a type of persons who stole slaves. It was evidently in use before it
was applied to the Ku Klux Klan.

The words "Ku Klux" and "Ku Klux Klan" are used indiscriminately in
current conversation and literature. It is also true that many persons
in the present do, and in the past did, refer to the Ku Klux Klan simply
as "Ku Klux."

It is a matter of record that the organization did not at first bear the
name "Ku Klux Klan" throughout the South. The name "Ku Klux" seems to
have grown in application as the organization changed from a moral
association of the best citizens of the South and gradually came under
the control of lawless persons with lawless methods--whipping and
murdering. It is antecedently reasonable that the change in names
accompanying a change in policy would be due to a fitness in the prior
use of the name.

The recent use of the name seems mostly imitation and propaganda.

Histories, encyclopedias, and dictionaries, in general, do not record a
meaning of the term Ku Klux as prior to the Reconstruction period.




Circumstances of Interview

STATE--Arkansas

NAME OF WORKER--Samuel S. Taylor