Interview
Dr. Charles Martin is a history professor at UTEP and the person being interviewed.
Do you know what the first terrorist act the klan committed in El Paso was? I don’t know of any terrorist acts here. The EP klan was quite peaceful compared to some in East Texas.
How did the KKK operate? There was an organizational structure running from the imperial wizard down to the local klavern president. Dues were shared between the local unit and the national organization.
Who was the head klansman in the 1920's? William J. Simmons was originally the head, but Hiram Wesley Evans (you can google him) of Dallas became the imperial wizard early in the 1920s. He wanted to clean up the klan’s public image, which had been hurt by violent actions in some locations.
Has anyone, other that Ron Stallworth, gone undercover as a klansman to get information? In the 1960s there were some undercover FBI contacts in the Klan.
Are there any KKK groups still active in El Paso today? If so, what are their main priorities? El Paso generally escapes terrorist groups. The large Mexican American and Catholic population hurt klan membership in the 1920s. Today we don’t have many extremists; the border atmosphere here seems to discourage such movements, just like for some reason we have a very low murder rate compared to other big cities.
Why did they start to resort to lynching? KKK groups used lynching and other forms of violence in the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1920s not very many Klansmen were involved in lynchings, although they did use other forms of violence. In the 1950s and 1960s other forms of violence, like simply murdering someone or bombing a black church, were used. But the KKK was NOT solely responsible for lynching. People who lynched usually did not have anything to do with the Klan, because it didn’t really exist from 1880 to 1916, when lynching was at its highest. And by the way, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were lynched in the Southwest, so lynching wasn’t just used against Blacks.
Dr. Charles Martin is a history professor at UTEP and the person being interviewed.
Do you know what the first terrorist act the klan committed in El Paso was? I don’t know of any terrorist acts here. The EP klan was quite peaceful compared to some in East Texas.
How did the KKK operate? There was an organizational structure running from the imperial wizard down to the local klavern president. Dues were shared between the local unit and the national organization.
Who was the head klansman in the 1920's? William J. Simmons was originally the head, but Hiram Wesley Evans (you can google him) of Dallas became the imperial wizard early in the 1920s. He wanted to clean up the klan’s public image, which had been hurt by violent actions in some locations.
Has anyone, other that Ron Stallworth, gone undercover as a klansman to get information? In the 1960s there were some undercover FBI contacts in the Klan.
Are there any KKK groups still active in El Paso today? If so, what are their main priorities? El Paso generally escapes terrorist groups. The large Mexican American and Catholic population hurt klan membership in the 1920s. Today we don’t have many extremists; the border atmosphere here seems to discourage such movements, just like for some reason we have a very low murder rate compared to other big cities.
Why did they start to resort to lynching? KKK groups used lynching and other forms of violence in the 1860s and 1870s. In the 1920s not very many Klansmen were involved in lynchings, although they did use other forms of violence. In the 1950s and 1960s other forms of violence, like simply murdering someone or bombing a black church, were used. But the KKK was NOT solely responsible for lynching. People who lynched usually did not have anything to do with the Klan, because it didn’t really exist from 1880 to 1916, when lynching was at its highest. And by the way, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were lynched in the Southwest, so lynching wasn’t just used against Blacks.