>From the early 1870's to the late 1920's, the southern United States was ravaged with a racial hate group and secret brotherhood known as the Ku Klux Klan. At the time, the South was dominantly populated by ignorant and uneducated white people still clinging to the days of slavery. However, the enlighetened and progressive North had an even stranger organization terrorizing people during the 1930's. Detroit, Michigan, the capitol of the automobile industry, was suffering from the Great Depression. What arose from this was a secret organization who also believed in violent tactics to achieve their goals. Similar to the KKK they wore hoods and robes, although, they wore black rather than white.
             The Black Legion had a broader agenda than the Ku Klux Klan. The Black Legion considered not only blacks, Jews and Catholics enemies but also welfare workers, welfare recipients and union organizers. This was during the Great Depression/New Deal era so many members were workers laid off and eager to lay blame and retalliate on others. "The native-born white people of America are menaced on every hand from above and below. If America is in the melting pot, the white people of America are neither the aristocratic scum on top nor the dregs of society on the bottom which is composed of anarchists and Communists and all cults and creeds believing in social equality. ... We regard as enemies to ourselves and our country all aliens, Negroes, Jews and cults and creeds believing in racial equality or owing allegiance to any foreign potentates. These we will fight without fear or favor as long as one foe of American liberty is left alive," was their oath of allegience. Although, so!
             me members just loved violence and joined for pure leisure. According to historian Thomas Jones, the Black Legion "made the Ku Klux Klan look like a cream puff." They drove cars, as opposed to the Klan's trademark of riding h...