XO why do you treat blacks different than others?

[Xavier_Onassis]

The robes and pointy headgear of the KKK are copied directly from the costume of the penitentes in the processions of Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Seville, Spain.

The pointy headgear is a dunce cap. The point indicates that the mind should be focused upwards, toward Heaven. Carrying the religious images in the parade could be considered a great honor, and of course, that could bloat someone's ego, so they cover the entire body of the image bearer so he cannot be recognized. The Confederacy's ambassador to Spain hung out in Seville during the Civil War, unsuccessfully seeking the aid of Queen Isabel II, and after the War, returned to help Nathan Bedford Forrest found the Klan. That is how the Klan got its uniforms. The flaming cross was another bit of ancient lore.

In the 1860's, Europeans were engaged in defining all the old national traditions and folklore, so there was a lot of interest and many articles in newspapers and magazines about ancient folklore.

[Plane]

I witnessed the Easter parades in Malaga, just as you say the robes resemble KKK uniform strongly. I was quite surprised, I think they called the robed marchers Penatants , though in Spanish the word ends in an E.

   In Malaga they carry platforms with large statues of stone on them , might be thirty men under each platform they have to move in coordination elese someof them could be seriously hurt.

    The heavyest platform is reserved for a troop of prisoners from a local prison they lifted the platform high overhead as I watched and pinwheeled in place to the roaring approval of the croud.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The pointy headpiece goes back to the Inquisition. Sinners were arrested and auto-da-fe (act of faith) parades through the streets with a dunce cap on their head and a sign around their neck detailing their sins: prostitution, adultery, swindles, gossip and other sins that they had confessed over and over and kept on doing. It is the origin of the dunce cap. In the religious parades on Easter Week, the penitentes wear these hats to show that thy are repentant of their sins (and everyone is a sinner) and their faces and bodies are covered to conceal their identities, since otherwise carrying the holy image would be perceived as an honor and they would be committing the sin of pride.

During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, similar public confessions and acts of repentance were forced on people as during the Inquisition.

The Kluxers hid their faces so they would not be identified by the people they were terrorizing and arrested by the Union Army. The kluxer robes also were rather ghostlike and served to scare superstitions Blacks, most of who had surely offended their owners a few years before. Massa Henry comin back as a ghost! Booooo!

[Plane]

 

  "The kluxer robes also were rather ghostlike and served to scare superstitions Blacks"

      That may have been the intent , but the black people targeted probably figured out what was going on . If they were terrified it was by the real terroristic threat.

[Xavier_Onassis]

More than half the population of Blacks after the Civil War were women and children. In the 1860's, a majority of the population believed in ghosts, especially the ghosts of dead soldiers. Sceances to speak with the dead were at all all-time high.

You are right. The Klansmen were also pretty terrifying anyway, as they tended to be on horseback. If you are on foot, a man on horseback with a saber is pretty terrifying.