Late
1800's The Ku Klux Klan was formed as a
social club by a group of Confederate Army veterans in
Pulaski, Tennessee around 1865. A Confederate General, Nathan
Bedford Forrest, was the Klan's first leader, whose title was
the Grand Wizard. The group adopted the name Ku Klux
Klan from the Greek word kuklos, meaning circle, and
the English word clan.
White superiority was the philosophy of the Klan, and they
would often use violence and terrorization of blacks as a
means of exercising this philosophized superiority. The Klan
detested the idea of blacks gaining any rights following the
Civil War into the Reconstruction, and terrorized blacks to
prevent them from voting in elections or practicing any other
right. Blacks and white sympathizers were often threatened,
beaten, or even murdered by Klan members in the South; the
Klan used the now familiar white robes and hoods to mask their
identity. The Ku Klux Klan became known as the Invisible
Empire as it grew and spread rapidly.
In 1871, the Force Bill was passed by Congress. This act gave
the President the authority to use federal troops against the
Ku Klux Klan if he deemed the action necessary. Soon after
this bill was passed, the Klan all but disappeared.
Early
1900's William J. Simmons, a former Methodist
preacher, organized a new Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia in
1915 as a patriotic, Protestant fraternal society. This new
Klan directed its activity against, not just blacks, but any
group it considered un-American, including any immigrants,
Jews, and Roman Catholics. The Ku Klux Klan grew
rapidly from here and had more than 2 million members
throughout the country by the mid-1920's. Although the Klan
still reverted at times to violence of previous years, burning
crosses, torturing and murdering those who they opposed, most
of the Klan acted through peaceful means. The KKK instead
became a more powerful political force as it elected many
public officials throughout the nation. However, eventually
the organization became weakened by disagreements among the
leadership and because of public criticism of Klan violence.
By 1944 the Ku Klux Klan had faded out again.
Mid-1900's
The Klan was revived again in 1946 by an Atlanta physician,
Samuel Green. However, shortly after Green's death in 1949,
the Klan split into many smaller groups. During the 1960's,
the Civil Rights movement began and a new wave of violence by
the Ku Klux Klan was brought about. In Mississippi,
three civil rights leaders were killed; in Birmingham, Alabama
a church was bombed, killing four black girls. President
Lyndon B. Johnson used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to
probe the Ku Klux Klan and sent some Klan members to
prison. Following this, Klan member ship fell to about 5,000
by the early 1970's.
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