Thursday, February 11, 2016

KKK in Chicago in the 1920s-- Part 3: Newspaper Reactions

The city's black newspaper, the Chicago defender editorialized:  "The Ku Klux Klan has reached Chicago:  Full page ads in the papers, followed by the announcement that 12,000 of them had met at Charles Weeghman's farm thirty miles out of town, and in the pouring rain initiated nearly 3,000 more, ought to jar us off our do-nothing stools."

The Chicago tribune also decried the coming of the KKK, but said it went against the goals of the original KKK saying:  "The first Ku Klux Klan grew out of intolerable conditions in the south and passed away when the danger of Negro domination and the plague of carpetbagger were lifted.

"It was born in an emergency and, while evils were committed in its name, it served an important end, while contributing one of the romantic episodes of our history."

Imagine any newspaper saying this today?

--DaCoot


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