KKK Explained

A few years after our grandparents died, my brother and I sat around one evening looking through a cardboard box of old photographs. We came across one of our paternal grandfather dressed in a white KKK robe and wearing a pointed hat. The photo was taken in the 1920s in California's Big Valley. 

We asked our father what the hell was going on. He told us that Grandpa had joined the KKK for one year because he'd been told they served free beer. That had proved untrue, so he had left the KKK to look for a more generous social club.

My question was: Who would have told our grandfather a dirty lie like that? Fifty years later I got an answer. In the 1920s the KKK suddenly grew huge numbers of members. There were, in 1920, many clubs boosting widespread racism, anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, but it was the KKK that burgeoned because it was a pyramid scheme. My grandfather had paid ten dollars to join, a lot of money from a working man in the twenties (but worth it if you got a year's supply of beer). The liar who recruited him got to keep 40% of the membership fee. If you joined the KKK and then talked ten friends into joining, you came out $30 ahead. 

You could make a living selling caps with KKK printed on the bills. You could make a living by traveling around and giving KKK lectures. You could sell memorabilia and the special white robes (no serious member would wear a sheet). And a hundred years later you can sell caps with MAGA on them. Those caps are making money for someone.