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Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the oldest organized hate group in the United States, dating back more than 135 years to the Reconstruction Era following the end of the Civil War. Although the Klan's original intent was to assert the supremacy of the white race over the newly freed black slaves, over the decades the organization widened the scope of its hatred to include Roman Catholics, Jews, immigrants, and homosexuals. The KKK has been a model for other extremist groups in the country, who have emulated Klan practices of intimidation and violence.

The Historical Klan

Accounts vary, but many believe that six Confederate soldiers formed the KKK on Christmas Eve 1865, in Pulaski, Tennessee. (Other accounts place the founding in May or June 1866). In its early years, the group was considered to be a social organization; however, the KKK soon began to terrorize local freed slaves. Klansmen would don white flowing robes and pointed hats, sometimes cloaking their horses in white sheets as well to affect the appearance of Confederate soldiers risen from the dead, and would raid the homes of blacks in the middle of the night.

Scholars believe that the Klan formed initially in response to white anxiety over the weak Reconstruction Era governments in the South and the possibility of insurrection on the part of newly freed slaves. Klansmen attacked black freedmen and their white Republican supporters alike, as well as assailing “carpetbaggers” from the North. Their intimidation was intended to keep black men and Republicans from voting, thus maintaining white political power in the South. In short, the Klan hoped to uphold Southern culture and politics as it existed before the Civil War and was willing to take violent measures to succeed.

In 1867, the disparate chapters of the Klan, which had taken root throughout Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, held their first national convention in Nashville and elected as their national leader, or Grand Wizard, General Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Confederate cavalry leader. This convention established the elaborately named organizational hierarchy, including Grand Cyclops, Magi, and Night Hawks who governed over dominions and dens, and the concept of the Klan as an “invisible empire” was born.

As the Klan grew, it was plagued by infighting—always part of the group's turbulent history. By 1869, Forrest officially disbanded the organization. Even the individual KKK chapters had nearly died off by the 1870s from a confluence of several factors, including national anti-Klan legislation in 1870 and 1871, Southern “Jim Crow” laws that neatly reestablished segregation, and internal dissension over the use of violence.

The Modern Klan

After lying dormant for more than 40 years, the Klan's “second era” began in 1915, when William J. Simmons, a former minister, resurrected the Klan at Stone Mountain, Georgia—an event marked by a cross burning, soon to become the Klan's calling card. Scholars attribute the renewed interest in the Klan to the release and popularity of D. W. Griffith's 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, which was based on a book by Thomas Dixon called The Clansman (1905) and credited the Klan with the preservation of the Southern way of life.

Within a decade, the Klan reached the height of its power, rapidly spreading nationwide. The Klan in its second incarnation opposed immigration, mostly of Jews and Catholics, and benefited from a growing Protestant fundamentalism and the patriotic fervor generated by World War I. By the mid-1920s, membership had developed from approximately 10,000 to between 4 and 5 million, and Klan leaders attained high political offices—governors, senators, and representatives.

Scandal soon rocked the organization. After David C. Stephenson, a Klan leader in the Midwest, was convicted for the rape and mutilation of a woman, evidence emerged that led to the indictments of the governor of Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, both Klan supporters. Once again, upper-class and more mainstream Klansmen distanced themselves from such violence. During the Great Depression (1929–1941), the Klan also lost its core dues-paying members, mostly from the lower and middle classes, to poverty.

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