The KKK(Ku Klux Klan)

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan Logo

The Research:
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-rights organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism. Since the mid-20th century, the KKK has also been anti-immigration. The current manifestation is splintered into several chapters and is classified as a hate group.

The first Klan was founded in 1865 in Pulaski, Tennessee , as a terrorist organization by veterans of the Confederate Army. They named it after the Greek wordkuklos , which means circle. The name means "Circle of Brothers."

Although there was no organizational structure above the local level, similar groups arose across the South, adopting the name and methods. Klan groups spread throughout the South as an insurgent movement during the Reconstruction era in the United States . As a secret vigilante group, the Klan targeted freedmen and their allies; it sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans . In 1870 and 1871, the federal government passed the Force Acts , which were used to prosecute Klan crimes. Prosecution of Klan crimes and enforcement of the Force Acts suppressed Klan activity. In 1874 and later, however, newly organized and openly active paramilitary organizations, such as the White League and the Red Shirts , started a fresh round of violence aimed at suppressing blacks' voting and running Republicans out of office. These contributed to segregationist white Democrats regaining political power in all the Southern states by 1877. (Wikipedia)

Ku Klux Klan Flag

At the end of the American civil war radical members of Congress attempted to destroy the white power structure of the Rebel states. The Freedman's Bureau was established by Congress on 3rd March, 1865. The bureau was designed to protect the interests of former slaves. This included helping them to find new employment and to improve educational and health facilities. In the year that followed the bureau spent $17,000,000 establishing 4,000 schools, 100 hospitals and providing homes and food for former slaves.

The first branch of the Ku Klux Klan was established in Pulaski, Tennessee, in May, 1866. A year later a general organization of local Klans was established in Nashville in April, 1867. Most of the leaders were former members of the Confederate Army and the first Grand Wizard was Nathan Forrest, an outstanding general during the American Civil War. During the next two years Klansmen wearing masks, white cardboard hats and draped in white sheets, tortured and killed black Americans and sympathetic whites.Immigrants, who they blamed for the election of Radical Republicans, were also targets of their hatred. Between 1868 and 1870 the Ku Klux Klan played an important role in restoring white rule in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. (http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm)

This video show that the terrorist (Ku Klux Klan) interfere the government and ask more and more people join the group. Also cause the KKK's force too strong, the Klan start began violent to terrorize the immigrants and the normal citizen. The KKK try to utilized the fear from the people to get the more gain, Around 1920s, there are almost 4,000,000 members in the group of Klan. In the 1950s the blacks asking to end the jim crow law which is the law that separate the whites and blacks, like in the train, there have two different class, for the whites and for the black, the different skin colors should go different class on the train. Around 1950s, the Klux organization has evolved to target its message of hate against many different populations. After that, In 1960s the FBI(Federal Bureau of Investigation) infiltrates Klan successful. The KKK leaders were being prosecuted.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

The picture on the left is Nathan Bedford Forrest, he is the lieutenant general in the confederate army during the United States Civil War. Forrest is one of the leader in KKK and Forrest was an early member of the Ku Klux Klan. In August 1867, the  The White leaders and members Americans, they all hoped to persuade those black voters that a return to their state of repression and near-slavery, as it existed before the war, was in their best interest.