Editorial — by the Lehigh Acres Gazette editorial board
Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s
A group including many former Confederate veterans founded the first branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. The first two words of the organization’s name supposedly derived from the Greek word “kyklos,” meaning circle. In the summer of 1867, local branches of the Klan met in a general organizing convention and established what they called an “Invisible Empire of the South.” Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses.
From 1867 onward, Black participation in public life in the South became one of the most radical aspects of Reconstruction, as Black people won election to southern state governments and even to the U.S. Congress. For its part, the Ku Klux Klan dedicated itself to an underground campaign of violence against Republican leaders and voters (both Black and white) in an effort to reverse the policies of Radical Reconstruction and restore white supremacy in the South.
In 1915, white Protestant nativists organized a revival of the Ku Klux Klan near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired by their romantic view of the Old South as well as Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.”
This second generation of the Klan was not only anti-Black but also took a stand against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners and organized labor. It was fueled by growing hostility to the surge in immigration that America experienced in the early 20th century along with fears of communist revolution akin to the Bolshevik triumph in Russia in 1917. The organization took as its symbol a burning cross and held rallies, parades and marches around the country. At its peak in the 1920s, Klan membership exceeded 4 million people nationwide.
In 2015, Three Ku Klux Klan members who worked at a Florida prison have been charged with plotting to kill a black inmate after his release because they believed the man is infected with HIV and hepatitis and he bit one of them during a fight. Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the KKK group to which the three men were said to belong, did not confirm or deny their membership.
As of 2016, the Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan membership to be around 3,000, while the Southern Poverty Law Center said there were 6,000 members total.
One of the most notable of divisions occurred at the end of 2019 and into the very beginning of 2020, when controversy surrounding stolen American Christian Dixie Knights funds divided leadership in that group and led to the creation of a new group, the United Klan Nation.
Fort Myers 1963, Rosalind Blalock was a senior at the all-black Dunbar High School. She was planning a career in medical technology and wanted to transfer to the all-white Fort Myers High School, which had better science equipment and new textbooks. Because she was black, however, Rosalind was denied enrollment. Rosalind’s father helped to instigate a lawsuit that would continue for 35 years.
Finally, in 1999, 35 years after Rosalind Blalock was denied enrollment at Fort Myers High School, a federal judge ruled that the Lee County school district was unitary. In the eyes of the government, it had eliminated its dual systems of education.
But, in Lee County in the later 70’s through the later 80’s lynching and other violence became norm is a terrorist tactic that white people (KKK) used to exert power over black men and women in the Dunbar area of Ft Myers.
Allegations of an unsafe Ft Myers were ramped during the same time frame.
This time frame was when Ceil Pendergrass was an officer of the Ft Myers police department.
Records show that Lee County Commissioner Cecil Pendergrass received campaign donations from the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in 2017 and 2018. click here
SCV is a Neo-Confederacy also incorporates advocacy of traditional gender roles, is hostile toward democracy, strongly opposes homosexuality, and exhibits an understanding of race that favors segregation and suggests white supremacy.
Could Pendergrass been a member of the KKK in Florida?
