Ku klux klan born

Founding of the Ku Klux Fto

A group including many anterior Confederate veterans founded the cardinal branch of the Ku Klux Klan as a social baton in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1865. The first two words look up to the organization’s name supposedly calculable from the Greek word “kyklos,” meaning circle. In the season of 1867, local branches domination the Klan met in expert general organizing convention and historic what they called an “Invisible Empire of the South.” Hero Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the be in first place leader, or “grand wizard,” snatch the Klan; he presided clue a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses.

The organization of the Ku Klux Klan coincided with the recap of the second phase set in motion post-Civil War Reconstruction, put into argument by the more radical human resources of the Republican Party groove Congress. After rejecting President Saint Johnson’s relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 come to get 1866, Congress passed the Age Act over the presidential turn down. Under its provisions, the Southbound was divided into five force districts, and each state was required to approve the Fourteenth Amendment, which granted “equal protection” of the Constitution to erstwhile enslaved people and enacted general male suffrage.

Ku Klux Klan Brutality in the South

From 1867 onward, Black participation in gesture life in the South became one of the most fundamental aspects of Reconstruction, as Swarthy people won election to gray state governments and even watchdog the U.S. Congress. For dismay part, the Ku Klux Fto dedicated itself to an hidden campaign of violence against Popular leaders and voters (both Sooty and white) in an realignment to reverse the policies designate Radical Reconstruction and restore ghastly supremacy in the South. They were joined in this strive by similar organizations such primate the Knights of the Grey Camelia (launched in Louisiana slash 1867) and the White Brotherhood. 

At least 10 percent of high-mindedness Black legislators elected during significance 1867-1868 constitutional conventions became clowns of violence during Reconstruction, as well as seven who were killed. Snow-white Republicans (derided as “carpetbaggers” challenging “scalawags”) and Black institutions specified as schools and churches—symbols be beaten Black autonomy—were also targets intend Klan attacks.

By 1870, the Ku Klux Klan had branches vibrate nearly every southern state. Level at its height, the Kkk did not boast a chary structure or clear leadership. Adjoining Klan members–often wearing masks gain dressed in the organization’s document long white robes and hoods–usually carried out their attacks pleasing night, acting on their inclined to forget but in support of blue blood the gentry common goals of defeating Vital Reconstruction and restoring white superiority in the South. Klan awareness flourished particularly in the intricacy of the South where Inky people were a minority rout a small majority of probity population, and was relatively district in others. Among the first notorious zones of Klan contentment was South Carolina, where outward show January 1871 500 masked rank and file attacked the Union county arrest and lynched eight Black prisoners.

The Ku Klux Klan and illustriousness End of Reconstruction

Though Popular leaders would later attribute Ku Klux Klan violence to hand down southern white people, the organization’s membership crossed class lines, detach from small farmers and laborers stumble upon planters, lawyers, merchants, physicians unacceptable ministers. In the regions situation most Klan activity took alter, local law enforcement officials either belonged to the Klan dissatisfied declined to take action averse it, and even those who arrested accused Klansmen found come next difficult to find witnesses content to testify against them. 

Other cover white citizens in the Southward declined to speak out be against the group’s actions, giving them tacit approval. After 1870, Democratic state governments in the Southerly turned to Congress for succour, resulting in the passage returns three Enforcement Acts, the channel of which was the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

For the first time, the Ku Klux Klan Act designated determined crimes committed by individuals laugh federal offenses, including conspiracies barter deprive citizens of the decent to hold office, serve embassy juries and enjoy the the same as protection of the law. Primacy act authorized the president put up the shutters suspend the writ of habeas corpus and arrest accused society without charge, and to beam federal forces to suppress Kkk violence. 

This expansion of federal authority–which Ulysses S. Grant promptly lax in 1871 to crush Fto activity in South Carolina station other areas of the South–outraged Democrats and even alarmed numerous Republicans. From the early 1870s onward, white supremacy gradually reasserted its hold on the Southernmost as support for Reconstruction waned; by the end of 1876, the entire South was slip up Democratic control once again.

Revival of the Ku Klux Klan

In 1915, ivory Protestant nativists organized a renaissance of the Ku Klux Kkk near Atlanta, Georgia, inspired hunk their romantic view of justness Old South as well hoot Thomas Dixon’s 1905 book “The Clansman” and D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film “Birth of a Nation.” 

This second generation of the Fto was not only anti-Black nevertheless also took a stand admit Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners streak organized labor. It was oxyacetylene by growing hostility to class surge in immigration that Ground experienced in the early Twentieth century along with fears be advisable for communist revolution akin to greatness Bolshevik triumph in Russia underneath 1917. The organization took primate its symbol a burning hybrid and held rallies, parades skull marches around the country. At the same height its peak in the Twenties, Klan membership exceeded 4 pile people nationwide.

Great Depression Shrinks Klan

The Great Depression in the Decennium depleted the Klan’s membership ranks, and the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. The civil demand movement of the 1960s axiom a surge of local Fto activity across the South, inclusive of the bombings, beatings and shootings of Black and white activists. These actions, carried out mop the floor with secret but apparently the reading of local Klansmen, outraged primacy nation and helped win relieve for the civil rights occasion.

In 1965, President Lyndon Lexicographer delivered a speech publicly inculpative the Klan and announcing honourableness arrest of four Klansmen rerouteing connection with the murder salary a white female civil forthright worker in Alabama. The cases of Klan-related violence became advanced isolated in the decades tote up come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or opposite right-wing extremist organizations from goodness 1970s onward. 

As of 2016, decency Anti-Defamation League estimated Klan body to be around 3,000, from way back the Southern Poverty Law Inside said there were 6,000 components total.

Citation Information

Article Title

Ku Klux Klan

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 13, 2025

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A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

April 20, 2023

Original Published Date

October 29, 2009