90 years ago today, Donald Trump's father was arrested at a Klu Klux Klan rally: www.rawstory.com/…
Although, notably, Trump's father would be sued for refusing to rent to blacks in his housing projects decades later, that particular KKK rally's cry was religious bigotry.
According to the Post, a flyer passed around the neighborhood ahead of the Klan rally described the need for the rally.
“The predication for the Klan to march, according to a flier passed around Jamaica beforehand, was that ‘Native-born Protestant Americans’ were being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City,'” Post reporter Philip Bump wrote in February 2016. “‘Liberty and Democracy have been trampled upon,’ it continued, ‘when native-born Protestant Americans dare to organize to protect one flag, the American flag; one school, the public school; and one language, the English language.'”
(Don't get excited about the KKK's seeming support of public schools -- that was simply a backhanded slam against Catholic schools.
In which school children would be indoctrinated by orders from the Pope, dontcha know.)
And I can personally attest to the KKK's religious bigotry directed at Catholics in the 20th century.
In the summer of 1960, my father had to work in Tennessee.
Where, for the first time outside of the news, I saw firsthand some of the bigoted sign posts of segregation: "Colored and White" water fountains and bathrooms (what is it with bigots and bathrooms?)
Unsettling enough, but this 10 year-old little white girl had bigotry hit closer to home when my mother took us to the local Catholic church.
Where my mother complimented one of the parishioners on that pretty white church with steeple.
And what that church lady replied sent chills down my spine, "We like it and hope to keep it."
"Our last three churches got burned down."
By the KKK, presumably, at a time when it's members were fire bombing churches in the South -- and not only when the churches were empty.
So this 10 year-old little white girl had to worry that my family could be burned to a crisp because of white religious bigotry.
Today, the KKK and their ilk have simply moved on to other religious targets -- ask Donald Trump.
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