The Ku Klux Klan

The Ku Klux Klan is a racist, anti-Semitic society with a dedication to excessive violence to attain its goals of racial separation and white dominance. It first emerged in 1866 following the American Civil War and it is considered to be America’s first terrorist group. Its first target was African – Americans and the white people who supported them. Later incarnations of this group added more categories amongst its enemies including Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, and the various immigrant groups in the United States. In most of these cases, these recognized enemies of the Klan were marginal groups that came into direct financial competition with the working class whites that formed the core constituency of these groups. According to Newton (202) the activities were however surpassed by growing neo – Nazi organizations in the United States in the 1990s and in the early 2000s.

The Ku Klux Klan was basically based in the Southern states of America where they targeted the African Americans set free after the American Civil War. The Klan had never considered the former slaves as being free and they terrorized the African Americans to maintain their supremacy as well as to express their anger at the freedoms granted to these former slaves. The root cause for their actions was that although America experienced great economic prosperity after the Civil War, not much of the wealth generated filtered to the South and it was the racism, mixed with anger at their economic plight that inspired the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan was a violent organization and they burnt the churches of the African American population, murdered, raped and castrated those who they targeted and they were rarely caught because most senior law enforcers in the South were also high ranking Klan members or were sympathetic to its aims.

According to Bullard (9) he earliest branch of the Ku Klux Klan was created in Pulaski, Tennessee in 1866 and most of its leaders had been previous members of the Confederate army in the Civil War. During the next two years after its founding, they tortured and killed African – Americans and those whites who were sympathetic to them. Immigrants, who the Klan blamed for the election of radical Republicans, were also targeted and between 1868 and 1870, the Ku Klux Klan was instrumental in the restoration of white rule in the states of North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia. West (110) states that the original objective of the Ku Klux Klan was to stop the African American people from voting so that white domination of the Southern states would be maintained. After all-white governments had been established in the South, this group continued to undermine the power of African Americans by attacking successful black businessmen and by stifling any attempt to form black protection groups such as trade unions. Since the Ku Klux Klan had achieved its main objective in the Southern states, by the end of 1871, the organization had practically disappeared.

It is claimed by Gitlin (133) that after its formation, the Klan quickly became a terrorist organization in the service of the Democratic Party and white supremacists and that its main goal was to destroy Congressional Reconstruction by murdering blacks and some whites who were either in active Republican politics or educating black children. They burned churches and schools and drove thousands of people out of their homes and because local law enforcement representatives were incapable or reluctant to stop them, Congress approved the Force Bill in 1871 giving the Federal government the authority to take legal action against the Klan. Dedicated prosecutors managed to win convictions and break up Klan activity and although relatively few people were punished, federal action did put an end to Klan activities, at least for a while.

Maclean (23) states that the Ku Klux Klan was reorganized in 1915 by William Simmons, a preacher who had been influenced by the book The Ku Klux Klan written in 1905 by Thomas Dixon and a film version of the book which glorified the past actions of this group. After World War One, the Ku Klux Klan became very antagonistic towards various religious and political groups and ideologies which they considered to be foreign to the United States. It was under the charismatic leadership of Hiram Evans, the group grew quickly and by the 1920s, Klansmen had been elected into positions of political authority and these included officials in Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, Oregon, and Maine. By 1925, the Klan members had reached a record four million members and this gave them so much power that on the rare occasions when they were arrested for serious crimes, Klansmen were unlikely to be convicted by the local Southern juries. However, after the conviction of a senior Klan leader for murder and the revelation of evidence of corruption by other senior members of this group such as the then governor of Indiana and the mayor of Indianapolis, the membership of the Klan started falling and this trend went on through the Great Depression and the Second World War. Eventually, the organization was weakened by disagreements amongst its leadership and because of the public criticism of its violent activities and by 1944, the Klan had lost most of its influence and membership and it was disbanded.

Chalmers (16) states that the emergence of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s resulted in the revival of the Ku Klux Klan movement and it saw a surge of Klan activity which included terror attacks on black schools and churches. The various Klan groups put pressure on African Americans not to vote mostly through lynching which the Klan employed as a method of terrorizing the local African American population. The success of these Klan activities can be seen in the state of Mississippi in 1960 where although the African Americans formed 42% of the population, only 2% were registered to vote.

In conclusion, it can be said that the Ku Klux Klan movement, despite its violent history, is still a part and parcel of the general history of the South of the United States. It however only developed to a position of great power during what can only be considered as emergencies. For example, it came into existence as a result of the emancipation of the slaves after the Civil War, the influx of immigrants after the First World War, and the rise of the Civil Rights movement. The Klan’s existence has been very persistent since its founding and it is as yet not known what its next incarnation is going to be.

References

Bullard, Sara. The Klu Klux Klan: A History of Racism and Violence. Darby, Pennsylvania: Diane Publishing, 1998.

Chalmers, David Mark. Backfire: How the Ku Klux Klan Helped the Civil Rights Movement. Lanham, Maryland, 2003.

Gitlin, Marty. The Ku Klux Klan: A Guide to an American Subculture. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2009.

MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Newton, Michael. The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: A History. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2010.

West, Jerry Lee. The Reconstruction Ku Klux Klan in York County, South Carolina, 1865 – 1877. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2002.