The National Park Service gave the Maryland-based unit of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) permission to hold a rally in Gettysburg National Military Park on October 5th. Why? The National Park Service said that Gettysburg is a national park open to the public, and that they gave permission for a rally because they did not want to infringe on the KKK’s freedom of speech. I find it ironic that the KKK has been given the chance to hold a rally at a battle site that was a victory for the Union Army against the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865). It seems that they are making a mockery of those who fought to end not only the Confederacy but also slavery and the possible split up of the United States.

                                               For those who do not know the history of the KKK, I should provide some background. The first Ku Klux Klan was organized after the Civil War in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six former veterans of the Confederate Army, in 1865. Their purpose was to act as a guerrilla force against newly freed African Americans and white Republicans. The Ku Klux Klan employed threats, murder and arson to spread white supremacy throughout those southern states that had been part of the former Confederate State of America. The Ku Klux Klan became so powerful that they seized whole towns and counties, and actually whole sections of the South. To the U.S. government, this was a new kind of insurrection against the United States, whereby then U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant had the Forces Act passed that allowed the U.S. government to crush the Ku Klux Klan by force.

                                               Since force could not achieve their purpose, many former Klan units started putting in southern Democrat politicians through the voting process to disenfranchise African Americans. This strategy worked only too well, and for 80 years African Americans were clearly second class citizens until the Civil Rights movement started in the 1950’s. Although the U.S. government had succeeded in largely suppressing the Ku Klux Klan in the 19th Century, it reappeared in the beginning of the early 20th Century, and has been with us ever since. Recently, the KKK had held a rally at the Antietam National Battlefield—the battle that would eventually lead then U.S. President Abraham Lincoln to issue his famed Emancipation Proclamation to end slavery. First the KKK held a rally at Antietam and now soon at Gettysburg—all in an apparent twisted mockery of two Union victories that spelled the end of the Confederacy. The decisive battle of Gettysburg was fought 150 years ago this year. However, the KKK seems to almost be proclaiming that despite the Union victory, and the beginning of the end of the Confederate States of America, the Confederacy is far from dead. But history has already judged the Confederacy dead, and the KKK damned. No rally the KKK holds will change any of this.