Dear Sir,” begins the membership form, “We have been requested by one of your personal friends to get in touch with you, and inform you of this organization.” A list of questions follows.
“What is your age? What is your occupation? Where were you born?”
And:
“Were your parents born in the United States of America? Are you a gentile or a Jew? Are you of the white race or the colored race? Do you believe in the principles of PURE Americanism?”
And:
“Do you believe in White Supremacy?”
The small print at the bottom of the form reads, “PRINTED BY THE KU KLUX PRESS.” A faded stamp identifies it as being printed in Medford, Oregon.
The Ku Klux Klan was a political machine, a terrorist organization, and a pyramid scheme. And for a few years in the early 1920s, it was one of the most powerful political groups in Oregon.
The “Second” Klan
“The Klan is a product of the Civil War,” says Darrell Millner, a professor emeritus of history at Portland State University. “The South lost the war, but they won the peace. And the Klan is a reason they won the peace…. It accomplished in the seven years following the Civil War what Robert E. Lee wasn’t able to do.”
“It was literally a terrorist organization,” says Linda Gordon, a professor of history at New York University and author of The Second Coming of the KKK, “that used lynching and other forms of violence to make sure that emancipation was not going to give African Americans equality or even any political or civic rights.”
