Ku Klux Klan

Early Years

• The 19th Century Klan was originally organized as a social club by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1866.
• Derived the name from the Greek word kyklos, from which comes the English “circle.”
• “Klan” was added for the sake of alliteration and Ku Klux Klan emerged.
• The organization quickly became a vehicle for Southern white underground resistance to Reconstruction.

Early Years

• In the summer of 1867, the Klan was structured into the “Invisible Empire of the South” at a convention in Nashville, attended by delegates from former Confederate states. Dressed in robes and sheets designed to frighten superstitious blacks and to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops, Klansmen whipped and killed freedmen and their white supporters in nighttime raids. Reached height of power in 1870
• Dressed in robes and sheets designed to frighten superstitious blacks and to prevent identification by the occupying federal troops, Klansmen whipped and killed freedmen and their white supporters in nighttime raids.
• Reached height of power in 1870

Decline of the Early Klan

• Congress passed the Force Act in 1870 and the Ku Klux Act in 1871.
• These bills authorized the president to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, suppress disturbances by force, and impose heavy penalties upon terrorist organizations.
• The Klan disappeared because its original objective—the restoration of white supremacy throughout the South—had been largely achieved during the 1870s

Klan Revival

• Colonel William J. Simmons, a preacher and promoter of fraternal orders who had been inspired by Thomas Dixon's book The Clansman (1905) and D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915), started the new Klan in 1915 in Atlanta.
• The new organization remained small until Edward Y. Clarke and Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler brought their talents as publicity agents and fund raisers.
• The revived Klan was fueled partly by false patriotism and partly by a romantic nostalgia for the Old South.

Growth

• White Protestants in small-town America felt threatened by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia.
• Membership grew to four million in the 1920s, and profits rolled in from the sale of its memberships, regalia, costumes, publications, and rituals.
• Some remnants left, but power declined during 1960s.