From time to time, individuals who are not Democrats accuse Democrats of being the party of the Ku Klux Klan. Although many Democrats and Democratic politicians may have belonged to the Klan in its glory days after the Civil War and in the 1920s, especially in the South and states like Indiana, New Jersey and Oregon (yes, folks Oregon), as a national entity the Democrats did not embrace the Klan, for very good reason. In addition to being segregationist and anti-black, the Klan was anti-immigrant and virulently anti-Catholic. In 1920s Oregon, for example, a KKK backed initiative effectively outlawed Catholic schools, a law that was almost immediately overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Why didn't Catholic immigrants flock to the Republican Party, you ask. The Republican Party's original sin was Nativism since it was formed from the remnants of the Whigs and the anti-immigrant Know Nothings. It's as unfair to shout guilt by association and brand Lincoln as a Nativist, he wasn't one, as it is to brand Democrats now as KKK... although the Republicans still have their problems with immigrants ... and some Democrats still have their issues with the Catholics.
