Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the Klan, is an American Protestant-led white supremacist and far-right hate group, with various independent groups active at different times. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction in the post-Civil War South. Various historians have characterized the Klan as America's first terrorist organization. The group is typically structured as a secret society composed of several distinct organizations that have historically employed terrorism, violence, and acts of intimidation to enforce their aims and oppress their targets, most notably African Americans, Jews, and Catholics. A leader of one of these organizations is called a grand wizard, and there have been three major iterations of the Klan, each with differing targets depending on time and place.
The first Klan was established during the Reconstruction era by Confederate veterans opposed to Reconstruction policies, and it carried out assaults and murders against politically active Black people and their white allies in the South. Federal law enforcement began taking action against the organization around 1871 and effectively suppressed it. The Klan sought to overthrow Republican state governments in the South, particularly through voter intimidation and targeted violence against African-American leaders. It was organized into numerous independent chapters across the Southern United States, each autonomous and highly secretive regarding membership and activities. Members created their own often elaborate costumes—robes, masks, and pointed hats—designed both to conceal their identities and to intimidate their victims.
The second iteration of the Klan emerged in the late 1910s and was the first to adopt cross burnings and standardized white-hooded robes. The KKK of the 1920s reached nationwide membership in the millions and reflected a broad cross-section of the native-born white Protestant population. The third and current iteration, formed in the mid-20th century, is significantly smaller and developed largely in reaction to the civil rights movement. It employed murder and bombings in pursuit of its goals. All three iterations have called for the "purification" of American society. In each era, membership remained secret, and estimates of total numbers were frequently exaggerated by both supporters and opponents.
Each iteration of the Klan is defined by non-overlapping time periods and consists of local chapters with no centralized leadership. All have reactionary positions such as white nationalism, anti-immigration policies, and—especially in later iterations—Nordicism, antisemitism, anti-Catholicism, right-wing populism, anti-communism, homophobia, anti-atheism, anti-globalization, and Islamophobia. Although many members of the KKK viewed themselves as upholding "one-hundred percent Americanism" and Christian morality, virtually every Christian denomination officially denounced the Ku Klux Klan.
Overview
First Klan
The first Klan was founded in Pulaski, Tennessee, on December 24, 1865, by six former officers of the Confederate Army: Frank McCord, Richard Reed, John Lester, John Kennedy, J. Calvin Jones, and James Crowe. It began as a fraternal social club inspired in part by the then largely defunct Sons of Malta. According to The Cyclopædia of Fraternities, the group borrowed elements of its initiation ceremonies from that organization, with the same stated purpose: "ludicrous initiations, the baffling of public curiosity, and amusement for members", in which "in each of these directions it was singularly successful". The manual of rituals was printed by Laps D. McCord of Pulaski. The origins of the hood are uncertain; it may have been adapted from the Spanish capirote hood, or it may derive from "folk traditions of carnival, circus, minstrelsy, Mardi Gras – or mid-century 'Calico Indians'" associated with the Anti-Rent War in upstate New York.The Cyclopædia of Fraternities also stated: "Beginning in April, 1867, there was a gradual transformation.... The members had conjured up a veritable Frankenstein. They had played with an engine of power and mystery, though organized on entirely innocent lines, and found themselves overcome by a belief that something must lie behind it all—that there was, after all, a serious purpose, a work for the Klan to do."
The KKK had no organizational structure above the chapter level. However, similar groups across the South adopted comparable goals. Klan chapters promoted white supremacy and spread throughout the region as an insurgent movement resisting Reconstruction. Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a Klan chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. As a secret vigilante organization, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies, seeking to restore white supremacy through threats and violence, including murder. According to J. Michael Martinez, the Klan "targeted white Northern leaders, Southern sympathizers and politically active Blacks." In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Enforcement Acts, which were designed to prosecute and suppress Klan crimes.
The first Klan had mixed results in achieving its objectives; although it significantly weakened Black political leadership through assassinations and threats of violence, driving some individuals out of public life, it also provoked a strong backlash, including the passage of federal legislation that historian Eric Foner describes as successful in "restoring order, reinvigorating the morale of Southern Republicans, and enabling Blacks to exercise their rights as citizens". Historian George C. Rable argues that the Klan was ultimately a political failure and was therefore abandoned by Democratic Party leaders in the South. He writes:
After the Klan was suppressed, similar insurgent paramilitary groups emerged that were explicitly dedicated to suppressing Republican voting and removing Republicans from office. These included the White League, founded in Louisiana in 1874, and the Red Shirts, which originated in Mississippi and later developed chapters in the Carolinas. The Red Shirts, for example, are credited with helping elect Wade Hampton as governor in South Carolina, acting as the military arm of the Democratic Party and contributing to the restoration of white Democratic control of state legislatures throughout the South. According to Historian George C. Rable, the Red Shirts "formed a solid line around the ballot boxes and prevented Negros without Democratic tickets from approaching", and even when federal troops attempted to clear a path, "many had gone home".
Second Klan
In 1915, the second Klan was founded atop Stone Mountain, Georgia, by William Joseph Simmons. While Simmons relied on documents from the original Klan and on the recollections of surviving members, the revived organization drew significant inspiration from the wildly popular film The Birth of a Nation. The earlier Klan had not worn white costumes or burned crosses; these elements were introduced in Thomas Dixon's 1905 fictional novel The Clansman: A Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan, on which the film was based. When the film was shown in Atlanta in December of that year, Simmons and his new Klansmen paraded to the theater in robes and pointed hoods—many on robed horses—mirroring the imagery depicted in the film. These mass parades became a hallmark of the new Klan that had not existed in the first iteration.Beginning in 1921, the second Klan adopted a modern business system that relied on full-time, paid recruiters, and it appealed to prospective members as a fraternal organization similar to many others flourishing at the time. The national headquarters profited from a monopoly on costume sales, while organizers retained initiation fees. The organization grew rapidly nationwide during a period of economic prosperity.
Writer W. J. Cash, in his 1941 book The Mind of the South, characterized the second Klan as "anti-Negro, anti-Alien, anti-Red, anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Darwin, anti-Modern, anti-Liberal, Fundamentalist, vastly Moral, militantly Protestant. And summing up these fears, it brought them into focus with the tradition of the past, and above all with the ancient Southern pattern of high romantic histrionics, violence and mass coercion of the scapegoat and the heretic." The organization preached "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and called for the purification of politics, advocating strict morality and stronger enforcement of Prohibition. Its official rhetoric emphasized the perceived threat of the Catholic Church, drawing on anti-Catholicism and nativism. Its appeal was directed exclusively toward white Protestants, and it opposed Jews, Black people, Catholics, and newly arriving Southern and Eastern European immigrants, many of whom were Jewish or Catholic.
Some local Klan groups threatened violence against rum-runners and individuals they considered "notorious sinners"; the relatively few violent incidents associated with the second Klan occurred primarily in the South. The Red Knights, a militant group formed in opposition to the Klan, responded violently to Klan provocations on several occasions.
The Second Klan was a formal fraternal organization with national and state structures. During its peak years, its publicity was managed by the Southern Publicity Association, owned and operated by Edward Young Clarke and Mary Elizabeth Tyler, who created a Propagation Department to "publicize and recruit for the Klan in exchange for a percentage of the Klan's $10 initiation fee". During the first six months of Clarke and Taylor's campaign, "an additional 85,000 members joined" with further claims by Simmons in a 1922 New York Times interview that "the Klan was accepting 3,500 new members a day and had a total of five million members in all forty‑eight states plus Alaska and the Canal Zone". Even with claims of exaggeration, there was no doubt that "the Klan had undergone a dramatic reversal of fortune". At its height in the mid-1920s, the organization's membership was estimated at between three and eight million people.
In 1923, Simmons was ousted as leader of the KKK by Hiram Wesley Evans. From September 1923 onward, two national Ku Klux Klan organizations existed: the original group founded by Simmons and led by Evans, whose strength lay primarily in the southern United States, and a breakaway organization led by Grand Dragon D. C. Stephenson based in Evansville, Indiana with membership concentrated in the Midwest.
Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders—especially Stephenson's conviction for the abduction, rape, and murder of Madge Oberholtzer—and external opposition contributed to a sharp decline in membership in both national Klan groups. By 1930s, the main group's membership had fallen to about 30,000 by 1930, and it ultimately faded away in the 1940s.
Klan organizers also operated in Canada, particularly in Saskatchewan in 1926 and 1928, where Klansmen denounced immigrants from Eastern Europe as a threat to Canada's "Anglo-Saxon" heritage.