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How Did Ku Klux Klan Persecution

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Om Patel Mrs. Belle Freshman English 22 October 2017 Ku Klux Klan: The Persecution of Thousands The Ku Klux Klan is the largest and most famous white supremacist group in the United States consisting of three Klans across its span of activeness. At the peak, there were approximately 6 million members. Later the Klan supported White Nationalism, Anti-Immigration, Nordicism, Anti- Catholicism, and Anti Semitism. With Nathan Bedford Forrest as their leader, the Klan thrived and killed over 7,000 people throughout the origins of the Klan, with almost none of these cases investigated because most of the police were part of the Klan. The Klan was created three times and terminated twice, with the final third Klan still growing continuously with …show more content…

This Klan was founded by William Simmons, and Hiram Wesley Evans became the Imperial Wizard in 1922. Evans had stated that the sacredness of “ Sabbath, of our homes, of chastity, and finally even of our right to teach our own children in our own school's fundamental facts and truths were torn away from us,” to express his reasoning for the rebirth of a new Klan. His inspiration gives the new life to the Klan was based on a movie called The Birth of a Nation. The Klan’s initial target was the African Americans just like the last Klan along with the Jews and Catholic immigrants. The African Americans were a greater target than the other races because of the increased wages they achieved after coming back from the first world war. Also, the veterans coming back from the war where they were racially discriminated against were longing to come back to a more accepting America. This made many people join the Klan and their views spread to the north and the south. Because of the rapid diffusion of the Klan, member count peaked at nearly 6 million. The diversity of the members were from members in the house or senate to local farmers. The members in the north and the south, because of their diversity, had had many different views to be carried out by the Klan. these different views and actions carried out by their regional leaders. One major action was when the Indiana Klan leader, David Stephenson, was convicted of kidnapping and murder. He had desperately tried to reduce the sentence by trying to talk to some officers who were known to be corrupt and was caught. Because of these actions, most of the members were scared they were going to get caught if they did the same actions and the nationwide Klan membership drastically plummeted to 10,000 from 4 million in 1930(“United States

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Between 1922 and 1924, the KKK gained over 3.8 million members. Many white Americans, especially in the South, felt threatened by African Americans. Many people were threatened so that they would join, and the KKK was often violent. The prominence of the KKK shows how many people were still against pushing these social boundaries, and demonstrates corruption during this time as

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The 1920s, and all of the events that accompanied it, provoked the KKK to rise up once again. This revitalized Klan is often referred to as the second wave of the Klan.5 It was established in 1915 by William J. Simmons. Simmons, a minister, claimed that he had been given a vision by God. In this vision, God told him to gather white, native-born Protestant men in battle against forces of evil and immorality that were consuming the nation.6 So, Simmons gathered 33 men, climbed to the top of Stone Mountain in Georgia, and set a cross on fire, signifying the beginning of a movement.7 While the first Klan had just been a phenomenon, the 1920s Klan was a legitimate organization, with over 6 million members joining in between 1920 and

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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.

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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.

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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.

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The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1865 by six veterans of the Confederate Army. Over a period of three hundred years of slavery in America White slave owners built a sophisticated structure to sustain their brutally corrupt and immoral system. They founded “The Klan” to protect the interests of the white popularity. Evolving from the Slave Patrol to the Ku Klux Klan. The first generation was known for its brutal and immoral acts against immigrants and former slaves.

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The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist group that ruined the lives of millions of African Americans. The Ku Klux Klan founded in 1915 by a William J. Simmons, who was a Methodist preacher, who had groups, or “klaverns”, in Alabama plus Georgia. In American history there has been three waves of the Ku Klux Klan. First was the Reconstruction-era Klan. They started in the South towards the conclusion of the Civil War that had a few thousand members.

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The KKK was founded in 1886 by old Confederate soldiers who did not believe the Reconstruction act of the Civil War. The clan demised slightly, then resurfaced in 1915. Prior to the 1920’s, the clan only focused on Africa-Americans. But during the twenties they not only focused on the hatred of African-Americans, but they also began to focus on the hatred of Catholics, Jews, and immigrants. (6)

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The Ku Klux Klan was alive and strong during World War I reconstruction but during this era they disbanded. Almost 50 years later, after seeing a film called “Birth of A Nation”, Colonel William Joseph Simmons rejuvinized the Klan. For Simmons first act as new Klan leader he climbed to the top of a mountain and set fire to a cross to mark the rebirth of the KKK. Simmons acts as new Klan leader led the supremacist to nationwide membership of possibly up to 8 million. Membership of the Klan was not limited to just the poor or the South either.

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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.).

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The Ku Klux Klan How did the KKK get to be the way it is today?The Ku Klux Klan, a small secret society that grew rapidly to reverse the federal government's decisions to give people of color their natural born rights in the south. But how did it happen? How did a group of six men who were a part of the civil war and fought for the Confederacy created a secret club, more than a hundred years later and this said club is still one of the most dangerous group of people in the south. On December 24, 1865, six men in Pulaski, Tennessee decided to create a secret society based solely on racism towards African Americans, instead of spending Christmas with their families like normal people.1 This small society grew rapidly, their sole purpose was to

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The Ku Klux Klan, made up of former Confederate officers who idealized an antebellum Southern heritage, became folk heroes by terrorizing outsiders who challenged race relations by assisting blacks. Catholics, foreigners, former slaves, and their sympathizers were targeted for wanting to push reforms that went against the Southern way of life. As one historian points out, the KKK gained sympathy because they were seen as defenders and policemen of the people who protected the prevailing values of society, including Protestantism, whiteness, and genteel southern culture (Kinshasa 15). The KKK and its sister organizations were even sponsored by state governments, such as Kentucky and Mississippi, as a police force to maintain the status quo (Parsons 160). The presence of the Klan and other forms of white resistance offered white residents a form of security during this uncertain time period.

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Founded in the South on December 24 1865 to about 1871, which was the first Klan. By the way there are three Klan’s from the time span of 1865 to present day! The first Klan had an unknown number of members in it. Their costumes were often colorful. They also had robes, masks, and cone hats designed to hide their identity and look frightening.

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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

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671-672)”. The United States was first introduced to the Ku Klux Klan in the 1860s during the Reconstruction Era as the organization played a major role opposed to African Americans in the South. The second emergence of the Klan was developed by William J. Simmons in 1915 in the city of Atlanta, Georgia and had almost an identical role, if not an even more violent focus, then the first wave of the group. As you can see in the photograph, the Klan distinctly dressed themselves in long, solid white robes usually accompanied with a red and white cross logo attached, and a white, sharp-pointy hat covering their entire face except for two eyeholes, protecting their identity and striking fear in the victims.

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