Why The KKK Is Reaching Out Beyond White Folks

As America's longest-lived white supremacist organization, the Ku Klux Klan has achieved a rare kind of name recognition. You know the way people say "Xerox" when they mean "to photocopy" or "Kleenex" when they mean "tissue"? "KKK" functions something like that, except it shorthands to "racial terrorism and extrajudicial killings."

It's a dilemma that some Klan groups are trying to address by being less, well, Klan-ish.

Back in April, after a 73-year-old Klansman went on a deadly shooting spree in Kansas City, a whole lot of avowed racists condemned the shootings.

CNN.com even ran a story that asked, "Can the Klan rebrand?" (It changed the headline after lots of outcry on social media.)

"Imperial Wizard Frank Ancona was upset, too. 'What this guy just did set back everything I've been trying to do for years,' said Ancona, who leads the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. [...]

" 'I believe in racial separation but it doesn't have to be violent,' he told CNN. 'People in the Klan are professional people, business people, working types. We are a legitimate organization.'

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