Ku Klux Klan - Wikipedia. The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply . It sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially by using violence against African American leaders. With numerous chapters across the South, it was suppressed around 1. Members made their own, often colorful, costumes: robes, masks, and conical hats, designed to be terrifying, and to hide their identities. It was rooted in local Protestant communities and opposed Catholics and Jews, and stressed opposition to the Catholic Church. They focused on opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, often using violence and murder to suppress activists. It is classified as a hate group by the Anti- Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. 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. For example, Confederate veteran John W. Morton founded a chapter in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1. 87. 0 and 1. Enforcement Acts, which were successfully enforced in prosecuting and suppressing Klan crimes. It seriously weakened the black political establishment through its use of assassinations and threats of violence; it drove some people out of politics. On the other hand, it caused a sharp backlash, with passage of federal laws that historian Eric Foner says were a success in terms of . Rable argues that the Klan was a political failure and therefore was discarded by the Democratic leaders of the South. He says: the Klan declined in strength in part because of internal weaknesses; its lack of central organization and the failure of its leaders to control criminal elements and sadists.
More fundamentally, it declined because it failed to achieve its central objective . In 1. 91. 5, the second Klan was founded in Atlanta, Georgia. Starting in 1. 92. The national headquarters made its profit through a monopoly of costume sales, while the organizers were paid through initiation fees. It grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions pitting urban versus rural America, it spread to every state and was prominent in many cities. The second KKK preached . Its official rhetoric focused on the threat of the Catholic Church, using anti- Catholicism and nativism. At its peak in the mid- 1. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 3. It finally faded away in the 1. During this period, they often forged alliances with Southern police departments, as in Birmingham, Alabama; or with governor's offices, as with George Wallace of Alabama. Today, researchers estimate that there may be 1. Klan chapters with upwards of 5,0. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Independent Monitor, September 1, 1. A full- scale scholarly history analyzes the cartoon. Hubbs, Searching for Freedom after the Civil War: Klansman, Carpetbagger, Scalawag, and Freedman (2. Zack Canepari for The New York Times, left; Chris Machian for The New York Times Wrong: Sitting at your cubicle. Better: Walking while clicking and talking. Torrent anonymously with torrshield encrypted vpn pay with bitcoin. The Ku Klux Klan was one of a number of secret, oath- bound organizations using violence, which included the Southern Cross in New Orleans (1. Knights of the White Camelia (1. Louisiana. In 1. 86. Mississippi Governor William L. Sharkey reported that disorder, lack of control, and lawlessness were widespread; in some states armed bands of Confederate soldiers roamed at will. The Klan used public violence against black people and their allies as intimidation. They burned houses, and attacked and killed black people, leaving their bodies on the roads. Since most of the Klan's members were veterans, they were used to such military hierarchy, but the Klan never operated under this centralized structure. Local chapters and bands were highly independent. Former Confederate Brigadier General George Gordon developed the Prescript, which espoused white supremacist belief. For instance, an applicant should be asked if he was in favor of . Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest became Grand Wizard, claiming to be the Klan's national leader. There were never hierarchical levels or state headquarters. Klan members used violence to settle old personal feuds and local grudges, as they worked to restore general white dominance in the disrupted postwar society. The historian Elaine Frantz Parsons describes the membership: Lifting the Klan mask revealed a chaotic multitude of antiblack vigilante groups, disgruntled poor white farmers, wartime guerrilla bands, displaced Democratic politicians, illegal whiskey distillers, coercive moral reformers, sadists, rapists, white workmen fearful of black competition, employers trying to enforce labor discipline, common thieves, neighbors with decades- old grudges, and even a few freedmen and white Republicans who allied with Democratic whites or had criminal agendas of their own. Indeed, all they had in common, besides being overwhelmingly white, southern, and Democratic, was that they called themselves, or were called, Klansmen. Its purposes were political, but political in the broadest sense, for it sought to affect power relations, both public and private, throughout Southern society. It aimed to reverse the interlocking changes sweeping over the South during Reconstruction: to destroy the Republican party's infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life. Those political leaders assassinated during the campaign included Arkansas Congressman James M. Hinds, three members of the South Carolina legislature, and several men who served in constitutional conventions. Many of them operated in small towns and rural areas where people otherwise knew each other's faces, and sometimes still recognized the attackers by voice and mannerisms. Few freedmen took such nonsense seriously. When they killed black political leaders, they also took heads of families, along with the leaders of churches and community groups, because these people had many roles in society. Agents of the Freedmen's Bureau reported weekly assaults and murders of blacks. They drove successful black farmers off their land. More than 2,0. 00 persons were killed, wounded and otherwise injured in Louisiana within a few weeks prior to the Presidential election of November 1. Landry Parish had a registered Republican majority of 1,0. Republicans voted in the fall elections. White Democrats cast the full vote of the parish for President Grant's opponent. The KKK killed and wounded more than 2. Republicans, hunting and chasing them through the woods. Thirteen captives were taken from jail and shot; a half- buried pile of 2. The KKK made people vote Democratic and gave them certificates of the fact. By the November presidential election, Klan intimidation led to suppression of the Republican vote and only one person voted for Ulysses S. Freedmen's Bureau records provided a detailed recounting of Klansmen's beatings and murders of freedmen and their white allies. In Mississippi, according to the Congressional inquiry. Each man wore a long white robe and his face was covered by a loose mask with scarlet stripes. She was ordered to get up and dress which she did at once and then admitted to her room the captain and lieutenant who in addition to the usual disguise had long horns on their heads and a sort of device in front. The lieutenant had a pistol in his hand and he and the captain sat down while eight or ten men stood inside the door and the porch was full. She heeded the warning and left the county. By 1. 86. 8, two years after the Klan's creation, its activity was beginning to decrease. Many influential southern Democrats feared that Klan lawlessness provided an excuse for the federal government to retain its power over the South, and they began to turn against it. They put an end to violence by threatening Klansmen with reprisals unless they stopped whipping Unionists and burning black churches and schools. Armed blacks formed their own defense in Bennettsville, South Carolina and patrolled the streets to protect their homes. They accumulated 1. In February, former Union General and Congressman Benjamin Franklin Butler of Massachusetts introduced the Civil Rights Act of 1. Ku Klux Klan Act). This added to the enmity that southern white Democrats bore toward him. The Governor of South Carolina appealed for federal troops to assist his efforts in keeping control of the state. A riot and massacre in a Meridian, Mississippi, courthouse were reported, from which a black state representative escaped only by taking to the woods. Grant to suspend habeas corpus. Grant signed Butler's legislation. The Ku Klux Klan Act was used by the Federal government, together with the Enforcement Act of 1. Under the 1. 87. 1 Klan Act, after the Klan refused to voluntarily dissolve, Grant issued a suspension of Habeas Corpus, and stationed Federal troops in nine South Carolina counties. The Klansmen were apprehended and prosecuted in federal court. Judges Hugh Lennox Bond and George S. Bryan presided over the trial of KKK members in Columbia, South Carolina during December 1. It was difficult for observers to judge its membership. Klan members were prosecuted, and many fled from areas that were under federal government jurisdiction, particularly in South Carolina. Forrest called for the Klan to disband in 1. Klan was . Combined with extensive violence and fraud at the polls, the Republicans lost their majority in the state legislature. Disaffection with Holden's actions led to white Democratic legislators' impeaching Holden and removing him from office, but their reasons were numerous. Attorney General Amos Tappan Ackerman led the prosecutions. So ended the Reconstruction career of the Ku Klux Klan. Harris that the Klan Act was partially unconstitutional. It ruled that Congress's power under the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to the right to regulate against private conspiracies.
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