History Of The KKK Essay, Research Paper

Shonn Slivkoff

The Ku Klux Klan

The KU KLUX KLAN is a group of white secret societies who oppose the advancement of blacks, Jews, Gays and other Minority groups. The Ku KLux Klan also known as the KKK or the Klan, Is active in The United States of America and Canada. It often uses violence to achieve its goal in society. The KKK members wear robes and hoods, and burn crosses at their outdoor meetings. They will also burn crosses to scare non-members.

The KKK was formed as a social club by a group of confederate army veterans in Pulaski, Tenn., in 1866, but still goes on today. A former confederate general , was the first Klan Leader , called the Grand Wizard. The group took its name from the Greek word kyklos, meaning circle, and the English word clan.

Klan members, who believed in the superiority of whites, soon began to terrorize blacks to keep them from voting or exercising the other rights they had gained during Reconstruction, the period following the end of the American Civil War in 1865. The Klan threatened, beat, and murdered many blacks in the South. To hide their identity, Klan terrorists wore robes and hoods, draped sheets over their horses, and rode at night. The KKK

spread rapidly throughout the Southern United States and became known

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as the Invisible Empire. Its attacks helped drive blacks out of Southern political life. In 1871, Congress passed the Force Bill, which gave the President the authority to use federal troops against the Klan. The KKK soon disappeared.

They then returned to Society in the early 1900?s. In 1915, William J. Simmons, a former Methodist clergyman, organized a new Klan in Atlanta, Ga., as a patriotic, society. The Klan directed its activities against groups it considered un-American, including blacks, immigrants, Jews, and particularly Roman Catholics. The KKK grew rapidly and by the mid-1920’s had more than 2 million members throughout the country.

The Invisible Empire of the 1920’s was neither centered in the southern and rural areas, and wasn’t all about white supremacists, violence. It was lead by an Atlanta fraternal organizer and first gained popularity on the national scene in the wild years after the end of World War I. The Ku Klux Klan then presented themselves as the defender of Americanism and the savior of Christian ideals. It received a charter in 1916 as a “patriotic secret, social , benevolent order,” but found many occasions to abuse Catholicism, integration, Judaism, immigration, and internationalism as threats to traditional American values. Enrolling over two million members between 1920 and 1926, the Klan commanded almost as much support as organized labor and was described with great

accuracy by journalist Stanley Frost as “the most vigorous, active, and

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effective force in American life outside business.”

The first nationwide notice of the Ku Klux Klan came in the fall of 1921. On September 6, after months of research by Rowland Thomas, the New York World began a three-week exposure of the secret order, with great concern on its more violent aspects. Carried by eighteen leading newspapers, the articles documented Klan purposes ideals, and practices. The World estimated its combined strength in forty-five states as five hundred thousand and, on September 19, 1921, it listed 152 separate outrages connected to the Invisible Empire, including four murders, forty-one floggings and twenty-seven tar-and-feather parties.

White supremacy was a basic part of the Klan in the South, but urban klan members took up the club even more violently towards the Roman Catholics. In 1922, the Klan attempted to intimidate the Atlanta Board of Education into dismissing Catholics from teaching assignments and threatened the lives of board members. Local employers were urged to fire Catholic workers, while merchants with ” Roman” sympathies were boycotted. Even the city council was infected with the fever, passing in September 1921, a resolution denouncing the Knights of Columbus as an un-American order.

Some Klan members burned crosses and whipped, tortured, and murdered people whose activities angered them, but most relied on

peaceful means. By electing public officials, the Klan became a powerful

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political force throughout the South and also in many Northern and

Western states, including Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Ohio, and Oregon. However, public outbursts of Klan violence and conflicts among Klan leaders weakened the organization. During the Great Depression of the 1930’s, the Klan’s membership dropped dramatically, and after a federal suit for income tax delinquency in 1944, the Klan went bankrupt. However, in the mid-1960s, as civil rights workers attempted to promote compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Klan briefly revived once again. It faded rapidly after President Lyndon Johnson denounced the organization in 1965.

Beginning in the mid-1970’s, new leaders tried to give a more respectable image to competing Klan groups. Some accepted women as members and set up youth groups. The KKK especially appealed to whites who hated special programs designed to help blacks and job competition from blacks and recent immigrants. Also in the 1970’s, it largely abandoned its dislike towards Roman Catholics.

Klan membership rose to about 10,000 by 1980. The KKK still attracted

people with extreme views who often used violence. In 1979, Klan members and their supporters killed five anti-Klan demonstrators in

Greensboro, N.C. Klan members murdered a black youth in Mobile, Ala.,

in 1981. Since then, declining interest in the Klan and some prosecutions

for illegal activities have reduced KKK membership to about 6,000.

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The Ideals of the Ku Klux Klan:

1.The White Race is the irreplaceable hub of the nation, the Christian

faith, and the high levels of Western Culture and technology.

2.America should come first before any foreign or alien influence of

interest.

3.The Constitution, as originally written and intended, is the finest

system of

government ever conceived by man.

4.There should be an end to high-finance.

5.Americans have a right to practice their Christian faith-including

prayer in schools.

6.The family unit, is one of the most important ingredients in the

preservation of White Christian civilization.

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Bibliography

1. http://tesuque.cs.sandia.gov/~bbooth/docs/kkk/Intro.html

3:00 PM , 7/16/98

2.http://tesuque.cs.sandia.gov/~bbooth/docs/kkk/Creeds.html

2:35 PM , 7/17/98

3. http://www.KKK.com

10:36 AM, 7/15/98

4. http://www.worldbook.com

3:10 PM , 7/19/98

5. Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1995

6. Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia, Electronic Publishing, Inc., 1998

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