Disturbing Historical Photos That Reveal What It’s Like To Grow Up In The KKK

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A mother looks on as her seven-month-old child is baptized into the Klan.

Long Island, New York. July 4, 1927.Bettmann/Getty Images

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Two children — in the original caption, labelled as "mascots" of the Ku Klux Klan — stand with the Grand Dragon.

Atlanta, Georgia. July 1948.Library of Congress

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A young girl in robes drinks a Coca-Cola while she and her mother watch a Ku Klux Klan rally.

Location unspecified. August 1925.Library of Congress

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A child is initiated into the Ku Klux Klan.

Macon, Georgia. January 1946.Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

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A group of Klan members lead their children through a parade.

Location unspecified. Circa 1912-1930.

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Shelby Pendergraft, 15, and Charity Pendergraft, 17, attend a cross lighting ceremony at the Christian Revival Center.

Bergman, Arkansas. 2008.Barcroft USA/Getty Images

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[Original Caption] This unidentified Klan woman gets her son dressed up real cute in KKK robes and hat. The boy doesn't seem to be too happy with the outfit, if you can judge by the expression on his face.

Location unspecified. April 27, 1956.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A young girl holds her father's hand as he marches down the street in a Klan parade.

Atlanta, Georgia. June 5, 1967.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A group of women, one holding her child in Klan robes, are among the 125 people who showed up to be initiated into the Klan.

Atlanta, Georgia. June 1949.Bettmann/Getty Images

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Seven-year-old Perry Blevens sticks his head out the car window, showing off the sign that calls for "no integration."

Gwinett County, Georgia. April 14, 1956.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A mother and her child hold hands as they watch a cross burn.

Georgia. April 27, 1956Bettmann/Getty Images

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A young girl clutches her doll in one hand as her father wraps his arm around her and her brother.

Port St. Lucie, Florida. Date unspecified.Evan Hurd/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images

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A group of Klan members pose for a photograph, one holding up her infant child.

Date unspecified. July 4, 1901.Bettmann/Getty Images

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A Klan member hands out pamphlets to the children and their parents watching their rally.

Tabor City, North Carolina. August 15, 1951.Hank Walker/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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Nearby, women in the Klan have to cover their eyes, blinded by the smoke of the burning cross.

Georgia. April 27, 1956Bettmann/Getty Images

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Klansmen and their children turn a rally into a vacation and take some time sightseeing in the nation's capital.

Washington, D.C. August 1925.Library of Congress

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A mother wipes the dirt off her child's face at a Ku Klux Klan gathering.

Indiana. Circa 1980-1989.David Turnley/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

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Young boys help their fathers set up a cross to be burned.

Jackson County, Ohio. 1987.Paul M. Walsh/Wikimedia Commons

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A robed Klansman gives children horseback rides at a White Heritage Day celebration, a gathering for Klansmen and neo-Nazis alike.

Scottsboro, Alabama. September 18, 2004.David S. Holloway/Getty Images

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A young girl in robes poses for a photograph in front of the Klan flag while her mother looks on.

Location uncertain. Circa 1990-1999.Eric-Paul-Pierre PASQUIER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

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[Original caption] Members of Ku Klux Klan posing with Santa Claus, Klan Claus and child.

Port St. Lucie, Florida. Date unspecified.Evan Hurd/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images

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A young boy with his head shaved holds up his arm in a salute during a protest against Martin Luther King Day.

Pulaski, Tennessee. Circa 1980-1989.Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images

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A young girl holds up a white cross, a Confederate flag draped behind her.

Pulaski, Tennessee. 1980-1989.Mark Peterson/Corbis via Getty Images

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A police officer stops to talk to a young boy about the Klan.

The young boy was curious about the rally marching by. But after talking to the officer, he changed his mind and went home instead of being lured into the Klan.

Danbury, Connecticut. August 7, 1982.Bettmann/Getty Images

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Disturbing Historical Photos That Reveal What It’s Like To Grow Up In The KKK

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The Ku Klux Klan has survived for more than 150 years. Its ideology of hatred and white supremacy continued to keep attracting new members through the Holocaust, the civil rights movement, and on past the election of America's first black president. It seems unbelievable that hatred could live on for that long, that anyone in the modern world could put on white robes, burn crosses, and still spread manifestos that call for an all-white America.

But hatred often starts at home. Since 1865, countless children across America have been born into the Ku Klux Klan. They’ve been raised by parents who pass down a moral code created in the days of slavery. From birth, these children are fully immersed in the Klan.

Ku Klux Klan children are sometimes brought to rallies mere months after their birth. Some of these children have even been baptized into the Klan, with a Grand Dragon sprinkling holy water over their infant heads.

Other children are introduced into the Klan when they're a little older, dressed up in little white robes and help up as the mascots of the group. Some march in parades, holding up hateful signs made by their parents. Other children help their parents set up crosses to be burned in the front yards of their black neighbors in order to scare them away.

These rituals started decades and decades ago, but they still happen today. In 2010, members of the Klan in Arkansas held a youth group meeting that invited kids aged five to 18 to learn about the white power ideology. Charity Pendergraft, a 19-year-old girl who was helping to run the event, advertised it by saying, “We need to teach them why we are proud to be white.”

Despite such indoctrination, some of the kids who grow up in the Ku Klux Klan manage to escape. But others don’t. They grow up surrounded by hatred and bigotry. They stay in the Klan — and pass on a violent and hateful worldview to the next generation.

Next, find out about the strange stories behind the day that the KKK rode a ferris wheel and the African-American man who made members quit the Klan by befriending them.