Editing Albert Pike (section)

=== Involvement with the Ku Klux Klan ===
Pike first wrote about the Ku Klux Klan less than three years after the Klan's founding, in an April 16, 1868 editorial in the ''[[Memphis Daily Appeal]].'' In the editorial, Pike indicated that his main problems lay not with its aims, but with its methods and leadership. Later in this editorial, he proposed "one great Order of Southern Brotherhood", a secret society which would have been a larger and more centrally organized version of the Klan: "If it were in our power, if it could be effected, we would unite every white man in the South, who is opposed to negro suffrage, into one great Order of Southern Brotherhood, with an organization complete, active, vigorous, in which a few should execute the concentrated will of all, and whose very existence should be concealed from all but its members."<ref name="Brown439-442" /><ref name="Dickerson2003">{{Cite book |last=Donna Lee Dickerson |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gXOan-fUeCMC&pg=PA263 |title=The Reconstruction Era: Primary Documents on Events from 1865 to 1877 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-313-32094-1 |pages=263–264}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Urban |first=Hugh |date=2001 |title=The Adornment of Silence |url=http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2001/2001-2.pdf |url-status=live |journal=Journal of Religion & Society |volume=3 |page=9 |issn=1522-5658 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221009/http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2001/2001-2.pdf |archive-date=October 9, 2022 |access-date=June 26, 2020}}</ref>

In 1905's ''Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment'', the author [[Walter L. Fleming]], lists Pike as the Klan's "chief judicial officer".<ref name="Lester">{{cite book |last1=Lester |first1=J.C. |last2=Wilson |first2=D.L. |last3=Fleming |first3=Walter L. |title=Ku Klux Klan: Its Origin, Growth and Disbandment |date=1905 |publisher=The Neal Publishing Company |location=New York and Washington |page=27 |url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31819/31819-h/31819-h.htm}}</ref> Susan Lawrence Davis, whose father was a founding member of the Klan in Alabama,<ref name="Whites2016">{{cite book|author=L. Whites|title=Gender Matters: Race, Class and Sexuality in the Nineteenth-Century South|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n2cYDAAAQBAJ|date=April 30, 2016|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan US|isbn=978-1-137-05915-4|page=93}}</ref> writes in her sympathetic account titled ''Authentic History: Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1877'', published in 1924, that Pike was personally chosen by [[Nathan Bedford Forrest]] to serve as the Klan's "Chief Judicial Officer" and to head the Klan in Arkansas as "[[Ku Klux Klan titles and vocabulary|Grand Dragon]] of that Realm."<ref name="Davis1924">{{cite book|author=Susan Lawrence Davis|title=Authentic History, Ku Klux Klan, 1865–1877|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rvZEAAAAIAAJ|year=1924|publisher=American Library Service|page=276}}</ref> In 1939's ''Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871'', [[Stanley Horn]], who served as president of the [[Tennessee Historical Society]], also reports that Forrest appointed Pike to lead the Klan in Arkansas and credits him with a surge of local Klan activity in April 1868. Horn says that a pro-Klan poem, "Death's Brigade", is attributed to Pike, although "of course, he did not have the bravado to claim that honor publicly at that time."<ref name="Horn">{{cite book |last1=Horn |first1=Staney F. |title=Invisible Empire: The Story of the Ku Klux Klan, 1866–1871 |date=1939 |publisher=Houghton-Mifflin |location=Boston |pages=245–246, 337 |url=https://archive.org/details/invisibleempires00hornrich/page/336/mode/2up?q=pike}}</ref> [[Southern Agrarians|Southern Agrarian]] poet [[John Gould Fletcher]], who grew up in Little Rock in a house that Pike built,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Johnson |first1=Ben |title=John Gould Fletcher (1886–1950) |url=https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/john-gould-fletcher-1646/ |website=Encyclopedia of Arkansas |publisher=CLAS |access-date=September 7, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |date=1950-05-24 |title=John Gould Fletcher, 1950 |url=https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-kansas-city-star-john-gould-fletcher/146340804/ |access-date=2024-07-28 |work=The Kansas City Star |pages=50}}</ref> likewise believed that Pike wrote the poem.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=A. Drew |title=Confederate monuments: General Albert Pike joined an effort to expel free Blacks from Arkansas |url=https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/2020/07/30/confederate-monument-albert-pike-arkansas/5448301002/ |access-date=2024-07-28 |website=The Commercial Appeal |language=en-US}}</ref>

When the Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915, there even existed an Albert Pike Klan, a local chapter of the organization based in Illinois.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Albert Pike: Confederate Commissioner, Masonic Demiurge, Apologist for Slavery, Apostate of the Union {{!}} Readex |url=https://www.readex.com/blog/albert-pike-confederate-commissioner-masonic-demiurge-apologist-slavery-apostate-union |access-date=2023-04-14 |website=www.readex.com}}</ref>

In 1971, [[Allen W. Trelease]] published ''White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction'', and claimed that the office that Pike allegedly held in the KKK was not mentioned in "The Prescript", the Klan constitution.<ref name="Brown439-442" /> However, the office of [[Grand dragon|Grand Dragon]], which Davis claims Pike once held, is explicitly mentioned in the 1867 Klan constitution.<ref>{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nlhHAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Grand+Wizard+of+the+Empire%22 |title=Congressional Serial Set |date=1872 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://thereconstructionera.com/the-prescript-of-the-ku-klux-klan-1867/ | title=The Prescript of the Ku Klux Klan 1867 | date=June 12, 2019 }}</ref> At the same time, Trelease noted that "Pike may well have affiliated with the Klan."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Trelease |first=Allen W. |url=http://archive.org/details/whiteterrorkuklu0000trel |title=White terror : the Ku Klux Klan conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction |date=1995 |publisher=Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press |others=Internet Archive |isbn=978-0-8071-1953-2}}</ref> As evidence, Trelease notes that Pike "was intrigued by secret societies and rituals" and "sympathized with the Klan's stated objectives."

In his 1997 biography of Pike, Walter Lee Brown asserts that Pike was not a member of the Klan and Brown found "no contemporary, nor no reliable late evidence that Pike ever joined the Klan."<ref name="Brown439-442" /> Brown claims the work of Fleming, Davis and Horn are "unreliable histories", but offers no further evidence other than citing Trelease, which, in Brown's interpretation "cast's doubt on Pike's membership."