No, this photo doesn’t show Klansmen at the Democratic National Convention

George Floyd’s killing by police renewed a national reckoning with racism in the United States and provided a backdrop for allegations of discrimination against political opponents. 

One image being shared on Facebook seeks to tie Democrats to the Ku Klux Klan. But the punch doesn’t land because the photo, of a crowd of people in white hoods standing in front of a burning cross with their arms outstretched, is miscaptioned. 

"The Democratic National Convention of 1924," the post says. "Not kidding. It really is."

It really isn’t. And the post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) 

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stated on March 21, 2024 in an Instagram post

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We did a reverse image search of the photo and found it in a 2015 Chicago Tribune article about the city welcoming the KKK. The caption of the photo says: "Thousands of Klansmen gather in August 1921 for an initiation ceremony on a farm near Lake Zurich owned by Charles Weeghman, who owned the Chicago Cubs. The procession there began in Chicago’s Albany Park neighborhood."

The Democratic National Convention was held at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1924. Back then, the KKK was the "most powerful bloc in the Democratic Party," according to the New York Times. During the convention, 20,000 klan members attended a rally across the river in New Jersey. But the photo in this Facebook post doesn’t show that gathering. 

We rate it False.