K.
Anno Domini, 1868

Misses X and Y:

Knowing you to be friends of the Ku Klux Klan, the Grand Cyclops takes the privilege of requesting you to make a couple of robes for some of his poor, needy followers, and if you will be so kind as to make them the protecting eye of the Great Grand Cyclops will ever rest upon you. Thinking that you will make them, the following are the directions:
Make two robes reaching to the ground, open in front, bordered with white three inches wide, white cuffs and collars, half moons on the left breast with stars in the center of each moon, and caps of a conical shape twelve inches high with a tassel, with white cloth hanging over the face so as to conceal it, and behind so as to hide the back of the head.
Make the first of the caps red, the second and third white, and the rest red.

By Order of the G. G. Cyclops.
Abel Haassaanan, G. Scribe

The Grand Turk will be after them on the night of the 15th, at 10 o'clock. You are requested to burn this after reading.'

Although the Ku Klux in fiction and newspaper stories are invariably described as 'white-robed' figures, the fact seems to be that the matter of color and style was left largely to the individual's personal taste, although all were of a grotesque nature calculated to impress and terrify the ignorant and superstitious... 'The impression sought to be made,' said Ryland Randolph, Grand Cyclops of the Den at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 'was that these white-robed night prowlers were the ghosts of the Confederate dead who had arisen from their graves in order to work vengeance on an undesirable class of both white and black men...' There was, however, an early departure from the popularity of the white robes, and black or red with white trimmings seemed to be favored."

(--from the book Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan 1866-1871

by Stanley F. Horn, 1939, Crown Rights Book Company.)

CROWN RIGHTS BOOK COMPANY:

http://www.crownrights.com/books/invisible_empire.htm

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