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The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist hate group from the United States of America, that has had three incarnation throughout the country's history. The group is notorious for its activity of burning crosses and committing lynchings; and wearing robes and capirotes (white aside from the leadership, titled "wizards"), meant to give anonymity and represent vengeful ghosts of Confederate Army soldiers.

History

First Klan (1865–1872)

First founded shortly after the end of the American Civil War by loyalist to the dissolved Confederate States of America, the Ku Klux Klan rose to prominence in the Reconstruction era (or "postbellum", 1865–1877). The presidency of Abraham Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, is remembered for its lenient policies that prioritized reintegrating the southern states into the Union, including the pardoning of the Confederate officers who founded the Klan. Under Johnson, the Klan engaged in domestic terrorism by killing minorities and either threatening or assassinating Republican politicians. It wasn't until Union war hero Ulysses S. Grant became president that the United States government began to enforce civil rights and combat Klan activity. Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered the Klan's disbanding shortly after Grant won the 1868 election in a landslide, and members went into hiding following the passage of the Enforcement Act of 1871.

Second Klan (1915–1944)

At the height of the eugenics movement concurrent to the Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), the Klan was reorganized by William Joseph Simmons, who was inspired to do so on Thanksgiving weekend after watching the propaganda film The Birth of the Nation (1915) and getting hit by a car. Seriously. This revival of the Klan operated in the capacity of a fraternal organization, and was allowed to exist under religious freedom laws; the Klan was officially justified as critical of the Catholic Church, despite white supremacy being its unofficial true purpose. 1923 saw a schism: Simmons was outed by Hiram Wesley Evans, and the Indiana Klan chapter lead by D.C. Stephenson split off into its own short lived organization. The Indiana Klan disbanded in 1925 after Stephenson was convicted for raping and murdering a woman, and the Georgia Klan declined in membership though the 1930s before it fell apart in the background of World War II due to pressures by the IRS.

Third Klan (1946–present)

Various unorganized groups professing to be the Klan arose after the World Wars. One iteration, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, under new leadership of Eldon Edwards gathered others as a national organization in 1950, only to divide again, some reunify under the United Klans of America, and then fall apart once more after it went bankrupt in 1987. Throughout and after the civil rights movement (1954–1968), the Klans resumed terroristic activity of murders, lynchings, and bombings, with the UKA being regarded as one of the most violent fronts. To this day, several Ku Klux Klans exist in some capacity, again with a rapid decline in activity — according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of self-identified Klan groups dropped from 130 to 51 between 2016 and 2019 alone. These groups engage in lobbying, demonstrations, and littering pamplets rather than organized terrorism, and some associated or are syncretized with neo-Nazi groups. Nowadays, especially on the internet, the Ku Klux Klan is a subject of dark humor and backwardness for most.

See also

• Confederate States of America
• ghost costume
• nazi
• racism

External links

• Wikipedia — Ku Klux Klan