| Summary: | The original Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866 in Pulaski, Tennessee and disbanded in 1869.
The Klan was reborn in 1915 near Atlanta, Georgia, in the wake of Thomas Dickson's 1905 novel "The Clansman" and the 1915 DW Griffith film adaptation "The Birth of a Nation."
There is at least one reference to "the local Ku Klux Klan" from May 5, 1921 however according to the "Florence Herald" in September of 1921 “Florence turned down the [Ku Klux Klan] organization.” In 1921 city officials of Florence supported by the "Florence Herald" and "Florence Times" repudiated the Klan specifically because of its secretive, violent, vigilante nature (though not specifically for its racism).
On September 16, 1921, "Florence Times" editor Ambrose Camper wrote an editorial denouncing the Klan in which he stated:
"This paper was one of the first to take up the cudgels [sic] against it [the Klan], and the more we see of its movements and effects, the more we are against it. It is calculated to do infinite damage to the south, and can be productive of no good, but of much harm."
The "Florence Herald," too, came out against the Klan, on September 23, 1921 stating that, "There is no longer any reason for the Ku Klux Klan in this country. . . . We are glad Florence turned down the organization—refused to have anything to do with it."
Local clubs and service organizations such as Florence’s Rotary Club also publicly repudiated the Klan and in the 1926 Lauderdale county elections Republican candidates publicly accused several Democratic nominees for county and city offices of being backed by the Klan, asking voters if they wanted elected officials who were responsible to all of the electorate, or only to “that unknown element and invisible force known as the Ku Klux Klan.” Thus Florence’s relationship with the Ku Klux Klan seems to have been ambivalent at best.
Unfortunately despite all of this, by May of 1923 it appears that Florence Klan No. 73, Realm of Alabama had been founded. No reports of Klan violence against minorities in Lauderdale has been discovered yet (though on one occasion in July of 1925 Klan No. 73 used tactics designed to intimidate two houses of prostitution, one on East Sweetwater Street (possibly African-American) and the other—probably the notorious white madam Kate Nelson’s—on South Seminary. If such racially motivated violence occurred, it went unreported.
On Friday, May 25, 1923 the "Florence Times" noted that "last Thursday afternoon" the Knights of the Fiery Cross, a "local Ku Klux Klan" group, had extended an invitation to the public via circulars to witness an initiation ceremony of approx. 150 new members at "the river bottom" (probably McFarland) at 9 o'clock that night, which was attended by a "tremendous crowd," which blocked traffic. This was presumably a ceremony of Klan No. 73.
We need to do more research but Klan No. 73 seems to have fizzled out by 1928; no reference to it has been located in local papers after August of 1927, again, possibly because public sentiment in Florence, led by the press and city officials, was against it.
The first reappearance of the Klan in Colbert County occurred in Sheffield. on Saturday night, November 25, 1922 when a group of out-of-town Klansmen in fifteen automobiles, with covered license plates, from "the east" staged a parade through the Streets of Sheffield. And on Sunday night, August 24, 1924 "about sixty members of the Ku Klux" posted notices in Steenson Hollow, near the south side of Wilson Dam, warning locals of a mixed race man passing as white who had moved to the neighborhood from Wayne County, Tennessee.
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