The Presence of the Ku Klux Klan in Pine Bluff
- Ninfa O. Barnard
- Aug 13
- 4 min read
During the 1920s, Pine Bluff, like many other Southern cities, experienced a surge in the number of white residents joining the Ku Klux Klan.
On December 24, 1865, a group of former Confederate soldiers founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan (commonly known as the KKK or Klan) in Pulaski, Tennessee. The Ku Klux Klan was founded as a white supremacist fraternal organization for white male Protestants who vehemently opposed the post-Civil War Reconstruction efforts, especially the federal government's efforts to ensure civil rights for African Americans.
By 1870, the Klan expanded into almost every southern state with numerous independent chapters across the South. To enforce their white supremacist agenda, the Klan launched a campaign of fear, intimidation, violence, and murder. They targeted politically active African Americans in the South, along with their allies, white voters who supported racial equality and civil rights. This campaign of terror featured Klan members wearing colorful homemade costumes, robes, masks, and pointed hats to both terrify their victims and hide their identities.
Although Klan violence was often attributed to poor white Southerners, Klan membership crossed class lines, including farmers, laborers, planters, merchants, lawyers, physicians, ministers, judges, and members of law enforcement.
During Reconstruction, Klan violence went largely unchecked by local authorities, prompting the federal government to intervene. In 1871, the U.S. Congress passed the Force Bill, which allowed federal courts to prosecute Klan members. In 1871, Congress also passed two other Enforcement Acts, including the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which designated certain crimes as federal offenses, including conspiracies to deprive citizens of the right to hold office, serve on juries, and enjoy equal protection under the law. The Ku Klux Klan Act also authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (legal right to protection from unlawful detention), arrest accused individuals without charge, and send federal forces to suppress Klan violence. Consequently, this dramatically slowed the Klan’s activities.
Unfortunately, Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel The Clansman and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation romanticized and glorified the Klan’s activities. With its new resurgence in popularity, the Klan expanded its agenda to include discrimination and violence against Catholics, Jews, organized labor, and immigrants.
During the 1920s, Klan membership swelled, exceeding 4 million members nationwide. Cross burning and the wearing of white-hooded robes became standards during this time as the Klan held rallies, parades, and marches around the country. Hangings, floggings, mutilations, tarring and featherings, kidnappings, and brandings by acid were crimes consistently committed in defense of the Klan’s racist beliefs.
During the 1920s, Pine Bluff, like many other Southern cities, experienced a surge in the number of white residents joining the Ku Klux Klan.
On September 14, 1922, the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic reported that Pine Bluff Klan No. 38 was planning to open its headquarters at 512 Main Street. The announcement of the Klan’s new Pine Bluff location was part of an effort to present the Klan as a patriotic organization accessible to the Pine Bluff public. Prominent Little Rock Klansmen, including Rev. P. G. Knowles, were invited to explain “the aims and purposes of the Klan to Pine Bluffians.”
On November 7, 1922, the Oklahoma Herald reported on a public initiation ceremony attended by five or six thousand spectators. Following this article, it listed “Kluxlets”, listing the location and size of Klans across the United States. Several of those listings were in Arkansas, with Pine Bluff boasting 1,400 Klan members in the public press. It was also stated that several hundred Klan members had attended an evening service of the Lakeside Methodist Church to hear Rev. H. B. Trimble expound on Klan principles at Geirieter Park.
Conversely, on March 17, 1923, the Pine Bluff Daily Graphic, Rev. L. J. Rothstein, Rabbi of Anshe Emeth, publicly denounced the Pine Bluff School Board’s decision to allow Dr. John Moore, a national Ku Klux Klan lecturer and former pastor of Pine Bluff’s First Baptist Church, to use the school’s auditorium. Rothstein stated that the auditorium should be utilized as a civic community center “used for every purpose that unites the people, but not for any purpose that would separate the people and cause discord and strife.” He also stated that allowing the Klan, an anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish organization, to utilize a facility maintained by Catholics and Jews was an insult to Jews, Catholics, and Pine Bluff Protestants not affiliated with the Klan.
Klan membership declined during the Great Depression, but resurged in response to the Civil Rights Movement, with murders and bombings characterizing their activities. According to an FBI correspondence dated Oct. 13, 1964, Arkansas had three “Klaverns” in Little Rock, Texarkana, and Pine Bluff. The Pine Bluff Klavern had the most active members of the cities with a total of twenty five. The correspondence further stated that the Klan also used a front organization, the National Patriots League (NPL) to carry out its work. This organization also organized the local Butram Country Club in 1964, with the land granted by the vice-president of the Klan, unbeknownst to some of the club patrons.
Cases of Klan-related violence have become more isolated in recent decades, though fragmented Klan groups have aligned themselves with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations. The Klan persists today but is estimated to have only about 3,000 active members. Its legacy represents a painful chapter of racism, intolerance, and divisiveness in the history of the United States.
Sources:
https://calendar.eji.org - A History of Racial Injustice: Confederate Veterans www.ebsco.com - Birth of the Ku Klux Klan
Written by: Ninfa O. Barnard
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