Origins of the Ku Klux Klan

Following the end of the American Civil War, when the South had lost to the North, White Southerners
had lost all control over their own affairs. As ex-Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest (a general from
a Southern army) put it, in losing the war they had "lost all but [their] honor", and now they felt even that
was being stripped from them. Southerners tried to regain some measure of control by forming secret
organizations to restore order to their disrupted society through the intimidation and terrorism of blacks
and unionists. These secret societies had names such as the Pale Faces, the Sons of Midnight, and the
Knights of the White Camelia.

Factfile In May 1866, a group of ex-Confederate (southern) veterans in Pulaski,

• Formed in 1866 by Tennessee, formed a group called the Ku Klux Klan. This grew to be the
former soldiers after the largest and best known of the groups that opposed the
American Civil War with
Reconstruction government (new government set up after the Civil
War) and attempts by freed blacks to receive their rights.
the aim of keeping white
people in control.
• It used parades,
In May 1867, A meeting with people from the former Confederate states
beatings, lynchings and
organized the Klan into the "Invisible Empire of the South" with former
Confederate Gen. Nathan B. Forrest as the group's leader, or Grand
other violent methods to
Wizard. Other members of the Klan had names like grand dragon and
intimidate black people.
grand titan. The Klan grew quickly as former soldiers of the South
It also attacked Jews,
joined it. They wore white robes and hoods, so that they looked like
Catholics and foreign
"ghosts of dead Rebel soldiers". This frightened others and hid the
immigrants.
identity of Klan members. They paid midnight visits to frightened black
• It was strongest in the
people and carpetbaggers (white people that sided with the North during
midwest and rural south, the Civil War). If warnings failed to get the desired results, the KKK would
where working-class use even more violent methods.
white people competed
with black people for
The name Ku Klux Klan
unskilled jobs.
reportedly was derived
• It declined in the late
nineteenth century but
from the Greek word for
was started up again in
circle, kyklos, with Klan
1915. It spread rapidly in added for its alliterative
the early 1920s, value.
managing to get
Klansmen elected into
positions of political
power. The activities of the Ku Klux Klan achieved their objective by the 1870’s
• By 1924 it had 4.5 when many Southern States took away took away the black people’s right
million members. to vote. White people were back in control. But the violent methods used
• Oregon and Oklahoma by the Klan were considered excessive by Forrest, and he ordered the
had governors who organization to be disbanded in 1869.
belonged to the Klan.
• The Klan declined after Many towns continued to have their own KKK and the organisation again
1925. One of its leaders, became powerful in the 1920’s stirring up racial and religious hatred. It
Grand Wizard David would only accept WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants- people
Stephenson, was that had originally come from Northern Europe and whose families
convicted of a vicious had lived in America for several generations)as true Americans. All
sexually motivated other people were condemned as not being true Americans; Jews,
murder. He turned Catholics, immigrants from southern Europe (such as Italians)
informer and the eastern Europe (such as Russians), and especially black people.
corruption of the Klan
became common
knowledge.

references: GCSE textbooks and http://edweb.tusd1.org/ushistory

 The Klan in the 1920s
Members of the Klan were often poor white people The Klan used torture and violence against their
who felt that their jobs were threatened by black enemies. Victims were beaten, whipped, tarred and
people and immigrants who were willing to work for feathered, or lynched (put to death without a trial). Their
lower wages. homes were set on fire and their property destroyed.

The Klan also had rich and powerful members, In many cases Klansmen were not punished for these
including state politicians. The Klan was strongest in activities. They were often protected by the authorities
the southern states where there was a large black or police or judges who were themselves members of
population the Klan.

After 1925 membership of the Klan fell. It still exists in American today but is
has never achieved the influence that it had in the 1920’s
Source A Source B
A lad whipped with branches until his A huge and angry mob were demanding from the sheriff ‘those three
back was ribboned flesh . . . a white girl, niggers’. They had gathered from all over the state of Indiana. Ten to
divorcee, beaten into unconsciousness in fifteen thousand of them at least, against three. Many in the crowd wore
her home; a naturalised foreigner flogged the headdress of the Ku Klux Klan.
until his back was pulp because he [The mob broke down the door of the jail, and beat and then hanged
married an American woman; a negro his two friends.]
lashed until he sold his land to a white The cruel hands that held me were vicelike. Fists, clubs, bricks and
man for a fraction of its value. rocks found their marks on my body. The weaker ones had to be content
with spitting. Little boys and little girls not yet in their teens, but being
RA Patton, writing in Current History in 1929,
describes the victims of Klan violence in taught how to treat black people, somehow managed to work their way
in close enough to bite and scratch me on the legs.
And over the thunderous din rose the shout of ‘Nigger! Nigger!
Nigger!’ James Cameron, A Time of Terror, 1982.

The KKK in the 1960s:

During the 1960s 30 Freedom Schools in towns throughout Mississippi. Volunteers taught in
the schools and the curriculum now included black history, the philosophy of the civil rights
movement. During the summer of 1964 over 3,000 students attended these schools and the
experiment provided a model for future educational programs such as Head Start

Freedom Schools were often targets of white mobs like the KKK. So also were the homes of
local African Americans involved in the campaign. During one summer, 30 black homes and 37
black churches were firebombed.

Over 80 volunteers were beaten by white mobs or racist police officers and three men, James
Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on 21st
June, 1964. These deaths created nation-wide publicity for the campaign.1

references: GCSE textbooks and http://edweb.tusd1.org/ushistory