Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, the most notorious of terrorist groups that arose in the Reconstruction Era to uphold white supremacy and Democratic party rule in the South.Founded as a social club (kuklos, the Greek word for circle, inspired the name) by six Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866, the Klan soon became a powerful and frightening vehicle of vigilante violence and lawlessness. Racial terrorists from all walks of life adopted the Klan's white hoods and secret rituals to protect their identities and lend an aura of legitimacy to their activities. Their aim was to punish anyone perceived as threatening white supremacy, including assertive black workers, black or white teachers in black schools, and those who violated interracial sexual taboos. The overwhelming focus of Klan violence and intimidation, however, was Republican party politicians, black and white, and black voters. During the election year of 1868, in Louisiana alone, the Klan and other terrorist groups murdered between eight hundred and one thousand people, the vast majority of whom were Republican leaders, political candidates, and others challenging white, Democratic rule. Similar murderous waves across the South kept countless black voters away from the polls. A congressional investigation and anti‐Klan state and federal legislation diminished the Klan's influence after 1871, but the movement left a powerful legacy.

Later, historians, novelists, and filmmakers offered racist apologies for the Reconstruction Klan. The most notorious of these, D.W. Griffith's film Birth of a Nation (1915), based on Thomas Dixon's 1905 novel The Clansman, inspired a second Klan movement. This revived Klan, founded at Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William J. Simmons and later taken over by the Texan Hiram W. Evans, differed markedly from the first. It attracted millions of male and female members from throughout the nation, especially in the Midwest and West, enriching paid recruiters (called Kleagles) as well as Simmons, Evans, and other leaders at the national headquarters in Atlanta. It was racist, but in an era when the institutions of white supremacy faced no serious challenge, race was not the exclusive focus. The second Klan's central message was that white Protestant hegemony was threatened by Roman Catholics, Jews, African Americans, immigrants, Prohibition violation, gambling and other crimes, political corruption, sexual immorality, materialism, and the erosion of religion and traditional family values. This Klan sometimes used intimidation and violence, but most frequently targeted fellow white Protestants who violated traditional morality. Political mobilization, parades, and social events were the Klan chapters’ primary activities. By the mid‐1920s, the Klan elected its candidates to local office in many communities, dominated politics in Indiana, Colorado, Oregon, Oklahoma, Alabama, and other states, and exerted a strong national influence within both major parties. A motion to condemn the Klan bitterly divided the 1924 Democratic party convention. The second Klan declined dramatically after 1925 as a result of bitter divisions among Klan leaders, the imprisonment of Indiana “Grand Dragon” D.C. Stephenson on rape and manslaughter charges, and declining faith that the Klan could accomplish its goals.

In the following decades, pockets of support lingered, and racial vigilantes continued to invoke the Klan's name and regalia. During the era of the civil rights movement, a variety of Klan organizations surfaced with newfound support and, like their predecessors of the Reconstruction Era, attacked and terrorized African Americans and racial reformers. As the twentieth century ended, isolated Klan groups, while generally discredited, continued to perpetuate an occasionally violent right‐wing subculture.
See also Anti‐Catholic Movement; Anti‐Semitism; Eighteenth Amendment; Immigration; Immigration Law; Nativist Movement; Progressive Era; Protestantism; Racism; Roman Catholicism; Temperance and Prohibition; Twenties, The.

Bibliography

Allen W. Trelease , White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, 1971.
David M. Chalmers , Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan, 3d ed., 1981.
Nancy MacLean , Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1994.

Leonard J. Moore