Ku Klux Klan Act

EQCA: 'No illusion' on Stop SB 48

Officials with Equality California have cast doubt on the chances of defeating repeal of the FAIR Education Act, and Executive Director Roland Palencia said they have "no illusion" that victory will be easy.

In a conference call with reporters last week, Palencia said, "The prospects are not good if [the repeal referendum] gets to the ballot. ... I'm not under any illusion that we necessarily have any advantage on this."

The Fair, Accurate, Inclusive, and Respectful Education Act, also known as Senate Bill 48, requires schools teach about the historical contributions of LGBT people. Gay state Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) authored the bill, which was sponsored by EQCA and Gay-Straight Alliance Network.

Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law in July. Anti-gay activists quickly launched a repeal effort and have about six weeks left to gather more than 500,000 valid signatures in order to get a referendum on the state ballot in 2012.

Palencia and others said they're working to thwart the signature gathering efforts, but, referring to anti-gay activists' use of kids learning about gays to scare voters, he said, "This is the seminal, core issue they always get us for, so they have the advantage on this so far."

He also said defeating the repeal effort "is going to be one of the most challenging things we've ever done," but he added that he and others with EQCA weren't saying the fight is "un-winnable."

Several hours after the Thursday, August 25 conference call, EQCA communications director Rebekah Orr sent an email out at Palencia's request "to clarify some of his comments today."

The message said that Palencia and others "know that even if we start way behind, a loss is not a foregone conclusion. From our starting place our chances may not look good, but I don't believe it is impossible."

'Extremist'

Palencia said EQCA has reached out to thousands of people, but the group's reaction to the repeal effort has appeared sluggish for weeks. On recent, weekly conference calls with reporters, the LGBT lobbying organization's leaders have repeatedly spoken of research, message testing, and coalition building, while ads and other tangible signs of a campaign have been slow to materialize.

Ku Klux Klan Facts, information, pictures | Encyclopedia.com articles ...

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is a white supremacist organization that was founded in 1866. Throughout its notorious history, factions of the secret fraternal organization have used acts of terrorism—including murder, lynching, arson, rape, and bombing—to oppose the granting of civil rights to African Americans. Deriving its membership from native-born, white Protestant U.S. citizens, the KKK has also been anti-Semitic and anti-Catholic, and has opposed the immigration of all those it does not view as “racially pure.”

Other names for the group have been White Brotherhood, Heroes of America, Constitutional Union Guards, and Invisible Empire.

Ex-Confederate soldiers established the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866. They developed the first two words of the group’s name from the Greek word

kuklos , meaning “group or band,” and took the third as a variant of the word

clan.

Starting as a largely recreational group, the Klan soon turned to intimidating newly freed African Americans. Riding at night, the Klan terrorized and sometimes murdered those it opposed. Members adopted a hooded white costume—a guise intended to represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead—to avoid identification and to frighten victims during nighttime raids.

The Klan fed off the post-Civil War resentments of white southerners—resentment that centered on the Reconstruction programs imposed on the South by a Republican Congress. Under Reconstruction, the North sought to restructure southern society on the basis of racial equality. Under this new regime, leading southern whites were disfranchised, while inexperienced African Americans, carpetbaggers (northerners who had migrated to the South following the war), and scalawags (southerners who cooperated with the North) occupied major political offices.

Shortly after the KKK’s formation, Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former slave trader and Confederate general, assumed control of the organization and turned it into a militaristic, hierarchical entity. In 1868, Forrest formally disbanded the group after he became appalled by its growing violence. However, the KKK continued to grow, and its atrocities worsened. Drawing the core of its membership from ex-Confederate soldiers, the KKK may have numbered several hundred thousand at its height during Reconstruction.

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