CONSPIRACY CLAIM #15

Short answer first: Albert Pike did not found the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and there is no reliable evidence that he was ever part of it.

Four stories about Albert Pike, checked

Four stories about Pike do the rounds online: that he founded the Klan, that he was a member or leader of it, what he thought about race, and that Freemasonry itself is a front for the Klan. Let’s take them one at a time.

1. “Pike founded the KKK” – He didn’t. The Klan was founded by six former Confederate officers in Pulaski, Tennessee, and Pike wasn’t one of them. Across all three waves of the Klan (1865-1871, 1915-1944, and 1946-present), there’s no record of Pike or Freemasonry founding any of them. The story has no credible source behind it; what it does have is a target, and that target is Freemasonry’s reputation.
   
   
2. “Pike was a Klan member or leader” – This one has a paper trail, so it deserves a closer look. It goes back mainly to a 1905 book by Walter L. Fleming, written forty years after the events, which named Pike the Klan’s “chief judicial officer”, and a couple of later writers repeated it. When Pike’s biographer, Walter Lee Brown, went looking for the proof, he found “no contemporary, nor no reliable late evidence that Pike ever joined the Klan.” Pike did write an 1868 newspaper editorial criticising the Klan’s methods and leadership and floating a “Southern Brotherhood” of his own — an uncomfortable read today, but an opinion piece is not a membership card. The honest verdict: no solid evidence he was a member, and none at all that he led it.
   
   
3. Pike’s views on race – Here we won’t pretend. Pike was a Confederate brigadier general, and his own words show he held the white-supremacist views common among Southern white men of his era; after the war he insisted that “the white race, and that race alone, shall govern this country.” That’s a fair criticism of the man. His record has other sides too — he spent years as a lawyer for Native American nations, including the Creek, Choctaw and Chickasaw. But none of it, good or bad, is evidence that he founded or joined the Klan — and that is the claim we’re here to check.
   
   
4. “Freemasonry is a Klan front” – This one is baseless, and frankly a bit insulting. It tries to put Freemasonry, a fraternity with a long history of promoting moral and ethical standards, in the same box as the KKK, an organisation known for its hateful ideology and violence. There’s no real evidence for it, and it gets Freemasonry’s principles and activities exactly backwards.
   
   

So: Pike as the Klan’s founder, Pike as its member or leader, and Freemasonry as the Klan in disguise — none of it stands up. Pike’s views on race were real and deserve to be judged honestly, but they don’t turn him into a Klansman. The historical record is the place to settle questions like these, not rumours or a viral image.

A few more things worth knowing:

1. The timeline:
   There have been three separate Klans.
   The first ran from 1865 to 1871, the second from 1915 to 1944, and the third from 1946 to the present.
   
   The original KKK was founded on 24 December 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee, by six former Confederate Army officers: (a) Frank McCord, (b) Richard Reed, (c) John Lester, (d) John Kennedy, (e) J. Calvin Jones and (f) James Crowe.
   
   Albert Pike was a prominent Freemason, attorney and writer of the same period. Living at the same time as the Klan is not the same as starting it, and there is no historical evidence that he created or led it.
   
   
2. What Pike is known for: Pike is famous for his Freemasonry and his Masonic writings. There is no credible historical document tying him to the KKK. His views on race and slavery were, as we’ve said, ugly by today’s standards — and, sadly, widespread among white Southerners of his time.
   
   
3. The Civil War context: The KKK grew up in the South after the Civil War as a white-supremacist movement, mainly to resist Reconstruction and enforce white dominance. Pike is not known to have taken part in its activities.
   
   
4. Pike’s legacy: Pike is remembered mainly for what he did in Freemasonry, above all writing and revising Masonic rituals and literature. He has admirers and critics, inside Masonry and out. But his Masonic work is one thing, and the Klan is another — the two are not connected.
   
   

The bottom line: Albert Pike did not found the KKK, there is no credible evidence he was part of it, and Freemasonry does not condone the Klan’s ideology, which Freemasons today regard as abhorrent. No reliable historical source makes Pike the Klan’s founder. The claim simply doesn’t hold up.

Webmaster’s Comment: (For readers who share this claim on religious grounds)

If accepting slavery in that era is enough to condemn a man, it’s worth remembering how much older that acceptance is. It is often pointed out that in those days, and even much earlier, figures such as “Jesus Christ”, who are still followed and worshiped today, actually promoted slavery which can be seen in various quotes from the Christian bible in the New Testament. To be precise, the passages below are a parable told by Jesus and instructions from letters attributed to Paul — but together they show how completely slavery was taken for granted. Such quotes can be seen in the following books:
(All claims are backed up by links to the online bible gateway)

– “⁴⁷The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows. ⁴⁸ But the one who does not know and does things deserving punishment will be beaten with few blows. From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12:47-48)

– “¹All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. ² Those who have believing masters should not show them disrespect just because they are fellow believers. Instead, they should serve them even better because their masters are dear to them as fellow believers and are devoted to the welfare^[a] of their slaves.” (1 Timothy 6:1-2)

– “⁶Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5)

The Old Testament has many more. Here are a few from the books of Leviticus & Exodus:
(All claims are backed up by links to the online bible gateway)

– “⁴⁴Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. ⁴⁵ You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. ⁴⁶ You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.“ (Leviticus 25:44-46)

– “²If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. ³ If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. ⁴ If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.

⁵ “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ ⁶ then his master must take him before the judges.^[a] He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.” (Exodus 21:2-6)

– “⁷If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. ⁸ If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself,^[a] he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. ⁹ If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. ¹⁰ If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. ¹¹ If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.” (Exodus 21:7-11)