The Ku Klux Klan or KKK are undoubtedly one of the most famous extremist groups on the planet. Their cross burning ceremonies, violent treatment of African Americans and ghoulish hoods are what has made them so ingrained into people’s minds across time. Names for their members such as ‘grand dragons’ or ‘grand cyclopes’ have imbued the Klan with a nature synonymous with mythology.
However, the roots of the group lie in simple politics. The Ku Klux Klan were officially founded in 1866 by veterans of the American confederate army in the aftermath of the American civil war. At first the gathering was nothing more than a social club based in Pulaski, Tennessee. Yet it was no mistake that the KKK’s conception coincided with the beginning of the second phase of post-Civil War Reconstruction, which was put into place by the more radical members of the Republican Party. After rejecting President Andrew Johnson’s relatively lenient Reconstruction policies, in place from 1865 to 1866, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act over the presidential veto. Under its provisions, the South was divided into five military districts, and each state was required to approve the 14th Amendment, which granted “equal protection” of the Constitution to former slaves and enacted universal male suffrage.
The preservation of the slave industry and the ideal of white supremacy were two of the major principles the KKK were founded on and were two ideologies that their families had instilled in the members for generations. The prospect of equal protection for slaves and universal male suffrage left them disillusioned to say the least. This reconstruction act would prove to be the ammunition the original group used to persuade others to create branches of the KKK across the U.S.
Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses. Grand Wizard was most likely a title born out of his military prowess in the civil war as he created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname “The Wizard of the Saddle”. However in 1868, Forrest formally disbanded the group after he became appalled by its growing violence. This had no effect on the organisation as a whole as the remaining members simply appointed a new leader.
The KKK, as of around 1869, had a formalised structure and a vast membership. At first, the main objective of Ku Klux Klan and splinter organisations formed in its wake such as: the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. However, after white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with.
The preservation of the slave industry and the ideal of white supremacy were two of the major principles the KKK were founded on and were two ideologies that their families had instilled in the members for generations. The prospect of equal protection for slaves and universal male suffrage left them disillusioned to say the least. This reconstruction act would prove to be the ammunition the original group used to persuade others to create branches of the KKK across the U.S.
Leading Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest was chosen as the first leader, or “grand wizard,” of the Klan; he presided over a hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans and grand cyclopses. Grand Wizard was most likely a title born out of his military prowess in the civil war as he created and established new doctrines for mobile forces, earning the nickname “The Wizard of the Saddle”. However in 1868, Forrest formally disbanded the group after he became appalled by its growing violence. This had no effect on the organisation as a whole as the remaining members simply appointed a new leader.
The KKK, as of around 1869, had a formalised structure and a vast membership. At first, the main objective of Ku Klux Klan and splinter organisations formed in its wake such as: the White Brotherhood, the Men of Justice, the Constitutional Union Guards and the Knights of the White Camelia was to stop black people from voting. However, after white governments had been established in the South the Ku Klux Klan continued to undermine the power of blacks. Successful black businessmen were attacked and any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions was quickly dealt with.
The methods by which they did this became progressively violent, from intimidation to the hunting and murdering of those who were deemed unacceptable. Members soon adopted a hooded white costume as a guise intended to represent the ghosts of the Confederate dead to avoid identification and to frighten victims during night time raids.
Eventually the group became so powerful that the president had to step in to put an end to its strong influence in the south. Hence the KKK was finally destroyed by President Ulysses S. Grant's prosecution and enforcement under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The act empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations. Meaning he could disband and disrupt any gathering he felt was in anyway threatening.
However, in 1915, a second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly in another period of postwar social tensions. After the First World War, many Americans coped with booming growth rates in major cities, where numerous waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites were being absorbed. After the War, labour tensions rose as veterans tried to re-enter the work force. In reaction to these new groups of immigrants and migrants, the second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism.
Consequently its appeal was not sectional, and, aided after 1920 by the activities of professional promoters Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Y. Clarke, it spread rapidly throughout the North as well as the South. It furnished an outlet for the militant patriotism aroused by World War I, and it stressed fundamentalism in religion.
At its peak in the mid-1920s its membership was estimated at four to five million. Although the actual figures were probably much smaller, the Klan nevertheless declined with amazing rapidity to an estimated 30,000 by 1930. This is probably due to state laws that forbade masks and eliminated the secret element, to the bad publicity the organization received through its thugs and swindlers, and apparently from the declining interest of the members. With the depression of the 1930s, dues-paying membership of the Klan shrank to almost nothing. Meanwhile, many of its leaders had done extremely well financially from the dues and the sale of Klan paraphernalia.
The KKK didn't really rise in numbers again until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This saw members from all sects of the KKK emerging in order to bomb, beat and shoot blacks and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama.
The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.
Since then KKK groups are rarefied but still exist in some numbers mostly in the south of America.
Eventually the group became so powerful that the president had to step in to put an end to its strong influence in the south. Hence the KKK was finally destroyed by President Ulysses S. Grant's prosecution and enforcement under the Civil Rights Act of 1871. The act empowered the President to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to combat the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy organizations. Meaning he could disband and disrupt any gathering he felt was in anyway threatening.
However, in 1915, a second Klan was founded. It grew rapidly in another period of postwar social tensions. After the First World War, many Americans coped with booming growth rates in major cities, where numerous waves of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe and the Great Migration of Southern blacks and whites were being absorbed. After the War, labour tensions rose as veterans tried to re-enter the work force. In reaction to these new groups of immigrants and migrants, the second KKK preached racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Communism, nativism, and anti-Semitism.
Consequently its appeal was not sectional, and, aided after 1920 by the activities of professional promoters Elizabeth Tyler and Edward Y. Clarke, it spread rapidly throughout the North as well as the South. It furnished an outlet for the militant patriotism aroused by World War I, and it stressed fundamentalism in religion.
At its peak in the mid-1920s its membership was estimated at four to five million. Although the actual figures were probably much smaller, the Klan nevertheless declined with amazing rapidity to an estimated 30,000 by 1930. This is probably due to state laws that forbade masks and eliminated the secret element, to the bad publicity the organization received through its thugs and swindlers, and apparently from the declining interest of the members. With the depression of the 1930s, dues-paying membership of the Klan shrank to almost nothing. Meanwhile, many of its leaders had done extremely well financially from the dues and the sale of Klan paraphernalia.
The KKK didn't really rise in numbers again until the civil rights movement of the 1960s. This saw members from all sects of the KKK emerging in order to bomb, beat and shoot blacks and white activists. These actions, carried out in secret but apparently the work of local Klansmen, outraged the nation and helped win support for the civil rights cause. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech publicly condemning the Klan and announcing the arrest of four Klansmen in connection with the murder of a white female civil rights worker in Alabama.
The cases of Klan-related violence became more isolated in the decades to come, though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.
Since then KKK groups are rarefied but still exist in some numbers mostly in the south of America.
By Tim Price