A KKK historian explains why the most feared hate group in American history was once as popular as the Freemasons, and why its iconic hood was designed to stop people making their own.

Full episode with Kristofer Allerfedlt: https://youtu.be/-WnsZGSYRUk

KKK historian and academic Kristofer Allerfeldt reveals why the Ku Klux Klan was not the fringe terrorist cult most people imagine but a mass fraternity that at its peak attracted up to 4 million ordinary Americans including one future US president. He explains that the organisation sold itself the same way as the Freemasons or the Odd Fellows, that members joined for social status and peer pressure, and that its most iconic symbol, the pointed white hood, was never designed to terrorise. It was designed to stop members making their own robes at home so the organisation could sell them at a profit.

He reveals that Harry Truman was a member of the Klan for three to four years in the 1920s, far longer than he ever publicly admitted, likely joining because his friends did and because Klan membership at that time was considered heroic, not shameful. The same man who would go on to desegregate the United States Army had spent years paying dues to a white supremacist organisation. When the guest visited a small town in Oklahoma and spoke to the son of a former Klansman, the man showed no shame, "Everyone here would have been a member," he said. At one parade, a seven-foot Catholic church leader marched with the Knights of Columbus, changed into his Klan robes, and marched again at the back. He was a member of both the anti-Catholic hate group and the Catholic fraternity itself.

He explains that the Klan was originally founded by six bored Confederate soldiers in a one-street town in Tennessee who could not even agree on a name and nearly called themselves the Thespians. Their costumes during the early years were not standardised white robes but bed sheets, dresses, and demonic-looking homemade masks. When the organisation was revived in the 1920s as a pyramid selling scheme, the leadership realised members were copying the robes from bed linen — so they made the hood so tall and rigid it required a specific type of stiff cotton that was impossible to replicate at home. The most sinister image in American hate history exists because of a business decision.

Discover:

• Why Harry Truman was a Klan member for years and what that reveals about 1920s America

• The Catholic church leader who marched in both the Knights of Columbus and the KKK parade on the same day

• How six bored soldiers in Tennessee nearly named the most feared hate group "the Thespians"

• Why the KKK's iconic pointed hood was a commercial decision, not a terror tactic

• How the Klan operated as a pyramid selling scheme that made its leadership rich

• Why the organisation became more violent only when its membership shrank

• The barber shop in Pulaski, Tennessee that still has a plaque marking where the Klan was founded

#KKKHistory #KuKluxKlan #HarryTruman #AmericanHistory #HateGroups #CivilisationsHistory #WatsonHowland