"Pike led the KKK": what the evidence actually shows (Memphis, 1868; Fleming, 1905)

SUMMARY"Pike led the KKK": what the evidence actually shows (Memphis, 1868; Fleming, 1905) [Connections: Masonic color line, asylums, castles, wight, Nov 5, 2026]

NOTEDISPUTED. RECORD for the claim: Walter L. Fleming's Introduction (dated "October, 1905") to Lester and Wilson's Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment states: "General Albert Pike, who stood high in the Masonic order, was the chief judicial officer of the Klan." A plate caption reads "General Albert Pike, chief judicial officer." Susan L. Davis (1924) and Stanley Horn (1939) repeat it and add that Pike was "Grand Dragon" of Arkansas. Pike's own Memphis Daily Appeal editorial of 16 April 1868 says: "We would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage," and proposes "one great Order of Southern Brotherhood." RECORD against: The Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon calls the membership claim "strictly hearsay." It notes that Fleming cites no source and that "Chief Judicial Officer" does not appear in the Klan's Prescript. Pike's biographer Walter Lee Brown (1997) found "no contemporary, nor no reliable late evidence that Pike ever joined the Klan." Allen Trelease (1971) said "Pike may well have affiliated with the Klan."

PATTERNMembership is unproven. His white-supremacist political aim is documented in his own words: a secret "Order" to unite white men against Black suffrage

LENS (WW9)You don't need the Klan robe. His own 1868 editorial calls for a secret white brotherhood against the Black vote

OPENFind a full scan of the 16 April 1868 Memphis Daily Appeal (Chronicling America) to read the whole editorial in context

SOURCELester & Wilson, ed. Fleming, Project Gutenberg #31819; Grand Lodge of BC & Yukon: Albert Pike did not found the KKK; Wikipedia: Albert Pike.