Three people were stabbed and 13 people arrested when members of a white separatist group clashed with a larger group of counter-demonstrators outside of Los Angeles Saturday, police said.
The violence occurred in the city of Anaheim, near the famed Disneyland theme park.
A police spokesman said several protesters had arrived ahead of time to protest a planned anti-immigration rally by a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
When the Klansmen arrived to begin their rally, they were surrounded by the counter-demonstrators and attacked.
All three stabbing victims were counter-demonstrators, one of them stabbed by a Klansman with the sharp end of a flagpole. Two Klansmen were stomped on by several of the protesters.
The police spokesman said six Klan members and seven protesters were arrested, and all face charges of assault with a deadly weapon.
The Ku Klux Klan was founded in the southern U.S. state of Tennessee in 1866, one year after the anti-slavery Union army defeated the army of the slave-holding Confederate states -- which broke away from the rest of the U.S. -- to bring an end to the Civil War.
Initially aimed at terrorizing newly freed African-American slaves, the KKK's ranks grew through the later part of the 19th century and first half of the 20th century as it fought against racial integration across the United States.
Klansmen were once the dominant political force in Anaheim, holding four of five City Council seats before a recall effort led to their ouster in 1924.
