The Ku Klux Klan is America’s most notorious white supremacist group. And they say they are recruiting new members in preparation for a race war. KKK: The Fight for White Supremacy, BBC 2016
The Klan have always claimed to protect the values of white Christian America. ibid.
The Ku Klux Klan is still the most notorious white-supremacist group in the world. But from its small beginnings how did it grow to such huge numbers? How has the Klan continued to cast a dark shadow over American society? The KKK: Behind the Mask, Channel 5 2016
In 1924-25 the Utah Klan suddenly experienced a rapid increase in membership and activity when Klan organizers (Kleagles) arrived in the state as part of a nationwide membership campaign. Klansmen appeared in Cache, Box Elder, Weber, Davis, Salt Lake, Utah, Carbon, Juab, Sevier and Tooele counties. The Klan was most active in Logan, Ogden, Provo, Helper and Price in Carbon County with their large immigrant populations, and in the city and county of Salt Lake, where anti-Mormon politics and nativism attracted members. Estimates of peak Klan membership in Utah range from 2,000 to 5,000, with perhaps half of the Knights residing in Salt Lake County. Some Mormons joined the Klan, but the vast majority of Knights were non-Mormons, Masons and others from the ranks of the middle-aged and middle class. Cross burnings, outdoor initiation ceremonies, parades, and numerous acts of covert intimidation were commonplace. The Salt Lake Klavern even established a women’s auxiliary, and hosted a regional Klonklave (meeting). However, the violence that marked Klan activities in other states was not a great part of the Utah Klan, although in Carbon County an elderly Italian man died from a heart attack after being chased by Klansmen, and a black man was hanged by a mob comprised largely of Klan members …
The heyday of the Utah Klan was short-lived. The city commissions of Logan, Ogden, and Salt Lake City passed municipal ordinances banning the wearing of masks in public, the LDS Church again issued strong anti-Klan statements and warned its members to not to join the secret order … Moreover, because of geographical considerations, diverse local agendas, and inadequate local leadership, the Utah Klaverns were never officially organized into a statewide administrative unit (Realm), nor did they publish a newspaper. Political efforts, whether through municipal electioneering or involvement in the anti-Mormon American party of 1923, were dismal failures. Larry R Gerlach, Blazing Crosses in Zion: The Ku Klux Klan in Utah, 1982
50 years later, the KKK reappeared in the state as part of the ‘third Klan movement’ that rose in the 1970s as a reaction to various aspects of the Civil Rights movement (busying and affirmative action), increased immigration from Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam), and an economic recession. The modern Klan in Utah was founded in Riverton and went public by hanging effigies, burning crosses and distributing recruiting leaflets in Salt Lake County.
In contrast with the 1920s Klan, the charter members of the new Klan were mostly Mormon, poorly educated and unskilled or semi-skilled blue-collar laborers. Despite modest success in obtaining recruits in Utah and Weber counties, the Klan was reduced to a handful of members by 1981. Driven underground by negative publicity from the press and close surveillance from law enforcement agencies and also split by rivalries within and among Klaverns, Klansmen either left the organization or moved to Idaho to join the various White supremacist organizations such as the Aryan Nations then flourishing in the Hayden Lake area. (Utah Gangs US: Ku Klux Klan & Mormons) Larry R Gerlach, Ku Klux Klan, viz. Utah History Encyclopedia
After several more skirmishes, [BP] Upham is able to suppress the entire Arkansas Klan … This of course is only temporary as the Ku Klux Klan will re-emerge and reinvent itself time and against throughout American history. Aftershock: Beyond the Civil War, History 2006