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Special Collections and University Archives, Virginia Tech
Special Collections and University Archives, University Libraries (0434)Kathryn Walters, Graduate Assistant, and Kira A. Dietz, Archivist
Permission to publish material from Virginia Ku Klux Klan Collection must be obtained from Special Collections, Virginia Tech.
The collection is open for research.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Virginia Ku Klux Klan Collection, Ms2018-002, Special Collections, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va.
The Virginia Ku Klux Klan Collection was purchased by Special Collections in April 2015.
The processing, arrangement, and description of the Virginia Ku Klux Klan Collection was completed in June 2018.
The K.K.K originated in the South in the 1860s after the Civil War as a white supremacist organization and terrorist movement. The Klan was inactive after the end of Reconstruction, but reemerged in the 1920s as a national movement with widespread outspokenness against Jews, Catholics, and immigrants.
The Klan in the 1960s was predominantly in the South and became increasingly active in opposition to the Civil rights movement. The United Klans of America, which is highlighted in this collection, was the most notorious Klan group. The majority of Klan members belonged to this Alabama-based organization led by Robert Sheldon. Klansmen in the 1960s were typically blue-collar workers, without a high school education, and in their thirties. Klan membership in this decade reached fifty thousand. Klansmen believed that integration risked their economic, political, and social status, and resisted desegregation with violence. Members of the Klan attacked and firebombed Civil rights activists and African American homes and churches, burned crosses, and murdered African Americans and supporters of integration. After desegregation, Klan activity dropped with less than 5,000 members in the 1970s.
Marshal Robert Kornegay (1928–1975), from North Carolina, was the Grand Dragon of Virginia for the United Klans of America from 1965-1968. The Virginia Klan practiced similar violent acts of resistance against the Civil rights movement as the national organization and held many rallies in the Richmond, Virginia area.
Source: Singleton, Carl, and Rowena Wildin. The Sixties in America Vol. 3, Vol. 3. The Sixties in America. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 1999.
This collection contains several broadsides for Klan rallies and events in and around Richmond, Virginia. Most of are from June through October of 1966, as well as a Ku Klux Klan Membership Application Package with two booklets and several pieces of ephemera detailing the history and beliefs of the organization including its attitudes towards integration, National Council of Churches, Communism, the Selma to Montgomery march, the constitutionality of the United Klan Association, and the House Un-American Activities Committee.