KKK (Ku Klux Klan)
Movement | Defunct
1865 CE to 1874 CE
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism.
Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-communist.
The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters with no connections between each other; it is classified as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
It is estimated to have between 3,000 and 5,000 members as of 2012.
The first Klan flourishes in the Southern United States in the late 1860s, then dies out by the early 1870s.
Members adopt white costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be outlandish and terrifying, and to hide their identities.
The second KKK flourishes nationwide in the early and mid 1920s, and adopts the same costumes and code words as the first Klan, while introducing cross burnings.
The third KKK emerges after the Second World War and is associated with opposing the Civil Rights Movement and progress among minorities.
The second and third incarnations of the Ku Klux Klan make frequent reference to the USA's "Anglo-Saxon" and "Celtic" blood, harking back to 19th-century nativism and claiming descent from the original 18th-century British colonial revolutionaries.
The first and third incarnations of the Klan have well-established records of engaging in terrorism and political violence, though historians debate whether or not the tactic was supported by the second KKK.
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The Ku Klux Klan is one among a number of secret, oath-bound organizations using violence, including the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1865) and the Knights of the White Camelia (1867) in Louisiana.
Historians generally see the KKK as part of the post Civil War insurgent violence related not only to the high number of veterans in the population, but also to their effort to control the dramatically changed social situation by using extrajudicial means to restore white supremacy.
The original Ku Klux Klan had been created on December 24, 1865, during Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War, by six well-educated Confederate veterans from Pulaski, Tennessee,
The name is formed by combining the Greek kyklos (circle) with clan, added for alliteration’s sake.
The group had been known for a short time as the "Kuklux Clan".
In 1866, Mississippi Governor William L. Sharkey had reported that disorder, lack of control and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roam at will.
The Klan uses public violence against blacks as intimidation.
They burn houses and attack and kill blacks, leaving their bodies on the roads.
At an 1867 meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, Klan members gather to try to create a hierarchical organization with local chapters eventually reporting up to a national headquarters.
Since most of the Klan's members are veterans, they are used to the hierarchical structure of the organization, but the Klan will never operate under this centralized structure.
Local chapters and bands are highly independent.
Former Confederate Brigadier General George Gordon develops the Prescript, or Klan dogma.
The Prescript suggests elements of white supremacist belief.
For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of "a white man's government", "the reenfranchisement and emancipation of the white men of the South, and the restitution of the Southern people to all their rights." (Ku Klux Klan, Organization and Principles, 1868". State University of New York at Albany.)
The latter is a reference to the Ironclad Oath, which had stripped the vote from white persons who refused to swear that they had not borne arms against the Union.
Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest becomes Grand Wizard, claiming to be the Klan's national leader.
Historian and Forrest biographer Brian Steel Wills writes, “While there is no doubt that Forrest joined the Klan, there is some question as to whether he actually was the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” (Wills, Brian Steel. A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, 1992; p. 336)
Forrest had become involved sometime in late 1866 or early 1867.
A common report is that Forrest had arrived in Nashville in April 1867 while the Klan was meeting at the Maxwell House Hotel, probably at the encouragement of a state Klan leader, former Confederate general George Gordon.
The organization had grown to the point where an experienced commander was needed, and Forrest fit the bill.
In Room 10 of the Maxwell, Forrest was sworn in as a member. (Hurst, Jack. Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. (1993))
According to Wills, in the August 1867 state elections the Klan was relatively restrained in its actions.
White Americans who make up the KKK hope to persuade black voters that a return to their state of repression and near-slavery, as it existed before the war, is in their best interest.
Forrest assists in maintaining order.
It is only after these efforts fail that Klan violence and intimidation will escalate and become widespread. (Wills, Brian Steel (1992). A Battle from the Start: The Life of Nathan Bedford Forrest. New York, New York: HarperCollins. p. 338)
Author Andrew Ward, however, writes, “In the spring of 1867, Forrest and his dragons launched a campaign of midnight parades; ‘ghost’ masquerades; and ‘whipping’ and even ‘killing Negro voters and white Republicans, to scare blacks off voting and running for office.’” (Ward, Andrew. River Run Red: The Fort Pillow Massacre in the American Civil War. Viking Penguin: 2005. p. 386)
Klansmen, dressed in robes and sheets calculated to frighten superstitious blacks and to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops, whip and kill freedmen and their white supporters in nighttime raids.
A potent force, the Klan is largely responsible for the restoration of white rule in North Carolina, ...
...Tennessee, and ...
...Georgia, but Forrest orders the organization disbanded in 1869, largely as a result of the group's excessive violence.
Local Ku Klux Klan branches have remained active for a time despite Nathan Bedford Forrest's order to disband, prompting Republican Reconstruction supporters in the Congress to pass the Force Act on May 31, 1870, to protect the constitutional rights guaranteed to blacks by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Nine South Carolina counties are placed under martial law in October 1871 under the Ku Klux Klan Act of April 20, 1871.
This act and earlier statutes result in more than five thousand indictments and twelve hundred and fifty convictions throughout the South.
The major provisions of the acts authorize federal authorities to enforce penalties upon anyone interfering with the registration, voting, officeholding, or jury service of blacks; provided for federal election supervisors; and empower the president to use military forces to make summary arrests.