The Klan of the 1960s has parallels to today’s tea party

The Political Agitator response: Just a few miles away Johnston County is known for the signs home of the KKK. But right here at home the KKK mentality has been real all of my 52 years from what I have been told and from what I have seen for myself since I have been of age. KKK of 1960’s, I was born in 1962 so folks that is why I can relate. So does the hats in this article look something similar to the hats in this article: “Party Hats? So The Girls Over At Nash Central High School Said Their Hats Were Party Hats! What Do You Think?”

What should we make of the fact that the North Carolina of the fictional Mayberry and The Andy Griffith Show was once also home to 10,000 very real and dues-paying members of the Ku Klux Klan—more than all other Southern states combined?

At first, the black-and-white images of the Klan parading in Salisbury or meeting at Memorial Auditorium in Raleigh seem out of an antiquarian past, irrelevant to our time. But as William Faulkner, chronicler of the South, memorably said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

As if channeling Faulkner, the story told by Klansville U.S.A., a new television documentary produced for the “American Experience” series on PBS, isn’t from the 19th century, when the KKK was created by defeated Confederate soldiers. Nor is it from the early 20th century, when the KKK arose again to enforce segregation. Rather, this is the KKK of the 1960s that came from the grave and took shape, especially in North Carolina, in opposition to the civil rights movement. (Source: Read more)