Pointy sleeves, etc.

Whoever put it together really cared.

Either it's a Klan outfit or Ralph or one of his friends took a significant amount of time to put it together.

Let's say I saw four men beating a black man and I called the police, and the assailants looked like the man in the sheet and hood on Ralph Northam's yearbook page. The police would ask me what they were wearing and I would say, Officer, it looked like they were wearing Klan outfits. That would be my honest recollection.

Going from:

1. it is a genuine Klan outfit, to

2. It is something that someone might think looks like a Klan outfit,

Are two different statements.

So, if I show you a ring with a rock in it, and say "this is a diamond ring" then what matters are the similarities, instead of the differences? Like, it's a ring, and it has a rock. So does a diamond ring - end of story.

Your question was about "Is this a genuine Klan outfit", not "does it look like a Klan image to me".

Usually, if the question is "Is this a genuine X", then you compare the sample to known exemplars of X, and look for differences, not similarities. Unless, of course, you are trying to force a predetermined result.

If I was asked what that outfit looks like to me I would say it looks like a Klan outfit to me. If I was asked to testify to its provenance or authenticity I would say I don't know.

I was using idiomatic English. It looked like a Klan outfit to me so I called it a Klan outfit. Do I know if he borrowed it from David Duke or it's an artifact from Nathan Bedford Forrest's garage, if he had one, or he sewed himself I don't know.

I was looking at Klan depictions in movies including Blazing Saddles and Django Unchained. I can't link them because the dialogue might get me a hide. Anybody can google them. They look very much like the outfits Mr. Northam or his partner are alleged to have worn.

Believing it is not an official Klan outfit and believing wearing a reasonable facsimile of one and putting it your med school yearbook is inherently offensive are not mutually exclusive. Some posters seem to believe that outfit is something you can just throw together. That doesn't seem likely to me.

Your point is about whether Northam and his circle associated with KKK members, such that one of Northam's associates would have been able to casually borrow a KKK member's outfit. Because, yeah, sure, Klansman loan them out all of the time because they're friendly like that.


Wouldn't we need expert witnesses to ascertain that.

You need an expert witness to answer the question:

"If you do a Google Image search for 'KKK outfit' and compare actual news and other photographs of actual KKK members (and sorting out ones which clearly aren't, like that light purple number), do you see any with mouth holes?"

That doesn't require expertise of any kind.

As to the existence of "official" ones, yes, there certainly used to be:



https://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/your-official-ku-klux-klan-robe-catalog

But in the game of "One of these things is not like the others" I don't recall Sesame Street calling in expert witnesses for what is a fairly simple one-to-many comparison.

The photo we are discussing is from 1984. Do you have a more recent catalog and not one that was nearly sixty years old when the photo was taken?

And how does a nearly one hundred year old official catalog that was sixty years old at the time establish what was and wasn't an official Klan outfit in 1984?

Wouldn't it be appropriate to use a catalog of the same vintage of the outfit of which we are trying to divine its provenance and authenticity?

How does that mitigate the horror the imagery it conveys?

All this obscurantism about whether or not the outfit is official obfuscates the horror of the imagery.

Obviously, I misunderstood whatever point you were trying to make in the OP. Could you perhaps rephrase and restate your question?

Based on the fact that you were led to post an OP proposing that it was a genuine Klan outfit, perhaps obtained from someone in Northam's social circle, I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that this question was important to you in some way - important enough to solicit the opinions of thousands of strangers as to whether it is or is not a genuine item.

Under the mistaken impression that the OP was posted for the purpose of discussing possible answers to the question it posed, I did an image search to get an idea of what "real" ones look like, in order to compare them to the one in the Northam picture, to advance what I believed to have been the purpose of your questions posed in the OP. The results strongly suggest that the outfit in the Northam picture is quite unlike any actual news photographs of actual klan persons.

You have taken great exception and offense to my stating that the image search results suggest it is not a genuine klan robe.

As I pointed out, I don't see why it matters, but then again I am not the one who posted an OP posing the question in the first place, or got upset at the suggestion that it does not resemble any news photographs of actual klan persons in recent decades.

Are you trying to say that the outfit in the photo isn't an "official" Klan outfit? Why is that significant? You seem to have gone to a lot of research to prove your point, but I don't see why it matters.

Seems to me DSB pointed out that the outfit doesn't look like a thrown together pillowcase and bedsheet costume. Thus, someone went to some work to produce it.

In 1984.

This thread is premised by a question about whether the depicted outfit came form an actual member of the KKK. If there is some other way to understand the inquiry in the OP, then feel free to explain it.


Did someone, cough, know someone in a domestic terrorist organization?

Perhaps I'm inordinately dense and this question means something else. If so, please explain what this question is trying to ask. The question is not about the effort involved or the degree of elaboration in the costume. The question is whether it came from an actual member of the KKK.

(and, yes, from the unusual branch of the KKK which has mouth holes in the front flap, and who have hitherto avoided being photographed)

The fact that there is a mouthhole and does not, therefore, confirm with you definition of proper KKK garb, does not take away from the question.

Do you really believe you have established that there is such a thing as an official Klan outfit to your own satisfaction?

I'm not an expert on the Klan but were they or are that much of a regimented organization?

a little joke, white face, black face.

Looks like the genuine article.

Probably why the governor won’t claim to be either of the people in the photograph.

Both outfits are disgusting.

They all know why.

I grew up in the south, a few years before Northam. I went to lots of parties, and I never saw these characters at any of them.

My friends and I did refuse to don blackface for a high school event in 1975. No one from my school ever blacked their face for that event, or any other, again.

Ps...I almost find the name they called him more offensive than any other slur. I’m not sure exactly why, but I hate it. I won’t type it.

The only time I saw blackface or a Klan outfit was on tv.

Plain white robes aren't hard to find, and they weren't hard to find in 1984.

it's as basic as it gets...

This isn't exactly from the wardrobe department at Downton Abbey.

Likely to this very day.

I don't know much about hate apparel, but it looks like more than just a sheet.

A decent human being would have raised a big fuss if that photo was included under his name in a yearbook.

It's him.

The level of detail suggests he knew that photo would be preserved for perpetuity. Ditto for the man in blackface.

Not that one is better than the other.

The person in blackface is significantly taller than the person in the klan costume. That should answer Northam's stupid question about which one is him.

The typical Klan hood looks more like the "pointy" part is supported by pleats:



...not to be confused with the capirote - a traditional robe worn during Easter processions in some parts of Spain, which is much longer and more conical:

As an attorney who has to evaluate whether your clients and other litigants are telling you the truth what do you make of the fact he said one of the men in the yearbook photo was him on Friday and then said it wasn't him on Saturday?

You can make a liar out of anyone, because of fairly common habits of mind that people have - particularly doctors and engineers. Doctors and engineers are ripe for this, because they are used to making inferences based on facts all of the time, and relying on those inferences.

He may have initially assumed it was him for the obvious reason that it is in a section with his name and other pictures around it, even if he had no specific recollection of the photograph being taken, because people tend to make reasonable inferences and weave them into their "memories" - which are no more reliable than anything else that goes on in people's minds. Memory is much more malleable than most people tend to believe it is.

Having no specific recollection of the event, and then later finding out that other pictures in the book are mis-assigned and mislabeled, then the basis for the initial inference may no longer be reasonable.

People say contradictory things all of the time without "lying" - intentionally making a false statement. That's one of the reasons why, when a client is going to be deposed, it is extremely important to get them to understand the difference between something they can specifically recall, and something they would infer. For example, if the witness usually parks his car in his garage at night, and the witness is asked "Did you park your car in your garage on Wednesday of last week?", then most people who usually park their car in their garage will say "yes" even if they have no specific recollection of parking their car in their garage last Wednesday night. Later, when reminded that their kid's band was rehearsing in the garage that evening, they'll change the story to not having parked the car in the garage - which still might be an inference.

But, seriously, most people are really shitty with facts - much more than they believe. That's pretty consistent, and has nothing to do with "lying".

The inference that can be drawn from his apology is that he had dressed up in this manner on some occasions. He's just not sure if he did this time or not. And, in fact, he immediately supports that inference by mentioning the Michael Jackson masquerade in 1984.

It sounds defensive and it's never good for politicians to sound defensive.

The photo is on his yearbook page. That looks very bad. His apology followed by non-apology made it worse. Big mess, poor leadership, ineffective politics.

I would have fracken remembered if I had.

I remember what I dressed up as on halloween.

Never even entered my mind to do this.

25 yr. old. "It's me. It's not me. It's me, but I dint do it."

I did some very stupid things in my 20s but I didn't accidentally dress up to mock black people. And if a photo suggesting that I did was on my yearbook page I sure as hell would have noticed.

His excuses aren't believable. And that's a huge problem, as it calls into question his integrity and credibility, not just 35 years ago but right now.

That said, patterns are freely available online and it's not exactly like the costume is a hard one to make. Hell, this happened just earlier last year in San Francisco.

in my 'hat'. Looked authentic. Baton, white tassled boots, the whole nine yards. She put blush circles on my cheeks. The directions with the costume must've said to?

Also went as a cowgirl/boy with entire gear. Sometimes a skirt, sometimes chaps.

Now I don't do halloween anything.

It's clearly not a real KKK uniform.

But it's still clearly not a Klan outfit. I forgot to list that it has an opening for a mouth, which real Klan uniforms don't have, in addition to the mask being too pointy, skinny, and long, and the uniform having no symbols. Here's a real KKK uniform:

my mom could whip up an angel costume for the christmas pagent very quickly. this isn't very different.

Or maybe a graduation robe, which is pretty much the same thing. Anyway, the robe itself isn't something that would have to be sewn up from scratch.

especially considering the Klan was and is explicitly a Christian organization.

Where y'all were in the 80's, I was in Florida and Alabama and I have no hard time at all believing that both costumes were rented as a pair from a costume store.

One of the persons in the photo could be a woman but Occam's Razor suggests its two men, their relationship to one another has not been determined. One would presume they are acquaintances or do you believe a person made up in blackface just randomly ran into a person with a Klan outfit?

Traveled the south at least five times during that time period in a car and never saw a Klansman. As a Jew I guess I was lucky but on the other hand I don't have the horns they would be looking for.

And my friend and I were horrified to see them standing around in their robes on a street corner, holding signs. There was a black woman with her kids in the backseat of a car at that same intersection. I remember this clearly as my friend wrote a song about it.

It was nauseating. Saw them in North Georgia.

I was in junior high when Volusia County schools were finally desegregated pursuant to a court officer. I remember one of my African American teachers telling me how white parents didn't want a black man teaching their kids. I also remember my teachers, for the most part, being pro integration, and anti war and anti-Nixon.

You’re very much mistaken if you think that.

It's not like they go around in costume all the time. They usually wear civvies, like everyone else.

What part of the assertion embodied in my statement is that I never saw a Klansman in Klan regalia don't you understand?

That said, the photo doesn't look like a real klan costume. The ones I've seen in museums don't have mouth holes and the cones are different.

In 1979, I was with a group of ex-college debaters who went to judge a high school debate tournament. We got lost and I nearly had a wreck when one of the debaters grabbed the wheel of my car and pointed at the KKK bookstore in Pasadena. We were all extreme liberals and declined. That bookstore was open unti 1990s. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Photographing-the-Klan-in-the-1980s-6395815.php

You say...


Not a 'real' Klan outfit...

have a lot of experience making Klan attire.

He purchased it.

A purchased costume would look more authentic. I think they used a white church robe or graduation robe or something like that, and rigged up the hat with a pillowcase.

I'd guess they were made at home, by hand.

I don't think there was a store named "Klan Outfitters".

Last edited Mon Feb 4, 2019, 07:00 PM - Edit history (1)

Asking for a friend.

There are aspects of the history of this country and its culture which do not appear to be taught in schools and about which there is a demonstrated ignorance among people who should know better.

Maybe you would prefer that people not understand the history of the KKK, what shaped its origins, and the continued legacy which it has.

Maybe you, like many, would like to think it is a bunch of goofballs in sheets instead of an organized pyramid scheme to sell memberships and which, incidentally, is easily the oldest terrorist organization in this country.

For someone to toss out an ignorant comment like "I don't think there was a store named "Klan Outfitters"" is, IMHO, an opportunity to point out that facts are preferable to ignorance. Yes, they were that highly organized that they ran a mail order catalog - literally "Klan Outfitters". IMHO, facts are preferable to completely uninformed idle speculation.

There are people who would prefer to believe that this was some sort of fringey group of idiots in bedsheets instead of the large, influential, and highly organized commercial operation which it was.

And there are obviously people who bristle at the idea that anyone would be interested in responding to ignorance with actual facts about a history which should not be swept under the carpet.

If you have any other concerns about me personally, feel free to follow up about.

Someone asked a question. I answered it. Do you have something to contribute to the topic? Or do you just prefer ignorance.

Alternatively, please send me by DM the Hekate-approved list of things I can post about, how often, and in how much detail.

He bought them at a ... wait for it ... "white sale"!