"DEMOCRATS WILL NOT 'SINGLE OUT' KKK"

MINORITY ANTI-KLAN PLANK DEFEATED BY ONE VOTE

New York City (JFK+50) The Associated Press reports that "the Democratic platform will not single out the Ku Klux Klan* by name" nor will it "contain a Wilsonian plank on the league of nations."

These decisions were made on Sunday morning, June 29, 1924, after a "ten-hour continuous session in which some of the most disorderly scenes in convention history were enacted."

Things got so heated that police had to be called in to quiet down disorderly delegates.

The final vote on the KKK minority plank fell just one vote short of passage. 

*According to David Pietrusza, the KKK of the 1920s came about because of "cultural conflict and modernization."  While the KKK of the Reconstruction years was a Southern phenomenon, the 1920s saw the Klan including "white, middle-class Protestant Americans from the North & Midwest."  There was a strong backlash against recent immigrants from Southern & Eastern Europe which resulted in anti-Catholicism & anti-Semitism.

SOURCES

"Anti-Klan Plank Beaten By One Vote," The Evening Star, Washington, D.C., June 29, 1924, Chronicling America, Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/

"The KKK in the 1920s," by David Pietrusza, Bill of Rights Institute, www.billofrightsinstitute.org/

 

 

Cover of Sheet Music (1923)

"We Are All Loyal Klansmen"

www.garystockbridges617.

getarchive.net/

"WE MUST SPEAK OUT AGAINST BIGOTRY & INTOLERANCE"

PRESIDENT BIDEN RELEASES STATEMENT ON INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY

Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) Today, January 27, 2021, President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. released a statement recognizing the importance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day*.  The statement reads in part...

"We must never forget the truth of what happened across Europe or brush aside the horrors inflicted on our fellow humans because of the doctrines of hatred and division.

Each of us must...speak out against the resurgent tide of anti-semitism**, and other forces of bigotry and intolerance." 

*IHRD was established by the United Nations in 2005 to honor all victims of the Nazi regime.  January 27th was selected because on that date in 1945 the largest concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated by Soviet troops.  During WWII, 5.7 million Jews were exterminated.

**Anti-semitism, hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people, is a term coined in 1879 by Wilhelm Marr to designate anti-Jewish campaigns in central Europe.  While it is most apparent in the Nazi regime 1933-1945, anti-semitism existed during the same period in other countries including Britain, France, Hungary & the United States. 

SOURCES

"Anti-Semitism," by Michael Berenbaum, Britannica, www.britannica.com/

"Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., on International Holocaust Remembrance Day," January 27, 2021, The White House, www.whitehouse.gov/

   

 

Hall of Remembrance

National Holocaust Memorial Museum

Washington, D.C.

Photo by John White (2007)