In the 20th century, America’s social landscape was changing, industrialization, urbanization and a mass influx of Catholics immigrants from Europe. As time as passed, certain groups of people thought Catholics threatened American values. That group or organization was known as the Ku Klux Klan, also known as the KKK. The KKK was an organization who strongly believed in white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism aimed at groups or individuals whom they opposed. By the 1920 Klan membership was over 4 million including urban residents who won political power. Began in the Civil Rights Era 1950, blacks began to end the Jim Crow laws in the south that legally supported discrimination laws. Riots began to rise and that’s when the Ku Klux Klan came to full effect to attack against blacks movement. The man who got the Klan started was William Simmons, a former Methodist minister from Georgia. The KKK organization was most likely to make attacks on Catholics, Jews immigrants, then …show more content…
One of the main reasons for it had to do with political power. Their goal was to devote their time to an underground campaign of violence towards Republic leaders and voter, which included whites as well. This was to reverse the policies of the Radical Reconstruction and to restore white supremacy in the South. Klan members normally did their attacks during night periods often wearing white masks and dressed in their signature robes with only their eyes being visible. A good portion of the legislators elected during the 1867-1868 that were African Americans were violently victims. Other targets for the Klan during the Reconstruction era were white republicans and black churches, and schools. This activity was most popular in the south due to the fact that majority of the population were blacks where the KKK was aiming to restore the white
Intolerance and nativism and recovery of nativist sentiments and the reemergence of the Klux Klan shows racial and ethnic bias. In 1925, the Klux Klan said that they had 5 million active members, making them out to be one of the largest and most fierce organizations in the country at the time. The renewal of the Klan was done by a rise in violent and racist incidents, including lynchings, across the country. These things were not limited to just the southern states but spread to the west and some northern states, choosing their victims such as African Americans, but also selected other groups, including Mexican Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, Catholic Americans, and others that were not white. (Cited: (n.d.).
Going beyond the roots of the southern states, the KKK had a huge impact on the American society in the 1920’s. To fully understand the Ku Klux Klan you have to know how the KKK originated. The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1866 in the town of Pulaski, Tennessee by former confederate army veterans; the first leader of the KKK is also known as the “Grand Wizard” was Nathan Bedford Forrest who was a former slave trader. The KKK was created in order to enforce white superiority in the south. The Klan members primarily targeted people who were not white, Anglo- Saxon, or Protestant.
Up until the Ku Klux Act, the Ku Klux Klan’s (KKK) influence spread throughout the Southern states and acted as a violent and driving continuation of the Confederate movement after the Civil War. It was created right after the Civil War by six Confederate Army veterans. Not only had the South just suffered their most humiliating military loss, but they also lost the institution of slavery, money, government power and beloved family members. As a result of their loss in the Civil War and the emancipation of their slaves, the Southern white man felt great embarrassment and humiliation. Though he could not preserve the institution of slavery, he now felt an obligation to preserve and reassert white supremacy.
The new Klan was against anyone who was not an American Native. This group was based near Atlanta, however there was a large group of the Klan in New Jersey. The new Klan was a sign that the people of the United States were sensing a change in culture and they were not comfortable with it. Therefore they decided to take it upon themselves to make the change stop. In 1924 it was reported that there were four million members in the new Klan.
In the South, there was a group called the Ku Klux Klan, or the KKK. They would run rampant killing whoever they pleased, and no one would stop them. The KKK would kill political figures who supported Reconstruction or freedman. In a testimony to the Senate, Abram Colby states, “On the 29th of October 1869, [the Klansmen] broke my door open , took me out of my bed, took me to the woods and whipped me three hours or more and left me for dead” (Colby 513). The KKK targeted African Americans and tortured them to death.
The KKK caused fear by threatening other people. “They set in and whipped me a thousand licks more, with sticks and straps that had buckles on the ends of them.” (Colby 513) Abram Colby was a freedman who was in the government during the reconstruction era. The KKK did not like him in the government
“Black churches and schools were burned, teachers were attacked, and freedpeople who refused to show proper deference were beaten and killed” (Bryant 4). Klansmen were outraged and showed no signs of repentance. The Klan made huge parades during the night to show their rebellious behavior towards blacks and Republicans. Blacks did their best to defend themselves, but the KKK never saw a reason to give up. After the Confederates lost for the South, the Ku Klux Klan saw its main goal, to prevent black domination in the Southern states.
The KKK was a group of white southerners who did not want the policies establishing political and economic equality for blacks to be successful. The KKK engaged in underground campaigns of intimidation and violence directed at Republican leaders, both white and black. One of the most notorious areas of the Klan was South Carolina. In January 1871, five hundred masked men attacked a Union county jail and lynched eight black prisoners. Acts like these would go “unnoticed” by officials and other influential citizens in the area because of the fear of how the Klan would retaliate and also by the lack of care for what the Klan was doing.
The KKK is a terrorist organization that want to have control over voting and opposed Reconstruction. People were sometimes killed if they didn’t listen to the KKK. The KKK wouldn’t just kill someone, they would torture them. People were also killed if they voted for something that the KKK did n’t like or if they supported Reconstruction.
The Ku Klux Klan hated the blacks a lot because many blacks received their rights after the Reconstruction Amendments were passed and they had experienced great economic prosperity during the 1920’s. Therefore, the Ku Klux Klan decided to
They tore up parties and barbecues They Klan would put letters in the newspaper inviting people to come to the meetings and join the Klan. The KKK is ran by the ‘Grand Cyclops’ The people became scared of the ‘hooded Lictors’ standing outside, because when they were asked who they were they would respond with “A spirit from the other world.
From 1868 through the early 1870s the Ku Klux Klan functioned as a loosely organized group of political and social terrorists. The Klan’s goals included the political defeat of the Republican Party and the maintenance of absolute white supremacy in response to newly gained civil and political rights by Southern blacks after the Civil War. At first it was formed as a social club for Confederate soldiers after the war, but it soon progressed to be one of the biggest terror groups in American history. Most Klan action was designed to intimidate black voters and white
They used modern advertising method to gain 5 million members by 1925. The KKK in this time period were not against only African Americans, but also Catholics, Jews, foreigners, and suspected Communists, due to the Red Scare. They used cruel punishments as tactics to intimidate anybody deemed as “un-American”. From whipping, tar and feathering, and even hanging, the KKK was ruthless.
The Ku Klux Klan first emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee following the Civil War. As we know today, the mere mention of the Klan triggers fear as the KKK is known for its various tactics of violence that came in the form if lynchings, murders, and mutilations. Following their emergence, the KKK were quickly symbolized and portrayed as the protectors of the South, following the defeat of the Southern states in the Civil War and the beginning of the period of Reconstruction by the federal government (Gurr, 1989, p. 132). During the 1920s, the KKK achieved its greatest political success and growth outside of the South. During this period, the membership of the Klan heavily expanded to the states of Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Oregon, to which the KKK obtained two to two and one-half million members at its apex.
The Ku Klux Klan or KKK has created centuries of fear. They originated in Pulaski, Tennessee. The famous hate group was out to re establish white supremacy. The KKK has influenced local governments and people in power. It has also had an impact on American people and specifically black minorities.