Ku Klux Klan Essay

The Ku Klux Klan, known as the KKK, has been one of the most feared groups in America since the end of the civil war during post-war reconstruction.. The civil war was not just about the rights of the black man, but it was a very important part. People in the north mostly believed the black person was due the same liberties insured by the U.S. Constitution. The 14th Amendment of the constitution gave equal protection to former slaves. However people in the south saw the black man as inferior and a slave needed to work on the plantation. This led to continued unrest after the war. Some felt the black man and those that supported his cause needed to be stopped. They wanted to control the black population. The Klan also would torture white people who were sympathetic to the blacks and their situation.

Topic: In 1866, the Ku Klux Klan was founded by many former confederate veterans in retaliation to their current Republican Party’s Reconstruction-era policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for blacks. The Reconstruction era sparked by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation clearly defined that the days of white superiority were in dissolution. Through a willful ignorance and an insecurity of what might postlude the civil rights movement, the KKK rose, using terror in pursuit of their white supremacist agenda. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a former Lieutenant general in the Civil war, became the KKK's first Grand Wizard. Now with a steady leader the klan became a persistent political party aimed at dismantling the increasingly

- The most notorious organization was the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan was organized in Pulaski Tennessee, in 1866 to intimidate former slaves who voted and apprehended political offices during Reconstruction. The Ku Klux Klan history came all about with the situation in the South following the harsh Civil War. The Southern States were in distraught and the defeated white people were humiliated and felt like they had to get revenge and gain their power back. The goal of the original Ku Klux Klan was to fight against the Reconstruction policies of the radical Republican Congress and to maintain "white supremacy. The Klan was led by merchants, planters, and Democratic politicians. They considered themselves as the most respectable citizens

The Ku Klux Klan flourished in the South at the beginning of the Reconstruction succeeding the Civil War. There remained numerous ex-Confederates that were still strongly opposed to the Reconstruction and sought to preserve white supremacy in the South. Directly after the Civil War the government in the South was weak and vulnerable. The Ku Klux Klan leveraged this and used violence and threats to try to reestablish white supremacy. They were most successful in playing upon fears and superstitions. They not only brought terror to the black communities but they also targeted carpetbaggers and scalawags. They used these threats and fears in effectively keeping the blacks away from the polls so that the ex-Confederates could gain back political control in the

The Ku Klux Klan was a secret terrorist organization that was created by six well educated Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee in the December of 1865. Their main objective was to restore white supremacy through acts of violence such as murder, against both Black and White Republicans. The KKK had eventually spread to every southern state, and Klansmen would often terrorize republicans regardless of their race. Members of the KKK believed that African Americans were inferior to Whites and did not believe that Blacks deserved equal rights. Although the rebel groups were outlawed and made illegal, many of them remained in existence and appeared after the reconstruction had ended. This proved the Reconstruction to be ineffective as many Southerners were still fighting against the government and opposed them. In addition, African Americans were still deprived of their rights by these

reconstruction of the south. Ever since 1865 the KKK are well known for their hatred toward

This turn to violence was how the first Ku Klux Klan rose. The Klan was formed by six ex-Confederate Veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, this organization started off small but began absorbing most of the other anti-Reconstruction groups in the south, like the Men of Justice, the Pale Faces, the Constitutional Union Guards, the White Brotherhood, and the Order of the White Rose (Infoplease.com). The Ku Klux Klan was created in fear of an insurrection by the ex-slaves, now the freedmen. The most recognized founder of the Klan was Nathan Bedford Forrest. Their white robes and masks are supposed to be a representation of ex-Confederate soldiers who died during the civil war. One of the Klan’s biggest goal was keeping the freedmen away from the voting polls to assure the success of ex-Confederates in gaining back their political control in many states. In 1871, President Grant took an aim at the Klan for their interference in black suffrage but by this time the support for Reconstruction was beginning to diminish because racism was still very much alive in both the north and the south. As time progressed the Democrats regained control of the House of Representatives. The democrats waged a campaign of violence to take control of Mississippi to which President Grant responded with a refusal of federal troop intervention which ended support of the Reconstruction era. In the election of 1876, Republican, Rutherford B. Haynes, reached a compromise with

Forever. 170). The Klan were white southerners who were organized and committed to the breaking down of Reconstruction. By methods of brutality, “the Klan during Reconstruction offers the most extensive example of homegrown terrorism in American history” (Foner. Forever. 171). The Ku Klux Klan as well as other groups killed or tormented black politicians or threatened the blacks who voted in elections. The Klan strongly disagreed with the northern idea that slaves should become part of the government. The Historian Kenneth M. Stampp states, “for their [the North] supreme offense was not corruption but attempting to organize the Negroes for political action” (Stampp. Era. 159). This corresponds with Foner’s idea that the South was not open to the idea of change but more so consumed with the idea of recreating a society similar to one of the past. However, the goal of white power groups was not just politics. The Klan wanted to restore the hierarchy once controlling the South. Foner observes that, “the organization took on the function of the antebellum slave patrols: making sure that blacks did not violate the rules and etiquette of white supremacy” (Foner. Forever. 172). Like the power the southern whites formerly held over the slave population, the Ku Klux Klan wanted to control the African American population still living in the South. They did not want the freedmen to become integrated into their society because they saw them as lesser people. By suppressing and

In the Civil War in 1865, many slaves got their freedom but were still being controlled by the whites and government. Black codes were being passed by Southern states to control the labor and behavior of former slaves and African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan became a structure for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s Reconstruction. The purpose of the Reconstruction was to bring the South together to be part of the Union. The success and failures of Reconstruction negatively impacted the political, social, and economic lives of newly freed African Americans in the south. It impacted them in a negative way politically because the government wasn’t fair with the newly freed African Americans. Many families were getting separated

Frustrated confederate soldiers made their way back home after losing the war that they had been fighting for four years. These men formed vigilante groups, attacking black people. While soldiers did this, wealthier men who had avoided fighting in the war formed agricultural and police clubs for the same purpose; both groups soon took shape and evolved into one large group, known as the Ku Klux Klan and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest became the first leader, known as the Grand Wizard. The name Ku Klux Klan is derived from the Greek word, Kyklos, meaning circle. The Ku Klux Klan, often shortened to the KKK, was founded in Tennessee in 1866 and grew to be one of the most feared terrorist groups in the United States, before dying off in 1869, but later being revived in 1915 (History.com Staff). The Ku Klux Klan negatively impacted the Reconstruction period through terror, intimidating Republican voters, and killing Republican officials.

Eight months after the Civil War, in the south the government was weak and there were no jobs available. On Christmas Eve of 1866, six confederate veterans started a social hate group in Pulaski, Tennessee. The six confederate veterans were John Lester, James Crowe, John Kennedy, Calvin Jones, Richard Reed, and Frank McCord. The group started off as just wanting to have fun and keep themselves entertained. The six founders were well educated and came from wealthy families. From their Greek knowledge, they use the word kyklos meaning circle and then added the word Klan. The Ku Klux Klan was then born. Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first leader of the Klan. He was known as the “Grand Wizard.”

     Ku Klux Klan started out as a secret club in 1866, just after the war,

The Klan’s wrongful violence and killings where a way to get back at the African American race for their questionable crimes. For example “The Klan's bombings, and other attacks took a great many lives, including, four young girls killed while preparing for Sunday services at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. ”(Ku Klux Klan).The Klan also raped women and basically did whatever they wanted because they were basically unstoppable with the power of the courts and the power of the community on their side. The Ku Klux Klan was the most powerful and most influential major organization in the United States.

The Klan used their rage to commit hate crimes against African Americans and Republicans. They used arms, lynchings, and public whippings to send fear down the spines

The KKK began in Tennessee in 1865, the group was made up of all white men who would ride horses through the street to kill and scare the African Americans that “had been freed from slavery” (“Ku Klux Klan”). Two years after the KKK started to have one main goal and that was to kill all of the supporters that support the Republican Party, called for the African Americans were the civil right and also the freed slaves. As the Klansmen would dress up as a ghost to go out and cause violence throughout towards the traders and slaves. Besides the beating, lynches, and whipping (all forms of the death penalty because hundreds of supports and blacks from the south dead from these groups), there also had been Klan-related problems that included murders and assaults throughout Georgia. The death penalties that happen in Georgia during that Klan-rated problem killed about 336 innocent lives just in 1868 alone (“Ku Klux Klan”).