The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1855-56. It started as a well-intentioned social group of former soldiers that fought with the Confederacy in the United States civil war, taking its name from the Greek word kuklos (meaning “circle”). However, its purpose changed to opposing Republican governments that had been imposed on the South after the war. The KKK also began to preach a doctrine of white supremacy in reaction to the appearance of freed blacks in government and other parts of Southern society.
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KKK members dressed themselves in white sheets or robes and wore masks to disguise their identities. They staged silent marches and threatening midnight horseback rides, leading some former slaves to believe that the ghosts of the Confederate dead had risen to reclaim their land. In many areas threats gave way to beatings, whippings, mutilations and lynchings. Black voters, southern white people who joined to the Republican Party (“scalawags”) and northern people who moved to southern states to exploit the local populace (“carpetbaggers”) were all targets of this violence. Such actions were defended by some Klansmen as a means of protecting white womanhood.
KKK activities were especially successful in Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina, where many Republicans were driven from office and blacks discouraged from voting.
The KKK peaked in the 1920s, when its membership exceeded 4,000,000 nationally, and profits rolled in from the sale of its memberships, regalia, costumes, publications, and rituals. A burning cross became the symbol of the new organization, and white-robed Klansmen participated in marches, parades, and nighttime cross burnings all over the country. To the old Klan’s hostility toward blacks the new Klan added bias against Roman Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and organized labour. The KKK enjoyed a last spurt of growth in 1928, when Alfred E. Smith, a Catholic, received the Democratic presidential nomination. The KKK acted secretly against him and discouraged people from not voting for him because he was a Roman Catholic. In this way the Klan drew new members. Also, the KKK had considerable political power in Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina but, a series of sex scandals, internal battles over power and newspaper exposés quickly reduced its influence. Hence, during the Great Depression of the 1930’s the Klan’s membership dropped drastically and the last remnants of the organization temporarily disbanded in 1944. For the next 20 years the Klan was dormant but it had a resurgence in some Southern states during the 1960s as civil-rights workers attempted to force Southern communities’ compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Since the 1970’s the Klan has been greatly weakened by internal conflicts, court cases, a seemingly endless series of splits and government infiltration. While some factions have preserved an openly racist and militant approach, others have tried to enter the mainstream, cloaking their racism as mere “civil rights for whites.” Today, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members, split among dozens of different organizations that use the Klan name.