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  • 2021-02-04 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Willie 'Whoopass' Johnson Hit a Klansman? (af)
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  • In observance of Black History Month in February 2021, social media users began sharing an image that supposedly showed a man named Willie Whoopass Johnson hitting a member of the Ku Klux Klan. This photograph was accompanied by the claim that Mr. Whoopass was the first Black man to be photographed fighting back against the KKK: This appears to be a genuine photograph of a man hitting someone wearing KKK garb. However, that person was not named Willie Whoopass Johnson, nor was he the first Black man to fight back against the klan. This image has been circulating online since at least 2009. Early postings of the picture, such as one example found on the Gothlaw blog, made no claims about the Black person's identity or the alleged historic nature of the photograph. Rather, the picture was simply used to illustrate posts about the history of the KKK and racial tensions in the United States. Around 2015, this image came to be shared in a more humorous fashion, and as the photograph made the rounds of the internet, it was accompanied by a number of different captions. At first, the person in this image was nicknamed Whoopass Wilson, while a later version claimed that this image depicted a man named Tyrone Fuck the Klan Johnson. These nicknames were later combined to form the current Willie Whoopass Johnson version: In other words, these captions do not relay factual information about this picture. The name Willie Whoopass Johnson was simply made up out of whole cloth and attached to this image for humorous effect. It should also be noted that this photograph does not document the first Black man to fight back against the Ku Klux Klan. While we have not been able to source this image, it was likely taken — judging by the cars and the clothing — in the 1960s or '70s. As the Ku Klux Klan has been around since the 1860s, it's safe to say that the man in this photograph was not the first to fight back against the KKK. While we are not certain as to who was the first Black man to be photographed punching a member of the KKK, we can say that Black men and women have been fighting against the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan for more than a century: https://youtu.be/LwT-VrQVlOU In 1919, as Black soldiers returned home from fighting overseas in World War I, they expected to find themselves treated as equals. Instead, they faced a resurging Ku Klux Klan and a rash of race-based violence, as History.com noted: (en)
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